The Single Payer Attack

The road to single-payer health care: Charles Krauthammer | OregonLive.com:

"Single Payer" is one of the greatest oxymorons in the history of mankind -- right up there with "Military Intelligence" or "Government Benefits". The government provides precisely NOTHING -- they pay for it either with money they take from living people, or debt they accrue against future people.

Thus, the same people that pay for everything else -- those that work, create, invest, succeed; pay for the addition of a PUBLIC system. If you currently live in public housing, use nothing but public transportation and eat via SNAP and foodshelves, you will probably LOVE a public system.

If not, you will no doubt use the public system as much as you use the other public systems -- you will pay for it, but you will not use it. Rather, like many of us with schools, you will get your medical care from a private system with private insurers -- at least when it matters.

The objective of "Single Payer" is to make healthcare unaffordable to more people, thus increasing the number of people dependent on the government and willing to vote for candidates who promise to transfer ever larger amounts of money to the government so it can buy the votes of the folks clamoring for better care. "VA for over half the nation" -- once they are trapped on "The Party's" plantation, they have no choice but to demand ever larger payments for the declining working part of the population and the dwindling future generations -- the offical TP position is that that those brown illegal babies will solve all our problems (eventually).

Public medicine is popular because there are more healthy people than sick people, and because sick people often don't vote -- or not for long at least.

The rather odd thing that the election of Trump and now the failure to repeal BOcare has engendered is the "throw up the hands, declare healthcare a "right" and go ahead with the fiction of "single payer" among a lot of people that really ought to know better.

Acceptance of its major premise -- that no one be denied health care -- is more widespread than ever. Even House Speaker Paul Ryan avers that "our goal is to give every American access to quality, affordable health care," making universality an essential premise of his own reform. And look at how sensitive and defensive Republicans have been about the possibility of people losing coverage in any Obamacare repeal.

The fact of the real world is that there are ZERO "rights" to a good that takes effort to create. Air can be free becuase we don't have to work to create it. Water can be almost free -- although even water is increasingly expensive. Even though the tap is "close to free" people increasingly opt for the marketed version in plastic bottles.

Food, shelter, clothing, bourbon, Packers tickets, cars, healthcare ... NOPE.

Let's take shelter as an example. If there is a "right" to shelter, then let's define it. How about a college dorm room? Double occupancy 224 SQ feet, shared bathroom / showers , cafeteria, pizza night once a week, burger night once a week ... many of us have been there.

The military barrracks would be another -- you just lose the stalls around the shitters, and it is one big room with a bunch of bunks to sleep in. I never served, however I did get to spend some time in them on scouting trips.

The USSR essentially had this -- as did/does the US in major cities. Giant concrete mausaleums with broken windows and a urine / fecal stench in the stairwells that was rumored to be supremely memorable. It may not quite be the third world, but you can smell it from there -- get a little too far off the trail in Mexico and the pungent mix of sewage, diesel, cooking smoke, urine and rotting miscellany gives a hint of "universal humanity".

In public health wards in Europe, the optimum ward size is 6-10 beds, but many are now 18 and over. "Private and semi-private"? That would be in the PRIVATE system!

When we were kids, our parents would admonish us to have some backbone. "If everyone else jumps over a cliff, are you going to as well?" This is often the leading argument for "Universal Health Care" ... everyone else in the western world has it, we should too ...".

Freedom isn't free either -- it takes intelligence, backbone, attention to reality ... and yes, maybe even "arrogance" -- what "right" do we have to be free after all?

NONE! It takes constant vigillance and often violence to maintain it -- and BOistan clearly lacks even the appreciation for the concept!

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Every Biased Picture Markets A Story

Kellyanne Conway & Conservatives Receive Different Treatment in Photos | National Review:

The pictures in the linked article are what is important, so just go and look.

We are wired to be visual creatures, there is a reason that a picture worth a "thousand words" ... many, I'd argue are worth FAR more than that.

The MSM used to be "essentially marketing" for the left, now it IS marketing for the left! To the same extent that "You Deserve a Break Today" or "Nationwide Is On Your Side" is "fake", so is the NY Times. They are MARKETING a viewpoint to you, and that is ALL they are attempting to do -- they aren't about to have their "ads" ("news stories") give some other viewpoint like; "Well, our food isn't all that healthy and Subway might be a good choice as well", or "Insurance is a tough decision, be sure to look at all the facts and shop around".

