Reagan, Sanders, Learned Helplessness

America has never recovered from Ronald Reagan. That’s why Bernie Sanders is so important. - Salon.com:



In my brain book reading, one of the big guns is Martin Seligman, whose concept of "learned helplessness" was one of big factors that destroyed at least the scientific basis for Behaviorism -- the idea that humans operate largely like Pavlov's dogs and all of our life is merely "response to stimulus".



Here is a link to an article on some of the base of Seligman's critical work, but here is the definition that counts for now:

[Learned Helplessness] "is being repeatedly exposed to an uncontrollable event, such as going on interviews or auditions and not getting called back. After many repeated and failed attempts to accomplish something while in an uncontrollable event, your brain "learns" that success is beyond your control, that you cannot affect the outcome. Once "conditioned" to this belief, the individual gives up hope and effort, even when later exposed to an event where control is possible. In effect, you've learned to become helpless."

The Salon article is eminently skippable ... "We have never recovered from Reagan, the Koch brothers are evil, corporations are evil, the free market is a disaster, government is great, government is good, we thank it for our daily bread, Republicans forebears are "fascists" (actually the Fascists were National SOCIALISTS!), etc, etc.



EVERYONE knows what the Salon article says -- it is the core dogma of "The Party" (TP-D), drilled into every school child from day 1 of nursery school until they graduate from state sponsored indoctrination at the end of their education, and reinforced in the mainstream media and entertainment every day. It is the dominant social message -- everyone is soaking in it 24x7 and 90% are not even aware that there may be an alternate message.



I submit that Learned Helplessness has become the dominant state of the vast majority of Americans of any age. We are nearly ALL convinced that we are completely helpless against the direction the country is headed -- constant vast increases in government programs, intrusion, debt, regulation, taxation, control of speech, religion, etc. The continued destruction of individual rights, responsibility, freedom and independence.



Now a little more than half of the population including Salon, TP, the media, the educational system and the legal system, finds this massive swing to government control, incentives, payments, regulation, etc to be POSITIVE -- but nevertheless, they certainly find it to be INEVITABLE -- as do I, and AFAIK pretty much anyone including the Koch Brothers. We dissidents may have hopes that it might be SLOWED to some small extent, but even the much demonized Reagan never REDUCED any of the government takeover -- at the very most, he only SLOWED THE RATE OF GROWTH.



We know how much the left has won when Salon is still gibbering about "not recovering from Reagan" nearly 30 years since he left office, having never managed to even gain ANY reduction in government, and only VERY slight reduction in the rate of growth that didn't last.



While science gave up on behaviorism by the late 1970's, Socialism, Communism and Fascism are behaviorist ideologies -- they assume that large masses of people can be controlled by "carrots and sticks". Typically, they start with more carrots (welfare, medical care, "free stuff"), and when the population is nearly universally impoverished by those efforts (other than the elites) and becomes peevish, they move to "sticks" -- locking dissidents up, sending more and more to the gulag, starving ethnic groups that "don't seem to get it", and often mass "purges" like Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, etc where millions are slaughtered -- if you kill enough people, behaviorism is BOUND to be declared correct! Even Global Warming can be a fact if you kill everyone that dares point out things like Antarctic glaciers growing and temperatures failing to rise.



The 2nd Amendment remains the last real obstacle to ultimate lefty victory -- an armed populace, even though beaten down by decades of socialist propaganda and policies is not TOTALLY helpless as long as they have their arms. It is the only exceptional ace that the Founders left us that keeps some dim spark of hope alive.





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BO "Betrayed Deepest Refugee Values" In 2011

Obama Admin Paused Iraq Refugee Program In 2011:
When "The Party" (TP-D) is talking, they make it up as they go and rely on the Sheeple having short memories. Given the constant media propaganda and most people's desire to be "in with the crowd", facts and even very recent history are completely absent.

Six month pause for IRAQI refugees ... many of which helped the US cause? NO PROBLEM!

Moral high horse if anyone suggests any delay now for Syrian refugees that are far more suspect? "Betrays our deepest values".

There is only one "deep value" for TP -- * * P O W E R ** !!!!!

Everything else is purely situational. In order to actually betray any values, you have to actually have some ... the left has ONE ... power.

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Trigger Warning, Packer Lives Matter

I was forced to lodge a complaint with the local health club today, as when I went in for a workout I was faced with an employee of the club in an Adrian Peterson jersey! After 3 straight losses, including losing to Detroit in Lambeau since before the holy Cheesehead was invented, I desperately need my safe space!

I've got a number of other local Packer fans to go along with me and we intend to go out looting, blocking highway 52, and turning over a few cars if the league and the Norse don't do their job and let the Pack win on Sunday!

Sure, officials have provided some key roughing the passer and defensive holding calls at points that were helpful, and Detroit played with their usual recognition of Packer entitlement (missed extra points, recovered onside, etc), but that just isn't enough this year. It is RESULTS that matter!!

