Oct 04 2021
The U.S. gets criticized by many other nations, but when it’s the French, you just know an important threshold has been crossed:
The worst part about it, of course, is that this time around, the French are right. Mark your calendars, Gentle Readers; it’s an occasion worth remembering.
Oct 04 2021
[Cannot be sung to the tune of “Baubles, Bangles, and Beads.” Don’t even try. Please!]
There have been times when, after watching supposedly intelligent people swallow utter bilge in Great-Lakes quantities, I have asked myself “Which of us is crazy? Are we living in Andrew Klavan’s Empire of Lies for real?” The answer always comes back in the words of Henry David Thoreau:
Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.
…to which one may add, for reinforcement, the words of the Twentieth Century’s foremost prognosticator of totalitarianism, George Orwell:
Sanity is not statistical.
But the suspicion returns at odd intervals, possibly because here in New York, the putative majority not only slurp down the nonsense, bucket after bucket, but insist that you must do so as well.
It can be disheartening. But no one said life is supposed to be all unicorns and rainbows.
I happen to be a Catholic. Though I have reservations about certain Church doctrines, I take Church teaching seriously. I’ve lost count of the number of people who, upon learning of my attachment to the Church, look at me as if they were about to ask whether I’m the real Fran Porretto or an incredible simulation. Apparently, the vogue is to regard religious belief as a variety of insanity.
I happen to be an amateur of economics. I admire the work of the Austrian School, and the fiscal analyses of Milton Friedman. I was once “persuaded” not to go to graduate school in economics…by other graduate students in the department who told me that “you won’t fit in here.” You see, Austrian / Friedmanite concepts were anathema to them, and they disliked the idea that a “heretic” – that being their characterization of anyone who rejects Keynesian monetary theory – might pollute their numbers.
I happen to be a fan of the NHL’s New York Rangers. Yet here on Long Island…no, never mind. I shan’t go on in that vein. Besides, it looks as if the Blueshirts are in the middle of another half-century Stanley Cup drought, so why press the issue?
I’m a skeptic by innate inclination, reinforced by long experience. At this point in my life, I find the habit of skepticism inescapable. However, in an Era of Credulity, the skeptic is profoundly out of step. Being out of step is a lonely condition. Skeptics tend not to cluster. Besides, the pressure to conform can make a skeptic do all sorts of unlikely and strenuous things. Ask Frank Chodorov.
But every now and then I give thanks for my skepticism. I include it among my less-well-understood blessings. All it takes is a fresh glimpse of the lunacies of “experts.”
The little piece just below this one is what got me thinking along the lines above. Despite his incredible record of error and outright deceit, Anthony Fauci is regarded by millions as authoritative on this COVID-19 business. That’s very much in Fauci’s interest, of course. It’s also the will of the Usurper Regime, which seeks to imprison Us the People in masks and isolation, and to addict us to regular injections of “vaccine,” by using Fauci’s “expert” status as a bludgeon.
It may strike the intelligent Gentle Reader as a goes-without-saying deal that printing more and more paper notes and calling them “money” does not create wealth or make anyone better off. Nevertheless many people – probably millions and possibly a majority – accept the representations of John Yarmuth (D-KY) about the boundlessness of the federal government’s purse. Why? Because he’s an “expert.” The Regime has put him forward as such because his utterances support their agenda. Many private persons want to believe he’s correct, because some of the money he wants to fling around might land in their backyards.
Finally for today’s parade of “experts,” many people accept the proclamations of militant atheist Richard Dawkins. Some prefer his conjectures because if he’s right, then will be no eternal consequences for a life of viciousness or dissolution, but others accept them because he’s been nominated an “expert.” Dawkins’ expertise, such as it is, is in evolutionary biology, a field from which even the possibility of experimentation is excluded. How did he become an “expert” in theistic analysis?
If these be representatives of today’s “expert class,” may God save us all. Don’t bother sending me an application for membership.
This is merely a brief illustration of an important front in the battle over our language, which is itself a battle over the scope of human consciousness.