To a significant extent, I "market" as well ... so does everyone! We ALL have our "teams, tribes, parties, heroes, sacred cows, friends, enemies, etc". Prior to say "1950", it was standard to have a whole lot of Americans with one or more shared transcendent views that were "accepted on faith". Christianity was the big one, American Exceptionalism ... as in Constitutionally limited government by rule of law was the other. A good post trying to understand bias in the old US vs BOistan media is here.

Now, to the extent that anything is "sacred", it is "might is right" and may the best marketing win.

That is why I say we live in BOistan. BO made it completely clear that "rule by power" was acceptible and it was cheered by the left/MSM, and with the election of Trump, the left has shown us in fullness that the acceptance of the results of elections --- even both houses of congress, 75% of the state governments and the White House, is no longer one of their beliefs (see might is right).

Rather, it is cause for resistance at all costs, fighting with the courts not for accepting the will of the people and even ALLOWING (forget "bipartisanship", a word that has now died) the party with all the votes to move forward with any sort of comity. (remember when it was so "Un-American" when Republicans didn't "reach across the aisle" early in the BO administration?)

This is not so much about "politics" as it is cultural survival. This is the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, which at it's simplest said "Absolute earthly institutional power corrupts". If "The Party" (TP-D) can't be controlled, and some majority of people returned to a belief in Christ, organized under some political organization, then what developed after the Reformation and reached it's pinnacle in the US is truly dead.

But that is my bias ... I believe that Christ is the answer, and that man cannot be free except in Christ. We either serve God through Christ, or we serve Satan. In Christ is eternal freedom, in Satan is eternal slavery and death. Or as Reagan put it, "If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under."

Perhaps you have another answer. If so, I hope that you will give some deep thought as to what that political structure might be -- please note that pure democracy opens the door to Sharia law and many other tyrannies of the masses. Western civilization post Reformation was quite a run. It was certainly not perfect, but up to the abandonment of Christianity, it was doing pretty well.

Without vision, the people perish. BOistan is a foreign land to many of us -- where do we go from here?

NYT's: Trump Boosts Foreign Applications At 35% of Colleges!

More Fake News From the New York Times | Power Line:

Well  no, the actual NYT headline was this.

The 35% of collegs saw more applications is also true (see linked article), and obviously "60% of Colleges See No Negative "Trump Effect"" is also true. How many times have we seen "Obamacare still popular" articles with the percentage liking it a little over 50%?

The difference is MARKETING, not "news". Our MSM using positive and negative marketing techniques to support left leaning candidates and oppose right leaning candidates is not new at all. To anyone paying attention it isn't "fake news", it is no "news", it is MARKETING!



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Suicide or Absurdity, The Flower of Postmodernism

https://medium.com/personal-growth/is-it-worth-the-trouble-9792513b9bfa

This is worth a read to understand why suicide continues to rise along with all forms of substance abuse and hopelessness in our post-civilization world. I think his final paragraph summarizes it rather well.

He says, Sisyphus is the perfect model for us, since he has no illusions about his pointless situation and yet revolts against the circumstances. With every descent of the rock he makes a conscious decision to give it another go. He keeps pushing that rock and recognizes that this is what his existence is all about: to be truly alive, to keep pushing.

 To the extent that our modern secular world has any philosophic or theological "sense" at all, the sense is meaninglessness and absurdity. Like most of the secular, Shakespeare summed it up well

“Life ... is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

 The key to the life of absurdity and despair is that "it's all about poor me" -- But **I** will "heroically rebel" and "keep pushing" ... permanently. I will "grab for all the gusto I can!" I will sound like Obama ... I, I, I, I, I, I ... aye, aye, aye, aye, I am the Frito Bandito.

The Christian difference would be a life of SERVICE (to Christ and others) -- recognizing our "little i" as being tiny, and acknowledging the infinite  I AM (God), vs pushing your absurd rock up a hill day after day while raging against the meaninglessness of it all.

Eternal service or eternal rebellion? Christ or Satan -- it is and always has been a very stark choice.