The Pack **IS** football -- Lambeau, Lombardi, the Frozen Tundra! To suffer the disappointment of the Seattle game last year and to now try to "soldier on" (he he) with three straight losses is simply grossly UNFAIR beyond any reasonable level that we as entitled Packer Fans should be forced to bear (or Bear even)! We are VICTIMS and we demand justice!

I can't imagine any decent unbiased human being not seeing this my way, but I'll leave you with this demand for justice. If the Pack doesn't win on Sunday, we will burn Lambeau, most of the city of Green Bay, and loot all of the big box and liquor stores of malt liquor and flat screen TVs! Nothing screams INJUSTICE like people destroying their own neighborhoods and looting these important items!

You have been warned! My anger at the health club knows no bounds. If their manager does not immediately resign, I will be forced overeat and skip workouts all next week to protect my fragile emotional state!

*** Notice, neither the Green Bay Packers or the NFL are responsible nor the content of MooseTracks. All opinions expressed are solely owned and the responsibility of the large land mammal known as "The Moose". ***

Arland , Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut)

This post may or may not be the start of my book and my blog becoming one. It's 3:15 AM ... the spirits that wake old men and speak to them in the middle of the night are at best untested.

As over 3K blog entries might tell you, I love to write ... or maybe more precisely, I HAVE to write. I also love to read ... as much as I love to write, I love to read far more. If I just wrote from now on I would never come close to writing as much text as I have read. Which is good I believe.

I don't like to proofread my own work, nor coherently organize disjoint chapters of it nearly as much.

I've read Vonnegut before. I find him cranky,  nihilistic,  disjoint and iconoclastic. I believe I share all of those save the nihilistic -- and that I fight with a passion because I believe that question of meaning or no meaning to be the true ultimate question of "Life, The Universe, and Everything", to quote Douglas Adams.

Vonnegut was captured in the Battle of the Bulge and ended up in a basement slaughterhouse numbered five in Dresden as a POW. Allies firebombed Dresden, killing 130K people ... the highest bombing total in history. More than Tokyo, more than either of the A-bombs, and likely more that both -- supposedly the A-bomb total for Hiroshima and Nagasaki together was 129K. In the book, Vonnegut would now say "and so it goes" ... because he decided to say that over and over after recounting death or deaths.

The slaughterhouse was basically an underground bunker, so the prisoners survived and ended up digging out bodies for days, and when that got too putrid to accomplish, digging holes and using flamethrowers to incinerate the corpses. Such things often have strong effects on people. In my universe, they are a message from God to "be ye not of this world", but to Vonnegut it seems to have explained this world as random, meaningless, and utterly lacking in even free will.

Part of his conception of the universe however weirdly lines up exactly with mine, which is the result of both imagination and actual physics. Vonnegut's main character, "Billy Pilgrim", travels through time and space randomly ... partially he exists as part of Vonnegut's group of prisoners in WWII, partially he is a man living a life in Illium NY at various points from his birth, marriage, life as an optometrist to his murder in Chicago IL after giving a speech. He also was kidnapped by aliens -- "Tralfamadorians" who explain one way that physics (and I) see space and time as "everything that happens has always happened and always will be happening". You can visualize it as your consciousness moving through a 3D movie, where your consciousness moving from moment to are the "frames" and which you see as "time".

Vonnegut stops there, but Hugh Everett, quantum computing, and myself believe that not only "everything" is happening always, but a very great number of options at every "decision point" are now, have always, and will forever be happening. For a programmer, what happens at these decision points is "simple" -- the Universe "forks", like a form of Unix process creation, and "everything is the same ... only different" in each of the now multiple universes ... as in different in that "both", or "N" of the "decisions" have ALL happened and are expressed accordingly in the now multiple universes.

This theory "explains" quantum effects because rather than there being "spooky effects at a distance" (which Einstein loathed) when there is a quantum "entanglement" (superposition) which "collapses", or "resolves", in the Many Worlds view, the apparent instantaneous effects that violate the speed of light limit are not needed ... at the "slight cost" of the creation of another universe where any set of entangled potentials have each happened accordingly!

From a philosophical POV, the single universe theory negates free will -- everything just IS, always has been, and always will be. We are, always have and always will be doing whatever -- it just "is that way", and it could be no other way. We have no "free will".

In my universe(s), our decisions create new universes, including new copies of us.  I believe our consciousness "forks" along with the universe -- and that is a base premise of MY book, and to some degree starts to make me a philosophical anti-Vonnegut.

Anyway, back to Billy Pilgrim ... he keeps popping back and forth in time in his life, including being mated to a porn star also kidnapped by the Tralfamadorian aliens in a "Zoo" on Tralfamadore. The tale is full of gallows humor and dark satire as Vonnegut is wont to be. I find him moderately entertaining ... as a "guilty pleasure" when I was younger, and with a decent amount of pity for his soul now that I am older.

