Archives for 2017
“I got the answers, I’m bona fide!” Ulysses Everett McGill
The best thing about the Left and about Islam is they have all the answers to all of the problems in the world. How do we know? Just ask them. They’ll tell you exactly what the capitalists and the Christians are doing wrong. Poverty, disease, inequality, unemployment, injustice, and immorality exist because the capitalists and the Christians failed to do something about them.
If only we would follow Leftist and Islamic principles, all of these human scourges would be eliminated. All you have to do is look at . . . and then there’s . . . um . . . hold on, I just had it . . . um . . . crap . . . well . . . um, no matter.
Still, socialism works and Islam is all about peace. I just can’t think of any examples right now. I know hundreds of millions of people over more than a millennium have tried these approaches, I just can’t think of one that worked. But at least it’s a good thing that the Left and Islam have all the answers.
It must be the faults of capitalists and Christians that Leftism and Islam haven’t solved any of mankind’s big problems yet. Yeah that’s it.
The least common denominator strikes again
Elbert County Democrats will be pleased to learn that the Facebook group Elbert County Republicans has torn a page from the Elbert County Citizens Facebook group and begun ejecting members with whom the moderators disagree. This practice infuriates me as it completely discredits the whole point of being a Republican, a political philosophy built on a foundation of reasonable and defensible ideas.
When a Republican must resort to high school clique antics to defend a position, then he should not be in a position of power over the publication of other’s ideas, Republican or whatever. Censorship is a notorious Democrat tool. A Republican who uses it has signed up for the wrong party.
~
—for if Men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind; reason is of no use to us—the freedom of Speech may be taken away—and, dumb & silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.
From George Washington to Officers of the Army, 15 March 1783
the battle space
A local Indivisible, Elizabeth Haymond, wrote today, “It is not enough for us to simply win enough votes, we must use this as an opportunity to condemn bigotry and xenophobia across our state. This is our moment to control the narrative. . .”
The noble motives that Haymond wants to virtue-signal to the world through her political action get undermined in the very next sentence. She is good, and there will be no dissent about that.
Who are the bigots and the xenophobes? That’s easy. They self-identify by opposing Haymond or voting against the way Haymond wants.
Not only is a political disagreement with Haymond impermissible, it constitutes an offense personal to Haymond on spiritual and metaphysical levels.
What if the purported bigots and xenophobes have a good reason for voting against the act of government that Haymond supports? Doesn’t matter. The narrative is under Haymond’s control and she’s not interested in debate.
This is just one example of the Left’s paradigm. You could take all of the social pathologies the Left virtue-signal about and pair them up with policies and actions the Left have assigned to the domain of government. They reinforce each other in tautological circles of reason.
The election of Donald Trump catalyzed the Left on a metaphysical level. The Left didn’t just lose an election. They watched, and continue to endure, insults to all that is just and holy in their world. The string of hate-proxy social pathologies the Left obsess upon are all in a high state of excitement right now, and will apparently remain so for the foreseeable future.
The Left seek something big and invasive–they want your mind. An election for the Left is just a step in a direction, a weapon in the broader battle for your head space.
They won’t admit straight out that they want control over your thoughts because that would put people off. But look at Haymond’s political construct above and do a little deductive reasoning. See if you can find any space left over after she’s through.
And consider this is just one of a whole basket of the Left’s political vectors, all motivated by meta-level social pathologies that must be justly resolved, but in reality can never be finalized until utopia is achieved.
They leave no room for any individual thought in your brain after they get done with you.
To be fair, conservatives have meta constructs of a religious nature too. God-given rights described in the Declaration of Independence codified into legislative and constitutional enforcements may be considered as metaphysical in nature as the Left’s basket of social pathologies.
Both sides’ metaphysics can be distinguished by; those that support the collective and those that support the individual, those that expand the domain of government and those that empower the individual against the usurpations of government, those that control your mind and those that set your mind free to create, those that are tautological and those that are unconstrained.
Free cultures award virtue on the basis of what one creates. Collective cultures award virtue to people who talk about it. Obviously, one of these paradigms leads to more tangible progress, and it isn’t the one that calls itself progressive.
Consider the educational malpractice of legions of young people taught in public school each day the language of the Left’s social pathologies. Will they grow up to be Haymonds?
the funny thing. . .
Late night comedians went from stand ups to standing jokes.
In high dudgeon, obsessive raves, compulsive attacks, hypersensitive over-reactions to anything and every thing, desperate over the end of their civilization, they present their nightly farce under the rubric of entertainment, inspiring the useful tools swarming under the guidance of new community organizations—innocents who think late night TV is the real news.
Late night writers gave up jokes for bathetic propaganda. The laugh tracks ring as hollow as their hosts’ feigned self assurance. Worst of all, their desperate hysterical ravings aren’t funny.
The big lie, the yuge lie, is all of this instant umbrage materialized after the election. The Left went from zero to please-pull-over in the time it took for the returns to come in. Everything was fine while the headlights pointed Left when all of a sudden the focus changed and the nightmare began.