BO Investigating Political Opponents

Did Obama Abuse Raw Intelligence? - WSJ:



Anyone that read BO's book "Dreams" and has ANY level of "trust" for him beyond his assurance that he was dedicated to destroying "the Colonial Powers" is not reality based. We have been totally screwed for 8 years, and the evidence is that the screwing is going to go on until multiple people from BO's administration and maybe the Clintons as well, go to jail!

My greatest concern—the one that keeps me awake at night—is that the awesome powers of our intelligence community might have been corrupted for political purposes. While we’re not witnessing broad, Stasi-style surveillance of citizens, it’s clear there have been serious errors of judgment and action among our otherwise professional intelligence community. This is truly scary. We have to learn the entire truth before anyone, in or out of Congress, can again have confidence in our intelligence community.

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White Death, The Spirit Haunts BOistan

The disease killing white Americans goes way deeper than opioids - The Washington Post:


Proverbs 29:18 Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.

Mathew 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

Human life requires hope and meaning, remove them and you get death. Religion has been a cornerstone of that hope and meaning for millennia, love and family for even longer, and community wrapping those together for that whole time. 

BOistan has pretty much destroyed actual religion (some "social religion" still exists), as well as  family and community, while trying to replace it with a paternalistic "Party Community" of "The Party (TP-D)". In TP "community", everyone is  god as long as you 100% follow every single dictate of TP all the time. You can have other "friends" that are equally committed to whatever TP tells you to be committed to at the moment, but you may not stray lest you be shunned. Naturally, groups of little gods that shit don't have much luck forming much in the way of  actual robust "community". These fake communities are fragile in the extreme -- one can often observe them tittering about "what they are against" ... deploreables, country people, Christians, etc. 

For those that don't accept that bargain, you are "deploreables" and as such, deserve to die -- and as ought to be no surprise to the WaPo, they are dying -- like flies.

"So the theory comes back to despair. Case and Deaton believe that white Americans may be suffering from a lack of hope. The pain in their bodies might reflect a “spiritual” pain caused by “cumulative distress, and the failure of life to turn out as expected.” If they're right, then the problem will be much harder to solve. Politicians can pass laws to keep opioids out of people's hands or require insurers to cover mental health costs, but they can't turn back the clock to 1955."

I love how spiritual is in scare quotes -- it is indeed the scariest of concepts to the ruling powers in BOistan. What WOULD a "spirit" be? Like so many other words that are meaningless to the secular god of science -- consciousness, love, beauty, honor, morality; the scary spirit can't be measured, and like the other words I listed that can't be measured, they haunt the arid spiritual wasteland of BOistan.


I covered this back in late 2015 -- the situation is if anything worse now. I believe we can understand a LOT about BOistan by looking at how "The Party" treats this crisis vs only real comparison of the last 50 years to this -- AIDS. TP was DESPERATE to allow gays to continue to to follow the lifestyle of bathhouses and open sexual license that they had also loosed by their removal of religion / morality. AIDs was a story that CONSUMED the TP controlled media!

The wages of TP have been known for a long time -- and TP is more than fine with that. The worship of death and darkness is the natural result of rejection of life and light. The unborn, the infirm, the elderly and eventually all who fail to bend their knee to the power of TP must die!

The intellectual comfort of TP demands it.


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Undocumented Democrat Rape

Threats and safety concerns follow Rockville High rape case - The Washington Post:

A couple of hispanic Undocumented Democrats decided to push a 14 year old girl into a boys bathroom during school hours and rape her.  They happen to be 17 and 18 years old, but as Undocumented Democrats, they were considered "freshmen".

The horror of "rape" in college has spent a lot of time in the headlines in recent times -- "1 in 5 college girls are raped" ... the number may well be closer to 1 in 200, but even that is WAY too high. In any case, the "patriarchal rape culture" of nasty white males is well known -- if you read feminist literature, pretty much all of Western civilization was designed to rape women. One of those assertions that are damned hard to prove, but I'm guessing that the mighty men of old had a long list of things that they wanted -- and women were just one thing on that list. Kicking the ass of that bastard king that lived just over the next ridge and making him beg for mercy that was not going to be available before he permanently (and painfully) checked out, was likely higher on the list -- men can be slightly cruel sometimes.