So what woke me up is that the working title of my book is "Arland" ... as in a play on "Our Land" and "Are Land", and also because it is the name of the Township I grew up in, as well as that of tiny town that used to be a church or two, couple bars, store, etc, but is now very close to being a sign on  county trunk "D".

PERHAPS I will have the "courage, gall, stupidity, "testicular capacity" to start dumping snippets of what bangs around in my head with dreams to be a book out here tagged as "Arland" to be "assembled later". Or probably not ... the whole thing seems to be less "stunningly brilliant" than it was an hour ago when the muse told me I was not getting back to sleep until I wrote it down.

I'm tired now.

Syria, Obama Lying, or Just Wrong?

President Obama’s Cynical Refugee Ploy - The American Interest:

The linked column  is a good one, but I'm not going to talk about it much -- I'm stealing Mead's thesis and clothing it with somewhat different support. His thesis is that if BO and his Sheeple were REALLY the "caring, virtuous, brave, etc" folks that they are now proudly strutting about as, we would have seen a bit of evidence A LOT earlier! Remember this picture that I blogged on in March of 2014? What we see now is a distraction, that is taking us deeper into the destabilization of the whole planet, rather than "merely" the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.

When your ideology is firmly based on hubris, then truth, reality, reason, common sense, etc all dissolve in the fog of rhetoric, propaganda, scapegoating and wishful thinking. Like the adult that "blames their parents" for their ills, the majority of the population behaves as fake adults who are really stuck in childhood, "blaming Bush", or "corporations", or "Capitalism" or some other bogeyman, while they ignore even the most basic of facts passing by their closed minds on a daily basis in favor of the utterances of their "messiah", now plainly fallen to all who retain any independence of thought.

The bulk of the US media however is still primarily in thrall to BO, so the number of people that might otherwise have figured out that this emperor is not just naked, but also either a raving lunatic or megalomaniac, is large!

Taking in 10K, a 100K, or even a million refugees from Syria at this late date is a laughable measure -- "pissing in the ocean" of a US and global foreign policy disaster on the scale of foreign policy mistakes that caused World Wars I and II. The idea of "having a discussion" about refugees is a smokescreen like discussing "saving" (slowing the rate of growth) a few tens of billions on a now nearly $20 TRILLION US debt. It is the equivalent of a magician's scantily clad assistant -- such diversions scream to free people that still retain independent thought to WAKE UP AND PAY ATTENTION!

Pulling the troops out of Iraq, destabilizing Libya, Egypt, Syria and giving $100 billion+ and the bomb to Iran are all part of either the most gross string of incompetence barely imaginable since at least the fall into WWI, or part of the plan of a madman intent on restructuring the world so that it is more "fair and equitable" to "proud Luo tribesmen from Kenya" (being "from Kenya" at least spiritually as stated by what he claims to be his own words ... assuming you can trust him on ANYTHING).

If anyone had any desire to help "ease the Syrian refugee crisis" they would have been setting up safe zones, feeding stations and driving back ISIS **LONG** ago. They would in fact never have pulled troops out of neighboring Iraq when Syria was already in chaos in 2011 due to the "Arab Spring". They would have had some sort of coherence relative to Assad.

To those of us that still use our minds, the spectacle of the very same people who wistfully pine away for the "peaceful, better days" when the glorious Saddam Hussein and his benevolent sons presided over a "much better" Iraq, now demanding petulantly that "Bashar Assad must go!" is surreal.

Indeed. Is not the entire thesis of the BO and leftist thinking that "W made a "GRAVE mistake" by removing benevolent and just Saddam and destabilizing Iraq? Pray tell then, why was not aiding in the destabilization of Libya with ZERO attempt to re-stabilize it, cheering the destabilization of Egypt and assisting in the destabilization of Syria by arming rebels against Assad NOT a "mistake" of much much greater import? Can one really make any sense of this other than either; A -- insanity, B - an interest in seeing the world re-structured through regional and likely global destabilization? The old leftist view of "blow it up and something better MUST arise from the ashes"!

Again, the BASE of this whole charade is the idea that "It was W's fault". However, in December of 2011, Mr "If you like your healthcare you can keep it" said this:

It’s harder to end a war than begin one. Indeed, everything that American troops have done in Iraq -– all the fighting and all the dying, the bleeding and the building, and the training and the partnering -– all of it has led to this moment of success. Now, Iraq is not a perfect place. It has many challenges ahead. But we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people. We’re building a new partnership between our nations. And we are ending a war not with a final battle, but with a final march toward home.

Was he lying, or was he just wrong? With BO, those are really the only two choices nearly all the time. I don't know how any sane person can at this late date not wonder about which of those two options we are hearing every time he opens his arrogant trap.

We EITHER are witnessing a level of incompetence in the creation of regional and possibly global instability equal to or possibly greater than the descent into WWI, **OR** we are witnessing the acts of a madman intent on avenging the "dreams of his father" on a naive and willfully ignorant world.