Time was, an expert was a man with a record for being right about developments in some field of study. If you trusted him, it was because you knew of his record and felt that it established him as a man who understood something about cause and effect. Other, self-nominated “experts” who disagreed with him could be ignored. After all, their records for prediction were far poorer, so why listen to them?
It was possible to be deceived even then, of course. Many “experts” claimed to have predicted all manner of developments…but when you looked at their assertions in detail, you couldn’t find any evidence that their “predictions” had come before the events they claimed to have “predicted.” Anyone can “predict” something that’s already happened.
(We also had “predictors” such as Jeane Dixon and The Amazing Criswell. They graced the pages of the tabloids usually found at supermarket checkout stations. But while they were occasionally entertaining, they’re not a significant part of this tale.)
Today’s “expert” is one who has either donned the mantle for himself, or has been awarded it by a government or a government-sponsored body. His record, as often as not, is shrouded in mystery. Sometimes it’s been deliberately obscured by his backers, to protect his reputation for “expertise.” Nevertheless, for his usefulness in promoting some falsehood, he is coronated and held up to the masses as The Authority on the field in which he’s an “expert.” He issues proclamations that sound like imperial ukases. The media, which have a powerful interest in “experts” – they’re great at filling the pages and the air time – almost always collaborate with these poseurs. They insist that their audience sing hosannas to the “expert,” for if the media have accepted him, surely their readers and viewers must! If, a long time afterward, the “expert’s” duplicity can no longer be concealed or denied, their backers and pet media merely move on in silence.
People who are taken in by this sort of “expert” are in the same boat as the victims of con men. The frauds are identical in all important respects. The co-opting of the term expert by institutions with massive megaphones is at the heart of the evil.
There are some things that cannot be said too often. One of my favorites is this exhortation from Siddhartha Gautama, better known to us of today as the Buddha:
Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it – no matter if I have said it! – except it agree with your own reason and your own common sense.
Eschew the rantings of “experts.” Treat their mock-authoritative pronouncements with a healthy dose of skepticism. Let’s make “common sense” common once more.
Oct 04 2021
It’s one thing to be wrong. It’s another to be unhappy about being shown to have been wrong. It’s quite another to insist that one’s position, despite a monumental record of error, failure, and outright deceit, is privileged:
HEWITT: “Is there a point where you will say: ‘I have done more harm than good because people don’t listen to me anymore’ and step aside?”
FAUCI: “No. Absolutely, unequivocally no.” pic.twitter.com/puoKGqUV2Z
— Samuel Bravo (@bravojourno) October 1, 2021
This man, this supposed medical expert, has been in government employ for more than half a century. If he’s ever been right about anything over that span, I cannot find any documentation of it. Yet he is as arrogant as if he’d predicted a half-century of medical developments with 100% accuracy.
This is the creature who presumes to decree your medical-treatment choices, and those of your children, and their children unto the end of Mankind…which, if we were to follow his dictates, would come a lot sooner than otherwise.
Oct 04 2021
They [socialists/the Davos slime] embarked on this Great Reset solely for the purpose of defaulting on their socialist promises made by buying off present generations with the labor of future generations. We call this in modern parlance debt.
Now that the debt is unpayable and the future liabilities of their governments overwhelming everything they have unleashed a torrent of policies around the world to starve, freeze and kill off entire generations of taxpayers who they can’t afford to bribe anymore.
COVID-9/11, no matter how you look at it, as a political operation has shortened lifespans in the U.S. by 18 months in 2020, according to the CDC. What will those numbers look like in 2021? This is a radical contraction which lifted trillions of unfunded liabilities in Social Security and Medicare payments from future U.S. governments.
And they call libertarians heartless?[1]
I’ve thought the same thing. The debt, unfunded liabilities, and baked-in-the-cake inflation storm are insoluable problems. Nonsense such as “modern monetary theory” is actually pushed by people with a lot of stolen letters after their names where it’s just another name for magical thinking. And, pilgrims, nothing short of actual magic is going to paper over the advanced gangrenous horror that “our” economic, monetary, fiscal, and debt “policies” have created.