If you have never seen "Taken", it is a worthy movie -- one can only wish that these two wonderful young specimens from Rockville would meet up with a reasonable man and a reliable power network to contemplate the joys of their rape under "proper" conditions.  Do you know the difference between justice and punishment? It appears they have the whole "Taken" movie out on youtube -- 1:02:49 is where the discussion about where his daughter is comes up. Reliable electric power is a wonderful thing. 27:47 is where he listens to the kidnapper wish him "good luck" ... perhaps the kidnapper was lucky and the power went out in Paris?

Naturally, the WaPo is very concerned that this doesn't reflect badly on Undocumented Democrats ... whenever there is a mass shooting, it is always so touching to see their similar concern over it not reflecting badly on gun owners in general! Ah consistency.

Naturally, in this case, these poor boys are "misunderstood", and the anger of the community is very hard for the media to understand. The left is fairly certain that it was "consensual" -- considering how advanced our culture is, most 14 year old girls are just hoping for some exciting sex in the boys bathroom during school hours -- well, at least if the boys are desirable undocumented democrats! One of the linked articles about points out that 80% of Republican men would be virgins if it was not for rape.

We live in a wonderful world -- at least so far, the power tends to stay on.


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The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard

https://www.amazon.com/Divine-Conspiracy-Rediscovering-Hidden-Life/dp/0060693339

This humbling work, subtitled "Rediscovering our hidden life in God", OUGHT to make a profound change in me -- as is always the case, the reality of that will depend on the DOING not just on the reading.

The book opens with the example of a fighter pilot flying at night who pulled back on the controls for a steep ascent and immediately hit the ground. They were flying upside down and were not aware of it.

The theme of the book is that we moderns are flying upside down and don't know it. As Tolstoy discovered to his dismay, we think that "particles and progress" are reality,  and "spirit" is fantasy, but in fact, the opposite is true.

"The mantle of intellectual meaningless shrouds every aspect of our common life. Events, things and "information" flood over us, overwhelming us, disorienting us with threats and possibilities we for the most part have no idea what to do about". 

Christianity has largely been reduced to a "consumer product".

"... the only thing made essential on the right wing of theology is forgiveness of the individuals sins. On the left it is the removal of social or structural evils."   

"A Christian is either one who is ready to die and face judgement or one who has an identifiable commitment to love and justice in society. That's it. 

The pointing out of problems is always relatively "fun" for we humans -- we love to point out the failings of others, systems, world views, etc -- and this is where the conviction descends on me personally.

"We ought to be spiritual in every aspect of our lives because our world is the spiritual one. It is what we are suited to. Thus Paul, from his profound grasp of human existence counsels us, " To fill your mind with the visible "flesh" is death, but to fill your mind with the spirit is life and peace".  

"To belong is a vital need based in the nature of being human. Contempt spits on this pathetically deep need. And like anger, contempt does not have to be acted out in special ways to be evil. It is inherently poisonous. Just by being what it is is withering to the human soul."

And we know it to be true, as we feel it profoundly. My "excuse" has been that obviously our modern society is contemptuous of Christians, so it is "only fair" that we are contemptuous in return. Only our soul knows that is wrong. We are to be like Christ, who hung on the cross AFTER going through a scourging that few survived, and being jeered and spit upon by the masses. And what did he do? He said "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do".

But we who have tasted of the blood of forgiveness DO know what we do -- if we let the shame of our contempt for those who are contemptuous of us well up within us. It is much like "the dark side" in Star Wars.

So what are we to do?

"Intensive internalization of the Kingdom order through the written word, and learning from the Living Word establishes good epidermal responses of thought, feeling and action. And these in turn integrate us into the flow of Gods eternal reign. We really come to think and believe differently and that changes everything."

The book gives some introduction to the path of becoming a disciple of Christ. It is not an easy path, nor is it a "required" path -- but it IS the goal. Either here or in eternity, if we believe, we WILL be his disciples and reign with him forever.

For those of us who are not premillennialists, eternity is NOW -- the kingdom of God is HERE, and has been since Jesus began his ministry! Christ offers us the way through the gospels and the sermon on the mount to begin that reign in this life -- through meditation on his word and prayer.