Paris and an airliner in the last couple weeks. Mere snippets of the noxious fallout of the disaster that is BO.

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Not As Legitimate As Hebdo

John Kerry’s Freudian slip | Power Line:

There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo [and what happened in last week’s Paris attacks], and I think everybody would feel that. [In the Hebdo case] [t]here was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of – not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, okay, they’re really angry because of this and that.

When Republicans say something off the cuff that can be taken out of context and misconstrued, it is a done deal that the slip was the "real truth", and no apology or explanation can recover the situation. The recent Kevin McCarthy "everyone thought Hillary was unbeatable" or the classic of Trent Lott making an offhand unscripted remark at a birthday party for an old man about "the country being better off if Thurmond had been elected president" come to mind. The comparison to the national firestorm when Todd Akin talked about "legitimate rape" is just a bit too close to "even a legitimacy" from Kerry, but let's be realistic -- nobody in national party controlled media is interested in taking down John Kerry. He is one of their own ...

I'm sure that if it was a written speech, Kerry would have worded it differently, but when BO said "the future does not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam", it WAS in a prepared speech! I think the situation is a bit worse than the analogy given in the linked piece; "rape of a woman in a short skirt is understandable, but not a pants suit". "Infidels" are an abomination to strict Islam -- as are non-theocratic governments, voting or even RECOGNIZING governments that are not the Caliphate. If you are not one of them, you are better off dead -- you don't have to be a cartoonist, just not in support of the Caliphate to be a "legitimate" target for them!

As Golda Meir put it -- "Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us."

One doesn't need to listen to BO, Hillary, Kerry or a whole lot of Democrat elite to realize that they see Republicans as their real enemies and Muslims as their friends. They believe that by controlling speech -- labeling it "hate speech" --  putting the guy who made a movie that want to use as cover for their Islamist friends killing the US Ambassador to Libya in jail, having NY State prosecute Exxon for not agreeing with Global Warming, harassing people in WI that had the gall to contribute to Scott Walker ... the list is already very long ... they and their Islamist friends can have centralized power states that will work out just fine. At least they think that ... but then as Reagan said : “It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.”

The left tends not to think very much about "unintended consequences", "collateral damage" in destroying the existing western culture, nor in embracing other cultures that they find "stylish". So it causes them some confusion ... and often lots of deaths. Like WWII, China, Pol Pot, etc ... Paris and 9-11 are just tiny things compared to Iranians with nukes and ICBMs. They are sure that Islamists are "reasonable people" -- Islamists like to run tightly controlled totalitarian governments, so they have a lot in common with "liberals".

Good luck to Lurch Kerry in figuring out how to appease Iran so they don't get "really angry" with us when they have the bomb. If you have a little time, Rubio puts it pretty succinctly without notes or a teleprompter.

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A Sowell of Great Price

http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2015/11/17/random-thoughts-n2081476?utm_content=buffer502e5&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer



Just read it, ALL OF IT! Thomas Sowell is a voice of wisdom that gets my respect, awe, envy and a few other choice feelings and thoughts. The fact he happens to be black is a wonderful icing on the cake, but most of all he is a erudite voice of common sense, morality and reason crying in the current wilderness that was once the great nation of America!



Only one little teaser, but it is ALL worthy of reading and RE-READING!!

"Our situation today reminds me of what Winston Churchill said to his bodyguard, after the king appointed Churchill prime minister in the darkest days during World War II: "All I hope is that it is not too late. I am very much afraid it is. We can only do our best." He had tears in his eyes."

I wish I knew him, because his name brings to mind this ...

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Minnesota Is #1 !

Minnesota leads U.S. in recruiting ISIL terrorists, federal report finds - StarTribune.com:

... in exporting ISIL terrorists. We even beat out New York and California!

That #1 rating is one that the state richly deserves and is not at all unexpected to me. "Stupid is as stupid does".

Unfortunately, the Vikings being #1 in the NFC N is also very deserved -- they have been playing well, and the Pack has imploded.

I fervently hope that Wisconsin will rise again in the NFC N this weekend, but I definitely lack confidence at a level even worse than when the Favre Pack would journey to the confines of their nemesis the Humpty Dome.

I do agree with Dayton though -- I'm on the path to getting out of this landlocked swamp that wishes it were one of the lefty coasts. I expect MN to continue to excel in leftism, terrorism, violence and general cultural decline.

I pray they fail to continue to excel in football, SHORTLY!

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Hillary Age / Health Not Issue

New Email: Hillary Clinton 'Often Confused' as Secretary of State | National Review Online:



So she is "frequently confused" according to her own aides and she will be 69 when she takes office if she wins -- same age as Reagan was.



Never mind -- she has a "D" next to her name, issues are well ... NOT ISSUES!