Given that taxpayers cannot pay off the huge sums when the check might eventually be presented, the only option for the parasite class is do the Thelma and Louise thing with all of us in the back seat but them with the parachutes.
The Great Reset is just another way of saying civilizational apocalypse. The behavior of the Australian cops is like a klew — a rather obvious hint of what’s yet to come. Schwab may bill the “Reset” as globalist nirvana but it’s vicious destruction to the core and nothing on the other side of that “reset” won’t look like a Steven King landscape and eventually the fanciest yachts, most luscious Argentinian land, choicest Alpine communities, and most impregnable, well-stocked, remote, hidden, solar-powered redoubts in Oregon will eventually mean nothing when there is no longer the marginally-functioning world-wide production and distribution miracle that there is now. Then it’s local bandido time. But the lizards don’t know that. It’s a de facto runaway train and there ain’t no Denzel.
At this grotesque moment in Western, if not human history, it’s too dangerous for the lizards to take responsibility for the fact that
That would expose the fraud of all the statists, communists, socialists, progressives, bleeding hearts, and Wall Street and banking whores who have afflicted us for the last century at least.
Strong message to follow.
Notes
[1] “Luongo: Energy Subsidies, Bitcoin, & The Socialist Takeover That Isn’t.” By Tom Luongo, ZeroHedge, 10/4/21 (emphasis removed).
Oct 03 2021
Imagine, Gentle Reader, that rather than talking to one another about how much of your money to spend, Congress is a single individual, and he’s talking directly to you, hoping to win your approval for his spending bill. Your exchange might go thus:
CONGRESS: So you see, this $[insert insane spending amount here] appropriations bill will actually leave you better off!
YOU: Financially?CONGRESS: Well, no, but…it will relieve all these [insert undesirable social conditions here] so greatly that you’ll be glad we spent the money!
YOU: Those social conditions don’t bother me.CONGRESS: What? Don’t you care?
YOU: Frankly, no, I don’t. Other people’s problems are for them to solve. But let’s imagine for a moment – strictly for the sake of this discussion, mind you – that I do care, I approve your bill, and the conditions you’ve mentioned don’t improve. Would you then pass a bill that refunds my money?CONGRESS: Well, no, we’d probably—
YOU: Don’t tell me: You’d pass another, even bigger appropriations bill, wouldn’t you?CONGRESS: Oh, not necessarily…
YOU: It’s what you’ve done in every previous case. So, perhaps you see why I don’t approve your bill?CONGRESS: [drawing himself up in injured dignity and disapproval] I can see there’s no point in talking to you. I’ll simply proceed without your assent.
YOU: And that, too, is what you’ve done in every previous case. So: see this? [Holds up coil of 3/4-inch hemp rope – the scratchy kind.]CONGRESS: Uh, yeah?
YOU: Pick your preferred lamppost.
That’s how I see it going, Gentle Reader. What about you – and what does the unwillingness of Congress to deal with the American public on an honest, evenhanded basis, admitting its past failures and its inability to guarantee the results it perpetually assures us will spring from its profligacies – in 2 years or your money back! – say to you about our so-called democracy?
Oct 03 2021
This is a precise statement of the endless modern battle between free people and statist pricks:
The EU, and political class of the western world, has driven up energy costs, and the cost of everything with more government taxation and spending. Those factories won’t be temporarily closing to save on energy costs, they’ll be closing because the high taxes and regulations there make their businesses uncompetitive compared to China where they use cheap coal, and have lots of cheap or slave labor.
The EU could be much more prosperous, with free markets instead of the socialist/mercantilist/authoritarian governments masquerading as democracies. Their markets are so screwed up, Biden had a say in whether a pipeline could be built from Russia to Germany. Free markets always outperform government controlled markets, but free markets are a barrier to politicians’ power and wealth. When the government picks winners/losers in commerce, we’re always the losers.[1]
Sociopathic politicians want power and when they get it they think they’ve acquire the ability to manipulate and direct something as complex as an economy.