As you might guess, this could easily be one of my longer and less reachable blogs if I was to get into the depths of what Willard expertly covers. Instead, I'll just touch on one basic point -- the fact that this IS God's universe, and the fear of God is STILL the beginning of wisdom, even though in the present day, the entire system is intended to declare it foolishness in the extreme.  (p 231)

But if this actually is God's universe, the lords of knowledge have made what is surely the greatest mistake in history. Believing the world is flat or the moon is made of cheese is nothing compared to their mistake. To believe that the lords of knowledge are right on the other hand, is to omit the spiritual God and the spiritual life from the literally real. It is to make them to be illusions; and two or more centuries of "advanced thinking" have been devoted to showing that they are illusions. So the battle to identify our universe as God's and our existence as part of his creation must go on. We cannot stand aside. And in training people to "hear and do", we must take an open, intelligent, and loving stand on these fundamental matters. 

I've covered this topic many times in a number of different ways in this blog -- my base assertion is that "epistemology", a part of philosophy must be understood to even begin the discussion. Another strange twist is to ponder with Elon Musk, the idea we are "simulated".  For extra credit, there is consideration of the odds of us being here if the universe is "godless".  I totally agree with Willard, to be a disciple of Christ, we must have rock solid understanding that God is creator and be able to show that faith to be at least as "reasonable" as any other faith on human origins.

A profound and discerning work. Will my level of condemnation in this blog drop? I pray it does ... there is no question that this book convicted me.

A Little Scott Adams Background

How Dilbert’s Scott Adams Got Hypnotized by Trump - Bloomberg:

Pay no attention to the title -- Bloomberg hates Trump, so if someone supports Trump, then SOMETHING happened to them ... "hypnotized" is as good as anything. The article doesn't tell you where Adams is "clearly wrong" -- you are supposed to know he is wrong, HE SUPPORTS TRUMP!

It sounds like Adams is pretty much an amoral wealthy eccentric that believes in "skills portfolios" vs having a single world class skill. He happened to predict Trump's victory ahead of everyone else -- which could well be dumb luck apropos of nothing. However, listening to people who make CORRECT predictions once in awhile vs listening to the MSM which made WRONG predictions doesn't seem completely insane to me.

Obviously the author of the article feels that the pieces that add up to Scott Adams are "bad", because they somehow enable him to approve of Trump ... which is clearly beyond the pale.

Not a bad read if you have any interest in Adams or Dilbert.

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Learning Lawlessness

Trump’s Opponents Use Sanctuary Cities & Leaks to Foster Lawlessness | National Review:

A good column that covers the litany of leftward optional "laws" from nullifying perfectly legal presidential orders in the courts, to Lois Lerner, to "sanctuary cities", to leaking phone conversations of an incoming administration, etc.

It closes with the conclusion that I've reached long ago -- when for "The Party", there is NO LAW! BOistan is very much like one of the countries named below. It remains to be seen if who the current "El Presidente" is makes any difference.

There is one common denominator in all these instances of attempted legal nullification: the liberal belief that laws should “progress” to reflect the supposedly superior political agenda of the Left. And if laws don’t progress? Then they can be safely ignored. But when the law is what we say it is, or what we want it to be, there is no law. And when there is no law, there is not much left but something resembling Russia, Somalia, or Venezuela.

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Baseless Claims And Spying

Did Obama Spy on Trump? | RealClearPolitics:

It is a documented FACT that all of the conversations of Trump and his associates were recorded -- because ALL conversations over US phone / data lines are recorded!

In case you want another source, here is the "Electronic Freedom Foundation"

"Secret government documents, published by the media in 2013, confirm the NSA obtains full copies of everything that is carried along major domestic fiber optic cable networks."

Since ALL of our communications are digital these days, that is ALL. Here is the key paragraph from the linked article.

Thus, in 2016, when Trump says the surveillance of him took place, Obama needed only to ask the NSA for a transcript of Trump's telephone conversations to be prepared from the digital versions that the NSA already possessed. Because the NSA has the digital version of every telephone call made to, from and within the U.S. since 2005, if President Obama last year wanted transcripts of Trump's calls made at any time, the NSA would have been duty-bound to provide them, just as it would be required to provide transcripts of Obama's calls today if President Trump wanted them.