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ISIS Will Sell Your Children Into Slavery

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

I had a good long time to mull the state of the crazy world yesterday on the way back from Denver as the Packers were losing to Detroit at Lambeau for the first time since 1991, the surrealism mounts.

It seems very clear that Paris wasn't caused by some film or Global Warming.

Obama has called Global Warming the greatest threat to our future 22 times now ... apparently Bernie Sanders did the same in the Democrat debate over the weekend. Last Friday AM on ABC, BO said that "ISIL is not getting stronger, we have them CONTAINED". Often one has to a wait at least a couple days for the idiocy of BO's statements to be completely clear ... not in this case.

I read the linked article prior to Friday, it is from the Atlantic, a "near left" publication, on par with the NYTs in left tilt, and was published in March of this year. Nothing surprising to me about Paris other than the fact that such attacks have been as infrequent as they have been -- anyone paying any attention has known what we were up against since at least the first World Trade Center bombing in '93. The choice is a very simple one "us or them" -- if we want to keep following the way of BO, they intend to have our women as concubines and our children as slaves ... but Global Warming is a bigger threat. Thus sayeth BO!

Everyone decries the violence in Paris, but am I the only one that remembers that if the "Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey's" had given even MINIMAL support back in '03, we wouldn't have this problem? Anybody paying attention knew who we were fighting in Iraq back in '03 -- the linked article covers it thusly:

In November (2014), the Islamic State released an infomercial-like video tracing its origins to bin Laden. It acknowledged Abu Musa’b al Zarqawi, the brutal head of al‑Qaeda in Iraq from roughly 2003 until his killing in 2006, as a more immediate progenitor, followed sequentially by two other guerrilla leaders before Baghdadi, the caliph.

The left in this country sold the masses on the idea that "al-Qaeda was not in Iraq" -- and continues to uphold that claim if it breaks into the popular consciousness, as it did with "American Sniper", but buried in an article like that linked, they do let the truth slip from time to time. It is interesting to see what W said back in '05 on the subject of what we were and are fighting: 

 In fact, we're not facing a set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed. We're facing a radical ideology with inalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world. 

No acts of ours involves the rage of killers. And no concessions, bribe, or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans of murder. On the contrary; they target nations whose behavior they believe they can change through violence. Against such an enemy, there is only one effective response: We will never back down, never give in, and never accept anything less than complete victory. (Applause.) 

But, those in the thrall of "The Party" and it's media KNOW that Bush was all wrong and stupid, while BO is an infallible genius. We DID back down -- BO ceded Iraq to "The JV Team", destabilized Libya and weakly intoned of "Red Lines" in Syria. Without BO, ISIS would never have gotten territory and as the linked article points out, the doctrine of ISIS is the doctrine of returning the Islamic Caliphate and it **REQUIRES** territory --

To be the caliph, one must meet conditions outlined in Sunni law—being a Muslim adult man of Quraysh descent; exhibiting moral probity and physical and mental integrity; and having ’amr, or authority. This last criterion, Cerantonio said, is the hardest to fulfill, and requires that the caliph have territory in which he can enforce Islamic law.

The article does a good job in general of pointing out the obvious VERY "Islamic" roots of ISIL and the fact that their doctrines are very much in keeping with fundamental Islam -- and their goal is clear, they mean to defeat us and enslave us.

...  the caliphate has continued to embrace slavery and crucifixion without apology. “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women,” Adnani, the spokesman, promised in one of his periodic valentines to the West. “If we do not reach that time, then our children and grandchildren will reach it, and they will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market.”

The article gets a little long, but the important things for people that don't want to see their children and grandchildren as slaves of an Islamic Caliphate is that:

1. Their goal is VICTORY, and unlike us, they believe in it enough to die for it. Do we care enough to die to prevent their victory and our grandchildren as slaves? Guess not. 
2. They are VERY MUCH Islamic, and THEY DON'T NEGOTIATE -- they don't send "ambassadors" nor even recognize other governments. Their motto is "win or die" -- even voting is a sin worthy of the death penalty. 
3. While they are certainly still a minority of Muslims, there are A LOT of Muslims that find their doctrine appealing -- the author tries to assert a non-violent fundamentalist version of Islam as an alternative, but one wonders if he was ever a young man -- the ACTION of ISIS is way too appealing for his alternative to win out. 

I especially liked these two as telling on the fact that what ISIS is doing and the general reaction of scholars in trying to downplay it as similarly meaningless as what most of the doctrinal disputes of modern Christianity have degenerated into. 

But Muslims who call the Islamic State un-Islamic are typically, as the Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel, the leading expert on the group’s theology, told me, “embarrassed and politically correct, with a cotton-candy view of their own religion” that neglects “what their religion has historically and legally required.” Many denials of the Islamic State’s religious nature, he said, are rooted in an “interfaith-Christian-nonsense tradition".