Murray Rothbard described the inputs necessary for a wife to make a ham sandwich for her husband (an example of the correct relationship in the universe between men and women). Milton Friedman did the same thing by showing all the things and people who are necessary to produce a simple pencil. Yet morons masquerading as omniscient beings presume to create command economies where various Sergeis, Helmuts, Pierres, Conchitas, Lashondras, and Astrids — selected for political reliability — maintain spreadsheets wherewith they calculate the number of can openers, ultrasound devices, saddles, thongs, oranges, electric backhoes, and axe handles to be produced and at what prices and with what delivery charges.
In the Soviet Union this was really tried but increasingly in the West this is being tried surreptitiously, not by trying to control the production of oranges or selenium directly but by placing a heavy thumb on the scale to favor the SJW/oligarch agenda items such as fossil fuel demonization, cruise missile production, a huge military establishment equal to our self delusions, underclass babies, tiny homes, injectable poisons, and preparations for building it back “better,” a/k/a the Great Reset, the details of which are close hold for the moment.
The result in the United States now that you have a small group of people in the Eccles Building deciding what the price of money is to be in an multi-trillion dollar economy. The interference of the Congress and the Fed is massive and the horrendous bubble economy we have now is the result because of the manipulation or ignoring of the fundamentals. The wisest people in the country have similarly managed to work it out so that people who actually engage in productive activities have lost a huge share of the GDP that their wages once represented while debt skyrockets, billionaires prosper, and pension funds vainly struggle to slay the actuarial and return dragons.
But so much for the familiar free markets (combined with light state regulation) are self-organizing and plainly wonderful truism.
I particularly like the text I highlighted in Mr. Kemp’s comment as it highlights the triumph of the ongoing propaganda effort to conceal the horrible deformation of the Western world that has taken place. The language of public debate has been debased and the notion of Western freedoms long since left in the dust of the progressive juggernaut. It’s crucial in our times to call out the liars and call a spade a bloody shovel, as my dear mother liked to say. She liked people who did that and we’re soon reaching a point when the [nonsense] will reach a critical mass. Then there will be a realignment.
I like to write of the applicability of the Chinese concept of the loss of the Mandate of Heaven. Without leadership and despite illiteracy and barbarous repression available to the emperor, the entire nation spontaneously decides for a multitude of individual reasons that you can stick a fork in it, “it” being the reigning dynasty. Western country cousins here = house of cards, too clever by half, build your house on sand, bad karma, wrath of God, and smarty pants. No need to complexify things.
There’s another aspect of oriental history that I think is applicable to our times, namely the Tokugawa Shogunate where the shogun ruled Japan from 1603-1868 and the emperor was only a figurehead encouraged to write poetry and be a scholar. Substance ruled form until the emperor began to acquire such increasing political influence that there was a restoration of the Meiji emperor as ruler in fact.
It strikes me we are living through a similar time where the lies of the Western nations, their pretense of rationalism, benevolence, and elite competence, are wearing thin. The abomination of open borders, multiculturalism, and diversity are perhaps the last straw, the giant middle finger salute to the people who never for one moment consented to the worship of foreign invaders and their own political and racial replacement.
Furthermore, the heady days of year one of the Social Security system — itself utterly unconstitutional like any and all subsequent federal “health” programs and agencies — are long gone, as are the times that older people in certain industries or sectors could expect to receive the pensions they were promised and on which they intended to live in their retirement. The iron laws of arithmetic increasingly apply with a vengeance.
The foreign policy of the United States has caused a blood bath and untold destruction wherever our leaders have chosen to involve us, all in supposed vindication of and defense of “our democratic values” while those values went by the board. Foreigners diluted the franchise and the concept of citizenship and vote fraud reached such proportions that it was possible for the ultra left party to steal elections right before God and man and pay no penalty.