I disagree that the NSA would currently provide the information to Trump ... at least not without leaking that they provided it and that Trump is misusing the security apparatus of BOistan. I believe the Administrative/Deep State (ADS) is the last (and arguably the most important) Democrat held part of the US government. The ADS may or may not be the "enemy of the people", but it is certainly the enemy of Trump! (and Republicans)

So Trump needs "evidence" to make the claim that BO spied on him. The FBI is investigating Trump for possibly having "connections to Russia". EVERYONE ought to have this video locked in their brain!

So did the FBI investigate Obama? In 2013 he WELCOMED the Russian proposal to get more involved in Syria. I assume the FBI has LOTS of tapes from conversations between BO and his surrogates on the topic of Russia, "Red Lines" and Syria! Why were none of those "leaked"?

Hillary, Podesta and the DNC set up insecure servers and they were hacked. The PROBLEMS came from:

1. Hillary clearly stated there was nothing secret on her server (because it was illegal for there to be anything classified on the server) -- there were at least 10's, if not hundreds of documents found to be classified on the server AFTER Hillary had made multiple illegal attempts to "wipe" it. For anyone else, this was JAIL TIME for a FELONY!
   
2. The problem with what was leaked was THE CONTENT for the DNC and Podesta. It proved they rigged the primary for Hillary, cheated on the debates, that the "Clinton Fund" was a quid pro quo "diving for dollars" for the Clintons, and a bunch of other seedy stuff. 

Did "the Russians" even do the hacking? If the MSM had covered the latest Wikileaks dump of CIA capability, pretty much nobody would be thinking that any more.

One of the most interesting disclosures concerns how the CIA can cover its tracks by leaving electronic trails suggesting the hacking is being done in different places — notably, in Russia. In fact, according to WikiLeaks, there’s an entire department dedicated to this. Its job is to “misdirect attribution” by leaving false fingerprints. If you’ve been at all skeptical about the recent levels of Russia-related hysteria, promoted heavily by U.S. intelligence agencies, alarm bells are probably going off in your head.

So BO directly tells the Russian ambassador in '12 that he is going to "have more flexibility after the election". Gee ... Did he know he was going to win? Maybe the Russians were helping him. Why not? Is this the sort of accusatory stream that only runs one way? What "evidence" did anyone have about Trump INFLUENCING the supposed "hacking" prior to the eavesdropping on the phone conversations -- which BTW didn't provide any evidence of "collusion" either.

And what would "collusion" be? "I'll have more flexibility to work with you after the election"?

WHOMEVER did the hacking and leaking of Hillary, her staff and the DNC, it was the result of:

1. Either their illegal servers, or their insanely poorly protected servers.
   
2. The ISSUE was about what was ON the servers and in the emails -- that they had classified documents on private servers, shook down campaign contributors and rigged their own primary for starters.  

In the case of Trump however, he and his incoming administration were using phone lines that OUGHT to not have been tapped -- or even if you are OK with the government recording all the calls and emails that flow, should not have been EXPOSED -- the leaks were from THIS country, and in the BO administration / Administrative Sate. Were there to be any sort of even handed treatment here, the PROBLEM (according to the media and the D's) would be the SOURCE OF THE LEAKS, not the CONTENT. BO DEFINITELY relaxed classified restrictions, basically encouraging "leaks", and the source is the NY Times.

As Inauguration Day approached, Obama White House officials grew convinced that the intelligence was damning and that they needed to ensure that as many people as possible inside government could see it, even if people without security clearances could not. Some officials began asking specific questions at intelligence briefings, knowing the answers would be archived and could be easily unearthed by investigators — including the Senate Intelligence Committee, which in early January announced an inquiry into Russian efforts to influence the election.

The "blaming the Russians" for "manipulation" is blaming their (supposed) intelligence gathering -- we are supposed to pay no attention to the content of what was leaked in those cases. 

In the Trump case, there has been NO CONTENT beyond "they talked", and that "looks bad" -- to Democrats, the left, and cranks like McCain. 

So where was that standard when the video above was happening? 

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Titanic Vs Largest Cruise Ship

Titanic Vs Oasis of the Seas | Malcolm Oliver's WaterWorld:

Appropo of nothing ... "ships got bigger".




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The Dark Rigidity of Tribes

An Insider's View: The Dark Rigidity of Fundamentalist Rural America | Alternet:

Way too loing for the point it makes -- the red state fundamentalist tribe isn't going to change it's views, even though from a coastal elite's views, everything it believes is wrong.