“Slavery, crucifixion, and beheadings are not something that freakish [jihadists] are cherry-picking from the medieval tradition,” Haykel said. Islamic State fighters “are smack in the middle of the medieval tradition and are bringing it wholesale into the present day.”

I found his closing paragraphs familiar to a lot of my thinking, and chilling. Contrast the meaning of being "personally involved in struggles beyond their own lives" with "voting to redistribute other people's money, or voting to force others to bake cakes for gay "weddings", or "voting for hope and change". "Especially when it is a burden" -- the essence of "having skin in the game", rather than voting to force others to do what you want.

I could enjoy their company, as a guilty intellectual exercise, up to a point. In reviewing Mein Kampf in March 1940, George Orwell confessed that he had “never been able to dislike Hitler”; something about the man projected an underdog quality, even when his goals were cowardly or loathsome. “If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon.” The Islamic State’s partisans have much the same allure. They believe that they are personally involved in struggles beyond their own lives, and that merely to be swept up in the drama, on the side of righteousness, is a privilege and a pleasure—especially when it is also a burden.

The author didn't think that ISIS was likely to execute terrorist attacks in western lands -- Paris seems to show that he was wrong on that.

All of a sudden, BO seems much happier "leading from behind" as France steps up attacks in Syria. Like a dog chasing a car, it is much more than a bit unclear what the objectives of France, the US, or Russia really are in Syria. France probably wants to kill ISIS and is largely OK with Assad ... which would seem to align with Russia. The US has declared that we want Assad gone, but how we prevent ISIS from filling that void is a mystery. It is obvious at this point how huge a mistake BO made in pulling the troops out of Iraq -- so even if Syria "miraculously" stabilizes under Assad or someone else, ISIS has a home in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

Once we were "One Nation under God, with Liberty and Justice for all". We saw ourselves as standing for important ideals -- a Flag, a Republic, a Constitution, we were exceptional, and hundreds of thousands died in preserving those ideas, because we knew they were not free -- from the Revolutionary War, to the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. We answered the call again after 9-11, but the corruption in the soul of America that first reared it's ugly head in Vietnam came back with a vengeance.

We are no longer a nation under God. We no longer respect a Constitution, nor even generally realize the difference between a Republic and a "democracy". To the extent we have any ideals at all, they are those of Mizzou -- declared by some majority or court decree, and not to be questioned under threat of state or institutional sanction. The young of university age expect their views to protected from even discussion -- they have no interest in defending them verbally, let alone on a battlefield.

Those that have nothing to live and die for eventually find that someone else will tell them if they live, and exactly how they will live, because their masters don't share their lack of commitment.

The human condition is slavery -- to the Devil, the State, addiction, money,  etc.  I'm a slave too -- to Christ, praise be to God!

20% of Americans Still Believe We Have Freedom of Speech

Little Support for Punishing Global Warming Foes - Rasmussen Reports™:

But only 20% of Americans think they have true freedom of speech today. Seventy-three percent (73%) think instead that Americans have to be careful not to say something politically incorrect to avoid getting in trouble.

I'm hoping that the 27% that haven't figured out "hate speech" are black, in nursing homes, or some other "special class" (gay, transexual, muslim, etc), because if you accidently say "niggardly", or something else in total innocence in the wrong crowd, you can at the very least lose your job if not be actually prosecuted.

Just over one-in-four Democrats (27%), however, favor prosecuting those who don’t agree with global warming.

So ONLY 1 in 4 Democrats are willing to say to a pollster that they believe those willing to present evidence contrary to Global Warming doctrine ought to be PUNISHED -- as NY State is doing with Exxon. They may not want to admit it to a pollster yet, but I'm sure the real numbers have to be a LOT higher or there would be some outcry in favor of that tired old concept of freedom of speech.

This column doesn't go into campaign finance laws directed at stopping conservative speech, anti-Chrisitian laws relative to praryer, crosses, ten commandments, etc.

Free speech was never free -- but we failed to pay the price to keep it, and now it is GONE -- the only thing going on now is "how big is the punishment" for "unapproved speech" -- loss of job, boycotts,  being arrested, jail, or eventually death.

The 20-27% need to get their minds right -- before somebody else makes their minds right by some level of force! Freedom of speech is HISTORY.

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The Oppressed Missouri 1%er

Blog: Mizzou hunger striker protesting 'white privilege' has a father making $6 million last year:

Turns out the father of the black "hunger striker" who took down the university head makes $6 Million a year and is worth north of $20 Million.

The mainline media doesn't report it, and Snopes says "doesn't matter".

Indeed, if it didn't matter what income people make, "income inequality" wouldn't be much of an issue, would it?

As you know -- I'd be fine with that. The Koch brothers have a right to their opinions as does George Soros, the New York Times, etc -- people at lots of different incomes have lots of different opinions. As long as income level isn't an issue for the Koch brothers, then it ought not be an issue for this young "oppressed" protestor either.

I'm sure that we won't hear any more about the Koch brothers income! -- and pigs are sure to fly very soon!