For over a year the Republicans broadcast their candidate selection process. Conservative ideas were discussed, almost ad nauseam, while the Left remained silent. They were sure the fix was in and nothing could derail the Clinton—except as it turned out the Clinton herself.
The Left’s panic reaction now consumes cable, the airwaves, and the internet. If this onslaught were a bona fide concern over their policies, the Left had over a year to make that case. But they were too busy goose stepping around Obama’s pen and phone to show much concern.
Now, after the election, suddenly it’s the end of the world.
Well, it’s not the end of the world. But it seems to be the end of late night comedy, at least for a while.
Boldfaced American propaganda
Speech and ideation control targeting young Americans
Reported by: Discoverthenetworks.org
“Indivisible is an organization that seeks to persuade Americans – particularly young people – to believe that big, centralized government can benefit society in a multitude of ways that the private sector cannot. In short, Indivisible’s objective is to “energiz[e] and infor[m] Americans about government’s potential” to ensure “a safe, healthy, just and prosperous future” for all. Asserting that “too much time is taken up debating big government versus small government,” Indivisible contends that “what we need to be discussing is how our government works well,” and why it is indispensable for “accomplishing big things.”
In an effort to “inspire a cultural shift in how Americans think about the role of government in America,” Indivisible is committed to “disrupting and reframing negative media discourse about government,” “creating a network of champions to change the conversation about government in their communities,” and “training the next generation of civic-minded leaders.” Toward these ends, the organization has created an Indivisible Institute that administers a leadership-development program for young people “who share a passion for reclaiming government as our unique tool for addressing tomorrow’s challenges and opportunities.” These “emerging leaders” are taught how “to help … build a new American culture” wherein “the potential and promise of government” is axiomatic.
One of Indivisible’s major projects is its “Pave the Way” video contest, whose name derives from the notion that government is “literally paving our way with road construction and interstates.” This contest offers cash prizes to young people who produce quality videos of interviews wherein small-business owners tell “how government paved the way for their business’ success” by means of things like the GI Bill, the Affordable Care Act, Small Business Administration loan programs, and infrastructure spending.
Another key initiative of Indivisible is its “I Love My” program, which offers information and talking points designed to highlight the many benefits of government. On the premise that “it’s amazing how much government is doing behind the scenes to make our lives better every day,” Indivisible argues that the media should make a special effort to “show [that] our public systems and structures [are] usually so well run that we don’t notice them at all.” One such structure, says Indivisible, is the U.S. Postal Service, which “makes our businesses better,” “helps our communities function,” “makes our democracy work,” and “is the reason our country works at all.”
Similarly, another section of the “I Love My” program teaches people to how to speak about taxes in a way that emphasizes their usefulness in helping government to serve “the common good,” rather than in a way that casts them in a negative light. “Don’t talk about taxes as a ‘burden‘ or something from which we need ‘relief,’” Indivisible advises. “These [terms] are inherently negative and they cue up the dominant thinking that taxes are bad. Instead, talk about taxes as ‘loads’ to be carried or shared.” Moreover, says Indivisible: “Don’t call people ‘taxpayers‘ – it limits the conversation to only one side of the ledger (costs, not benefits). Instead, talk about people as ‘residents’ or ‘citizens’ or ‘member[s] of our community’ – it highlights that we are all people who both contribute to and benefit from public systems and structures.”
Indivisible’s “My Take” program features interviews where “real people” are asked to articulate “their feelings [about] government” and their various interactions with it. For example, the interviewees are asked: (a) “What is your favorite thing that government does?” (b) “Who is your government hero who is not an elected official?” (c) “What thing that government does do you think would surprise most Americans?”
Indivisible’s “Reality Check” program seeks to “expos[e] the reality behind myths and misunderstandings about government,” which ultimately serves as “our tool to help us solve big problems together.”
Reclaiming Government for America’s Future is an Indivisible research project consisting of reports, videos, and webinars that aim to counter the popular notion that government “is too big, intrusive, untrustworthy, and controlled by powerful elites” who have little interest in using it as “a tool for the common good.” Topos Partnership conducted this research on behalf of Indivisible, Public Works, and a number of partner organizations in Oregon, North Carolina, Nebraska, Michigan, Arkansas, and Colorado. The overarching objective of the project is to spell out ways in which progressives can effectively “shift conversations and begin to change the cultural common sense about government.”
Politics of the Swarm
“Indivisible” groups across the U.S. take inspirations from the success of the previously-reviled “astroturf” Tea Party, from the militant ANTIFA Left wing who practice violence to preclude counter revolutionary messages from being heard, from the Occupy campers, and all of it underpinned by a love of Marxism, sympathy for communism, hatred of capitalism, and revulsion over the evil counter-revolutionary Republicans.
But that’s not the message they present to the rest of the world—the Dar al-Harb [House of War]—the U.S. became for them after the recent election.