Naturally the coastal elites views are all "scientific,  correct, etc" -- so there is no need to "understand anyone" -- coastal elites right, red states wrong, poor, racist etc. "Deplorable" summarizes it pretty well.

I'm wondering if food and fuel transfers from red states to blue states suddenly stopped, and all the red oriented "stupid" (from the column authors POV) truckers stopped moving stuff around, how long Mr "correct" would need to be without food and power before being smart was deemed less important than being fed?

I found this to be a pretty good summary of the whole deal ...

When a 2,700-year-old book that was written by uneducated, pre-scientific people, subject to translation innumerable times, and edited with political and economic pressures from popes and kings, is given higher intellectual authority than facts arrived at from a rigorous, self-critical, constantly re-evaluating system that can and does correct mistakes, no amount of understanding, respect or evidence is going to change their minds and assuage their fears.

Yes indeed. That "2700 year old book" along with some Greek philosophy that is a mere 2,350 or so old, plus a few other pieces of wisdom that are centures old built the civilization that was once smart enough to know that without transcendent values, humans return to fundamentalist tribal factions that are so rigid that there is no ground for discussion -- the author of the column seems to grasp the sound of his left tribe "clapping" quite well.

If there are no transcendent values, then obviously might is right. No doubt Mr elite is confident in his team / tribe. They are "right" after all!

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Race vs Civilization, Steve King

Rep. Steve King says his ‘somebody else’s babies’ tweet isn’t ‘about race.’ Except with King, it’s almost always about race. - The Washington Post:

The linked article is a dedicated attempt to mark Steve King as a "racist", and therefore silence his voice, or at least make it "bad". The chief offending comment for this attempt is "our civilization can't be restored with “somebody else's babies”" ... but they dig some other comments out as well.

First of all, what is "our civilization"? I'd argue it is WESTERN civilization ... Greek, Roman, Christian, Enlightenment, Reformation, etc. Assuming THAT is what he means, what is "somebody else's babies"?

To me that would mean babies from people that don't share that civilization -- they aren't Christian, don't know about Greece, Rome, etc -- or at least don't subscribe to what at least once were the tenets of Western civilization -- free speech, private property, rule of law, ordered universe understandable by man (science), etc

Creatures can carry on their SPECIES and differences in the species -- like race, merely by propagation of genetic material. That however is not supposed to be a "civilization", or even a "culture". Humans want to pass on their culture / civilization to their children -- or at least the ones not in dying cultures and civilizations wanted to.

One of the other "racist" things he said was “The idea that every culture is equal is not objectively true,”. Obviously, it is racist to claim that there are value differences between cultures. The Nazi culture would be equal to the San Francisco hipster culture, which is equal to the culture in deeply red Emmetsburg IA where I spent the weekend, and also equal to a culture of cannibals in Borneo. To not agree with that is simply "racist" -- or maybe "culturalist"?

Here is what Thomas Sowell has to say on the topic (in a great column BTW). "There is no economic determinism. People choose what to spend their money on, and what to spend their time on. Cultures differ." Sowell is an intellectual giant who happens to be black ... so it isn't as important for the WaPo to lable him "racist" for having the same view as King.

We know that, much like climate change, this racist label is not up for "debate", because ... well, because we have been TOLD !

King's influence on the Republican Party and American culture writ large is something to be debated. But whether King's comments are about race is not up for debate.

In the world view of the WaPo, race and civilization or culture are totally equivalent, and thus, obviously totally EQUAL ... as in Nazi, Hipster and Cannibal culture being equal.

Our betters are so intelligent it is hard to imagine why a bunch of hick Emmetsburg IA folks would disagree with them and vote for King and Trump! The gall! And AFTER they have been TOLD!


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Carefully Taught To Hate The Past

George W. Bush Gave Us Donald Trump. Now He Wants To Be Forgiven. | The Huffington Post: 

The title is a play on "You've got to be carefully taught" from the musical "South Pacific". 

You've got to be taughtTo hate and fear, you've got to be taught from year to year
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught
To be afraid of people
Whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a different shade
You've got to be carefully taught.

My belief (and world views are ALWAYS "beliefs" vs "facts") is that we are spiritual beings living  in a created universe with a purpose defined by a loving God, who have an eternal future in the loving presence of God and fellow believers through the death and sacrifice of his Son Jesus Christ. 