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White Officers Shoot and Kill 6 Year old Autistic Black Child

2 Louisiana Officers Charged With Second-Degree Murder in Killing of Boy, 6 - The New York Times:



Think my headline would be a bit more newsworthy? Oh well, it was two BLACK officers that shot and killed a 6 year old autistic WHITE boy, and shot his father -- who according to some film actually DID have his hands up and was unarmed.



I almost missed this story, it is pretty much already gone from the news. Doesn't fit the narrative, no story here, move along.



I have no idea what the circumstances really were -- it is a terrible tragedy, it APPEARS like the officers MAY have been in the wrong, but there is no drumbeat for their hides -- as there should not be! Let it be investigated, and if they are guilty of "whatever", even racism (it IS possible for blacks as well!), then they pay the price. Even if two black cops turn out to be racist it DOES NOT mean that "lots", "a majority", are as well.



Maybe they are guilty of nothing -- but low light, mistaken identity, poor but understandable decision making, being afraid, etc ... it is all possible. Humans DO make errors, sometimes grievous ones and then we all move along.



One thing is clear however, in America today what we are shown is very carefully controlled by THE PARTY -- we see the narrative that they want us to see. The real world is largely invisible.



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Black and White, United In Death

White Working Class: Rising Death Rate| National Review Online:

A good angle from Victor Davis Hanson on the shrinking lifespans of working class white Americans, a subject that I covered here. I believe there are lots of reasons for what has happened -- I tend to focus on religion and culture, but in reading Hanson, a couple other major items came to my mind, both of which can fit under the heading "America Gave Up".

Up through the 60's, we were certainly THE "exceptional nation" -- the land of the free and the home of the brave. A nation specially blessed by God. A nation with liberty and justice for all. We were that shining city on a hill that Reagan invoked in our memories during the 1980s.

While we reached one of the greatest triumphs in the history of the world in the late '60s, the Moon Landing, we also lost a war, saw racial strife spill onto our streets, had two leading figures assassinated, had riots on our campuses, and saw morality publicly decline precipitously with the "sexual revolution" and the rapid rise of divorce and welfare.

We began to lose our way and with it our confidence in the '60s, in the seventies we lost more -- Watergate, inflation, Americans held hostage by Iran, the Carter malaise. The '80s brought a lot of re-birth, but an awful lot of it was consumption and even worse, debt based. We might have taken pride in the end of the USSR, and some of us did, but the message from the elites was muted -- the end of the USSR kind of "just happened" as far as we were told.

We could go on, but the bottom line is that being a part of something bigger than oneself -- say an exceptional nation with a God-given purpose is MOST important to those people to whom individual recognition of a public sort, great wealth, or other external validation is not likely to happen. Being a part of a great nation, working toward a better tomorrow for their children and grandchildren with the idea that what they are doing is unique, moral, and exceptional in the world is most important when you are "just plain folks" -- not "thinkers", elite, wealthy, highly educated, etc. Those are the people that most need to wave the flag on the sidelines of the 4th of July parade -- the ones that BO calls "bitter clingers".

Turns out that neither being bitter nor clinging -- as in just barely hanging on, is conducive to a long nor healthy life. America lost it's way -- and it lost it's soul, and those people that are not "special" in the sense that they are called out positively by those in power in media and government feel that loss the most.

We also decided that we could not or at least would not compete on the global market in the area of relatively unskilled labor. We declared what a "living wage" was and was not, and decided that jobs that didn't pay more than that were best done overseas or by illegal aliens. "We can't compete with "less than a dollar an hour" -- or some such figure, so we stopped trying to compete. The sad part is that "living" becomes a lot too optional when one's labors are declared and forced by government policy to not be worth even going through the motions of. You have been declared "not competitive" -- sit back and take your check.

Better to not work at all and draw welfare and assistance than to have a job that doesn't provide a "living wage" -- only nobody really ran any "studies" to decide if that is in fact true. Perhaps it is better to work for even a very low wage than it is to fall under dependence to the very elites that have declared you to be "not worthy to compete in the world market".

In any case, what was there to do? Consumption is bad ... not sustainable, the planet has a fever! We seem to have no more exploration or expansion desires -- not looking to exploit more land here, in Alaska or anywhere around the globe -- who knows, if the US was still into expanding, we might have companies trying to "exploit" Siberia, parts of Africa, parts of the oceans, or who knows what? We used to be innovative! But now it is settled that the greatest problem facing the US and the planet is "Global Warming"!

To even consider old terms like "expansion", "development", "advancement", "exploration" is positively immoral -- we are back to the 1970's. America needs to lie low -- to be a "leader" in reducing! Our malaise is so universal that nobody seems to notice -- very few see any potential for recovery.