Add in gross economic mismanagement (off-shoring, massive debt, currency debasement), ruinous regulation and taxation, lunatic notions of world government and globalism, complete debasement of the constitutional scheme, a putrid, ridiculous culture, complete anarchy in the streets and lecture halls, massive monopoly, a corrupt press, and propaganda to put the master Joseph Goebbels to shame and you get to the point where Dr. Phil liked to ask, “And how’s that working out for you?”
There aren’t too many Dr. Phils out there just now and I think “the Constitution” is not likely to be a realistic standard to rally around. At least the Japanese had a cultural icon and figurehead to turn to (“that other guy”) rather then the Chinese “dynasty or complete collapse” alternative. Still, our present predicament of utter, complete, total, unalloyed, 100% vitamin-enriched stupidity and mindless rejection of all that’s workable, time-tested, decent, or holy is so putrid that perhaps a simple demand that the political class just cut the crap will suffice. Pardon my language but you must admit it has more punch than “stop trying to immanentize the eschaton.”
Alas, not one bar association in the country, and certainly not the Supreme Court, lifts a finger to restore the clear federal-state scheme of the original Constitution. Even a polite cough about Obongo and Harris not being natural born citizens was too risky for these tireless proponents of the rule of law, diversity, inclusion, and pro bono service. And, even if there are any Joan of Arc type of transformative leaders among us (possible candidates = Marjorie Taylor Greene, Bronx Tina, Laura Loomer, Jordan Peterson, LTC Stuart Scheller, Alex Jones, LTC Allen West, Gov. Ron DeSantis) they’re certain to fall victim to the ad hominem killing machine that reduces all patriots to the level of sexual predator, rightist maniac, serial killer, or capitalist tool. Or the thug scum action arm of the Democrat Party can be summoned to supply other means of persuasion. Still the Ceaușescus ended up against the wall, literally, despite their control of frightful powers of repression. Not part of my agenda, that sort of thing, but illustrative of the twists and turns of human history that surprise everyone.
I suspect that, ultimately, chaos will be our friend and enable the reestablishment of virile, no nonsense leadership capable of pursuing common sense (as much as human governments can) not to mention antiquated concepts of sedition and subversion with vigor, unlike what passes for leadership now with its fawning obeisance to depravity, feminist lunacy, racial rejectionism, foreign invasion, and sexual “identity” lunacy, inter alia, and its worship of The Lie in the service of the victory of sacred state power above all.
This period of feeble, arrogant, meritless, lawless rule by cretins is an aberration on human history. For a while there it was good but now it is time for a certain, um, illiberalism. Endless treatises, cries, and entreaties have had zero effect. The outcome will be impossible to predict, not least because all landmarks and traditional controls and cautions have been tossed out the window. It’s leftist lunacy ad astra for now and then, after a little wrath of God action, maybe we can come up with something that doesn’t involve the words “progress,” “identify,” or “structural.” It won’t be Western Civ 101 I’m pretty sure but who knows? Living under rational governments and not being beholden to complete toads have an enduring appeal if you know anything about human history. “Smile when you call me a white supremacist, padnuh” could be like a sort of new motto.
Notes
[1] Comment by MoreFreedom on “Kemp: Europe’s Rising Energy Prices Will Force Factory Closures.” By John Kemp, ZeroHedge, 10/3/21 (emphasis added).
Edited 10/4/21.
Oct 02 2021
Listen as a top Congressional Democrat tells you exactly that:
On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “OutFront,” House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-KY) said that $3.5 trillion in spending under the reconciliation bill “is pretty inconsequential when you consider all the benefits to the American people,” and “The federal government can afford anything that it feels it needs to do.”
Yarmuth said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) “has no understanding of how the federal government monetary system works. When he compared it yesterday to his household income, that has no relevance to what we can do. It’s not a question of what we can afford. The federal government can afford anything that it feels it needs to do. And right now, that’s what we ought to be focused on.”
Really! His lips moved and everything!
But why, then, have a budgetary process at all? Why not have the federal government purchase literally everything everyone in America needs or wants—and distribute it for free? Indeed, why have taxes?