In the new battle space, forget philosophy, argument, cases, constructs, reasoning, laws, precedent, decorum, and civil behavior. Enter the swarm—used to be called the mob. But where the mob was random and uncontrolled, the swarm is targeted and strategic.
The swarm intends to overwhelm, not through a Cloward-Piven system-saturation strategy, but through crowding out the head space, the message space of the public domain, from the opposition—the illegitimate non-communist counter revolutionaries currently holding public office.
With what content, one might ask, and here’s the new twist. It’s nothing. Or something. It does not matter! The message is irrelevant except as a temporary placeholder to crowd out the opposition message. Counter revolutionaries are so far beneath the Left’s contempt, they’re not even worth an argument.
Instead, they get short, shouted, repetitive, symbolic phrases, fitted to sound bites. No conversation, no debate, because no one wants to be seen talking to a counter revolutionary dhimmi.
The swarm intends to foreclose discussion and provoke suppression. If they get lucky, maybe create a few martyrs for the movement. They intend to exacerbate normal human relations by politicizing everything to foreclose peaceful constructive communications. Peace does not serve their interest in revolution.
Any form of engagement aggravates the swarm. Proximity or adjacency feeds it with targets to focus outrage upon.
So how should civil society, the descendants of our Western intellectual heritage, live alongside these extremely unpleasant, and sometimes outright destructive, swarming communist agents?
It seems prudent to keep a safe distance from them when they’re in outrage mode. Perhaps if enough people stop enabling them and leave them alone to burn through their tantrums among themselves, they’ll eventually burn themselves out and settle down.
There’s plenty of advice on the internet for dealing with tantrums in children, advice that might inform a rational approach to political tantrums by Leftist adults.
Meanwhile, the political adults in the room should carry on with the constructive chores that come with adulthood. To this end they should continue to publish their constructive ideas, present their solutions using reasonable persuasion, and most importantly, stop taking the Left’s tantrums as serious political statements.
To elevate the swarm’s messaging to the level of our core constitutional structures, besides being an absurd equivocation, seriously undervalues the work product from the Founders who built our republic, and we should never forget that hindsight.
The Rule of Law?
“Connected by leadership”
Milo Yiannopoulos
M.Y. is rude, crude and explicitly true. Sure, his message could be delivered in a sanitized non-blue format, perhaps appealing to more conservative audiences. But why bother? Those audiences already understand the paucities of the Left. Anyone who’s been to a comedy club will recognize Yiannopoulus’ edgy method. And given that most Leftists lack the necessary DNA to laugh at themselves, Yiannopoulus’ comic acerbic style seems fitting to the enormity of the task–skewering a decades-entrenched protected set of holier-than-thou Leftists.
Comparative advantage
Consider two sets of shops.
This set in Denver: http://elbertcounty.net/blog/2012/04/14/things-change/
This set in Shanghai: http://elbertcounty.net/blog/2012/06/08/on-1-block-of-fujian-road/
A place has an economic comparative advantage if its opportunity costs for providing a good or service are greater than the opportunity costs for providing that good or service in another place.
Put less obtusely, a place has a comparative advantage for a given good or service if it can be produced for less cost in that place, than in another place.
People who are allowed to trade freely with each other can utilize their comparative advantages to provide the least cost goods to each other, and thereby maximize their combined wealth.
Maximizing wealth of the people ought to be the primary goal of any government involved with regulating or controlling international trade.
Obviously, our government has not been interested in maximizing the wealth of its citizens for some time. Various social, political, and government revenue objectives have long been put first. It remains to be seen whether the Trump administration will try to remedy that situation.
But what do you do about a people who would rather get high than make things? For Trump to succeed at making America great again, Americans are going to have to want to do something more than get stoned.
Dreams on MLK day
On this MLK holiday, I have dreams too:
. . .that another more violent, more outrageous, expression of Leftist or Islamic rage will not happen.
. . .that the Left will learn the history of German national socialism’s policy details, and how most modern Leftist demands of government have ancestry in national socialist programs, tried and failed, almost a century ago.
. . .that the Left will realize that national socialism and communism are, in proven effect, indistinguishable totalitarian systems, and that both inexorably lead to mass slaughter of their own citizens.
. . .that the Left will learn that our American constitutional system is based on volitional consent, and that militancy and the projection of force are repugnant to our value system and our way of life.
. . .that the totalitarian Left will end its marriage of convenience with political Islam.
. . .that civilization will return to America and render the hardening of our society, infrastructure, law enforcement, and systems that became necessary to prevent random political, religious and criminal harm, obsolete.
With due respect to the memory of MLK, we have bigger problems to dream about solutions for than race.
America has been had
President Trump, whatever else you do, you must get the Muslim Brotherhood OUT of our government, military and federal agencies.
http://unconstrainedanalytics.org/resources/
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263921/our-catastrophic-failure-jihad-denial-daniel-greenfield