I've been talking about this for 10 years in this blog -- there really wasn't a lot of "prediction" involved, it has been happening all along, but now the pace is accelerating and some things like the cost in human lives is becoming more obvious. It is also obvious, as it is with the cost in thousands of black lives lost each year because they shoot each other, that to the elites that are running the country, THESE LIVES DON'T MATTER!

Except for those at the very top of the Fascist connection between "The Party" (D), the elite universities, media and corporations, NO LIVES MATTER! In a Godless nation, all that ultimately matters is POWER, and all the rest is just a matter of how to best consolidate that power -- no matter the cost in the loss of a once great culture and the lives destroyed along with it.

Black and white, we are united in death as TP destroys even the desire to live.

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Carson, Character, Consistency, Caring, Contrast

Ben Carson and West Point, another look | Power Line:

"In general" (always a dangerous statement), people of a conservative bent care deeply about character and consistency. Liberals at least say that they "care about caring" -- they say they want to have a belief that their candidates "care", although from a conservative perspective the fact that they have no concept of consistency in the sense of any general application makes it hard to even understand how they can support their oft repeated "we care" claim.

The problem seems to be desires vs results. They at least claim to believe that their government programs "help", although the facts show that among the groups targeted by those programs, families have been destroyed, poverty, substance abuse and crime have risen, and thousands of young black men shoot each other each year. They claim that they fervently desire to help black families, their programs demonstrably destroy those families consigning the vast majority of them to poverty, substance abuse, despair and early often violent deaths.

But liberals FEEL good about their programs, so the programs continue.

Conservatives actually have feelings as well -- no matter what liberals say. A person like Ben Carson, a child of poverty, who lived the dysfunction of the liberally imposed system in Detroit, rose to be the pre-eminent brain surgeon in the nation, is a Christian and a conservative, brings a shiver of pride to our spines and maybe a bit of a tear to our eye. While we know in our hearts that he is "just a man", our tendency is to love him and idolize him. A guy like Carson makes conservatives FEEL really good!

I've said before, I have doubts about him as a presidential candidate -- he is brilliant, but he has no executive experience nor political experience, and being president is BOTH -- big time. But I'm human too ... he is a symbol of what I believe many more black men could be if their culture were recovered from the clutches of The Party.

I also knew that the left must HATE Carson! They have no choice -- in their world model he is Satan. A successful "real black man" ... of the inner city, of a single mother and according to his genesis story, even angry enough to try to stab someone until he found Christ. If Ben Carson is real, then at least a significant amount of what liberals feel good about is a lie -- which if they looked at data, they would already know to be true, but humans need stories and liberalism depends on mythology. If Carson and his story are true, then what liberals feel very good and completely smug about is at least significantly false -- not just statistically, but in terms of a real human narrative.

So Carson must be destroyed -- and since he is human, we know he has flaws, so the likelihood is that he will be. Since conservatives DO care about character and consistency, the liberal onslaught tends to have the desired effect on us  -- like Nixon swearing on the tapes, or W Bush's DUI, conservatives can't help but feel bad when flaws are pointed out in leaders that we had hopes were at least closer to "perfect".

I thought the linked column was a great example of the effects of media attack on even those that are among the most intelligent in the conservative camp -- the universal human tendency to write our own stories with an eye to positive mythology is of no concern from the left, it is almost "endearing" (eg. Hillary named after Edmund Hillary, etc, etc), but from the right it is immediately translated as a disappointing "lie". It isn't "all politicians" that have a life story that is somewhat mythological, it is ALL HUMANS,  ME! -- but for those of us not in public life, our friends and family share in the covering of the secrets and the celebration of the triumphs -- both the embellished "real", and the very nearly entirely myth.

Conservative Christians aren't allowed to hate anyone -- BUT, we certainly can hate policy and sin -- as in abortion, gay "marriage", single parenthood, etc, and feel bad when they win and lives are destroyed. Being Christian and conservative often means feeling sorry for our own sins and the sins of those of like belief in this world as well as those who war against belief itself. We have the hope in Christ of ultimate victory, but we deal with the knowledge that in our walk through this very imperfect world, we will often be disappointed in both our own feet of clay, and of those who take on the mantle of leadership for our cause.

The left has no admonition against hate -- and we can observe that they hate Ben Carson as they must, and have great joy in attacking him with abandon. He makes them feel bad -- and one of the big reasons to be liberal is that you desire to feel GOOD ... superior, smart, just,  powerful (at least as a group), self righteous, proud and smug -- the fruits of the left. Conservatives trade some good feelings for virtue in this world and the promise of the next, for liberals, this life is it, and they are willing for others to pay ANY price so that they can feel good! (we Christians can't brag -- Christ paid even more for our hope than the millions of dead babies, tens of thousands of dead young black men, and now rising death toll of lesser educated whites sacrificed on the altar of liberal good feeling)

Such is the shape of the battle that will continue until the day Christ returns -- we often need to prayerfully "let go and let God", because how the manner in which the victory is to the righteous often seems very well shrouded.

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