Please, please watch the video above. It’s only 33 seconds long, and it’s the most blatant attempt to deceive that any Congressman has ever dared to essay.
Either John Yarmuth doesn’t understand the import of his words, in which case he might be the stupidest man ever elected to a federal position, or he does…in which case he’s purely evil, a deceiver who hopes to rob us and all our descendants, with our compliance. And here I am typing with my fists again.
Yarmuth thought he was talking to a “friendly audience.” Perhaps he forgot that his performance would be recorded for others to marvel at. People whose jobs have been destroyed by the Usurpers’ policies. People whose towns and counties have been impoverished by the disappearance of employers. People who’ve been watching prices skyrocket and their savings dwindle.
Spread this little video around, Gentle Reader. If enough people see it and grasp its significance, we might just reach the critical mass necessary to eject the Usurpers and their henchmen on Capitol Hill from their seats.
Oct 02 2021
How about we add a line to the tax forms?
“By signing below, this taxpayer authorizes the government of the United States to raise the debt limit to spend more money we haven’t got. I realize that this means I will pay MORE in taxes over the following years.”
My guess is that fewer than 20% of the TAXPAYING public would agree to this.
Failure to get at least 50% of those paying MORE than they receive from the Federal government to agree would mean that Congress could not raise money through taxes. That would still leave fees as a means to get people to cough up the cash.
Perhaps make those services needing fees to continue operations voluntary? If you don’t want to pay, don’t use the government service? Or allow any of those services to be offered through private operators?
Oct 01 2021
This development almost got past me:
The leftist National School Boards Association is begging President Joe Biden to use domestic terrorism laws to target parents who oppose anti-science mask mandates for children and the infiltration of racist curriculum in schools.
In a letter sent on Wednesday, NSBA asked the Biden administration and federal law enforcement to “deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation.”
“Now, we ask that the federal government investigate, intercept, and prevent the current threats and acts of violence against our public school officials through existing statutes, executive authority, interagency and intergovernmental task forces, and other extraordinary measures to ensure the safety of our children and educators, to protect interstate commerce, and to preserve public school infrastructure and campuses,” the letter states.
Were you aware of the National School Boards Association? I wasn’t. I don’t know how large it is, or how influential it’s been in years past. But the very existence of such an organization is fodder for the Left’s agenda. If you don’t grasp this at once, you might want to look into how the eco-Nazis that dominate the Environmental Protection Agency have used lobbying and suits by “interest groups” such as the Sierra Club . The EPA routinely uses their contentions as fuel for ever-tightening regulations that choke off natural resource development in the United States. The agency has been found to provide data and funding to such groups; to immediately concede any lawsuits they might file; and to use their “experts” as witnesses and advocates for their proposed regulations.
Now, if there have been “threats and acts of violence against our public school officials,” they’re worthy of investigation by local law-enforcement authorities. But that’s not enough for the NSBA. It wants even a hint of such developments to trigger a federal response comparable to the War on Terror. You know, the “war” in which the Usurpers conceded defeat just a few weeks ago…after first characterizing the entirely peaceful January 6 protestors as domestic terrorists.
Perhaps it’s time for me to go back to writing fiction. I can’t spend any more of my life typing with my fists. Too many of my keystrokes are backspaces. And that’s to say nothing of the wear and tear on my throat from the constant screaming.
Oct 01 2021
Not only wasn’t it a gaffe, it goes all the way to the top:
So I saw this clip circulating the Twitter interwebs (I don’t think that’s a word but it’s funny to say when referencing the Internet – makes me feel like I’m 90) of Miguel Cardona, President Joe Biden’s Education Secretary, in which Cardona suggests that parents should not be the “primary stakeholder” in their kids’ education.
Cardona: “I believe parents are important stake-holders but I also believe that educators have a role in determining educational programming.”
A lot of Twitter keyboard warriors are stating that, given professors and teachers are professionals at what they do, that parents should just trust them OR do home-schooling.