To the extent that I can understand the world view of the authors of the top linked column, it is "We live in a randomly evolved universe with no inherent meaning but that which we will into being by some process which will evolve in the future to be "better" by some unknown standard". I'll label that "Secular Humanist" (SH). 

To some extent, up to say "1950-60", America and even Europe still somewhat followed my world view. Since then, we have been increasingly following the SH world view, and according to the author of the column, the results so far, well, suck. The worldview of Western civilization put men on the moon, the worldview of SH has a lot of trouble identifying men, but it has put them in women's bathrooms. 

"Hazy nostalgia for George W. Bush carries broader risks. If Bush really wasn’t so bad, then Trump is more of a dramatic switch from ages past than he’s already been judged. His administration is a comet carrying alien life, as opposed to the edge of a continuum stretching back through decades of Democratic and Republican misrule. Normalizing Bush weakens our already weak grip on history, making it that much harder to see how today’s political harvest was also cultivated by the administrations of Clinton, who signed NAFTA and unleashed Wall Street, and Obama, who continued the Wall Street bailouts and allowed 90 percent of wealth creation during his tenure to accrue to the top 1 percent.

If Bush had never been president, or an execution-happy Texas governor, he might be a great buddy to talk baseball with. Even now, despite everything, it’s possible to empathize with his anguished conscience and maybe grant him whatever fleeting solace he finds in his paints and his bubble baths. But that’s really between him, his minister and his therapist. The country cannot afford any more sentimentalized politics."

They included Nixon in the column as well, and I'm quite certain they could go back for all of US and western history, the Founders, the Reformation, and Enlightenment, DaVinci, Augustine, Christ, Plato, Abraham, etc and point out that it ALL sucked! And we can't afford any sentiment about it -- the past SUCKED ... ergo the future is so bright we need to wear shades by comparison -- except for this nasty current "Trump bump" in the road ... and of course all the crap that preceded it.

Now that we are clear on that, let me make a couple comments.

First, you actually DON'T have to be "carefully taught" to prefer same and dislike different, which can be fanned into "hate" by things like wars, flying planes into buildings, losing your job, others voting for Trump, or reading articles like the linked.

We are born preferring "like" over things, creatures and people that are different, unfamiliar, strange, etc. I'd call it the way God created us -- evolution would just say "it has generally led to survival". What you DO have to be carefully taught is to love your enemies, which Christ teaches and clearly SHs do not.

We are also born with a built in natural affection for our parents and our "kin" as in blood relatives, even shoestring ones. Somewhere in that set of "good feelings well met" is the draw of our "tribe", "homeland", etc. Things like love, and yes that awful "sentiment" are also a part of us (in my world view), even MORE wired into our spiritual selves than our physical. Ideas that SHs find completely abhorrent like  "love your father and your mother", "love of God and country",  are part of that "sentiment" that is "unaffordable".

So you DO have to be VERY carefully taught to hate your past, your country, your civilization, your system of government, your parents, your relatives and people that voted for Trump. The linked column is an attempt at our old friend the INVERSION -- the place where Satan lives. It is an article that asks you to believe the OPPOSITE of what built Western civilization, and therefore tear it down and start over.

The SH world view has been being taught nearly exclusively in this country since at least the '50's (see  "God and Man at Yale") and it has flowered into increasingly mainstream embrace, especially among the "millennials" of views like the linked column. One of the features of the SH worldview is that it tends to lead to not having children. While there is the vague promise of "a better future SOMEHOW", the SH message coupled with the inductive "proofs" of science ( It worked great the last X times in a row!) is hard for them to sink their teeth into -- as evidenced above, even "The One", BO, turned out to be just one more failure, that like W and Slick before him led to the horror of Trump. Thousands of years of world history and all just crap! (well, except for that article I'm sure -- perhaps THAT is what mankind was leading up to, thus providing the "hope" to bring new life into the world).

Somehow, once you throw out sentiment, hope, love, etc tend to leave the now declared to be spiritless body with them. Oh, and "forgiveness" and "redemption" -- as evidenced in the column, certainly there is no room for those in the clear eyed SH view of reality.

And that folks, in one relatively short column and a few extra words is a class of world views.

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