Here’s Cardona on PBS NewsHour:
He weasel-worded it. He didn’t want to say “No, parents aren’t the primary stakeholders in their children’s education,” right out in front of God and everybody. So he circumnavigated the question. (Also take note of that insidious phrase “educational programming.” I wonder exactly what he meant by that?) All the same, it’s clear that despite the predictable blowback from the earlier “gaffe,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona will not contradict Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe.
Why not? I can only think of two reasons:
In either case, the message is clear: This is now Democrat educational policy.
Spread it around, Gentle Readers. There aren’t many American parents of minor children who’d hear that message and approve it. Quite a lot of left-leaning mothers and fathers are already quite unhappy with the way their kids are being indoctrinated. (Pace Cardona’s “educational programming,” I made a deliberate choice of words there: they certainly aren’t being “educated.”) At this point the single nondestructive function the “public” schools serve is as a six-to-eight-hour babysitting service so Mom can go to her paying gig – and I’d be willing to dispute that one, as well.
Once more, in large font:
I trust no more need be said.
Sep 30 2021
One could say a lot of very negative things about former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe. He hates guns. He’s pro-abortion. He keeps bad company. He lies a lot. In other words, he’s a typical Democrat politician. But, his backers would say, at least he’s consistent. And consistency is a virtue, right?
McAuliffe is running for the governorship again. Unfortunately for his “image,” he’s said something that Virginia parents (and everyone else associated with the “public” education system) will surely remember:
Virginia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe said parents shouldn’t be telling schools what they should teach during Tuesday night’s debate with Republican Glenn Youngkin.
Terry McAuliffe is an old Clintonite.
The Clintons are funding McAuliffe’s gubernatorial run…AGAIN.
Democrat McAuliffe doesn’t believe parents should have a say in what their kids are learning in school.
“The parents had the right to veto books… also take them off the shelves,” McAuliffe said. “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions.”
“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” McAuliffe added.
Now, that “should” business always raises one of my flags. Well, then who “should” be telling the schools what they “should” teach? And what if the party of the second part chooses to defy the party of the first part?
Fairly obviously, in McAuliffe’s view “the party of the first part” is the State: specifically, the state’s Department of Education, as instructed by the state legislature. “The party of the second part,” better known as the individual school district, is expected to conform to the state’s dictates. If it doesn’t and is found out, the state will withhold the approximately 50% of the district’s funding that comes from the state’s treasury. The teachers’ union would probably take that amiss. There’d be a strike. There might be a riot.
That pattern applies to every “public” school system in these United States…and to much else.
McAuliffe has done us a service! For in him we have a Democrat who is actually expounding on what “public” really means.
You might think otherwise – you being a member of the “public.” But Terry McAuliffe is here to re-educate you…and your kids.
That de facto meaning of “public” is at the heart of the Left’s agenda. They want everything to be “public” in that sense: they, the State, are to control it all; you, the nominal “public,” are to have no say.
Moreover, you may take it as written that that is exactly what they’re teaching your children: Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State. It’s the core of the Left’s ideology, and the Left controls the “public” schools with an iron hand.
But wait: there’s more! You’re surely aware, if you have minor children in a “public” school, that a majority of school districts are insisting that the kids wear face masks all day. Why? “COVID-19,” they’ll tell you. “To prevent the spread of the virus.” It’s nonsense, of course. Not only are masks completely useless for preventing the transmission of virus particles; they also impose health hazards of their own on the wearer. Those hazards go considerably beyond the risk to a minor child from COVID-19.
Any bets on when the first “public” school district makes vaccinations mandatory for all students?
That “everything within the State” quote above is from Benito Mussolini, the original expositor of fascism. Mussolini admired the goals of the European socialists, but found their methods to be defective. His fascism was intended to improve on socialism’s economic performance, by permitting de jure private ownership in the means of production, but de facto giving all decision-making power to the State, through a State-imposed manager. Hitler adopted Mussolini’s model, added a pariah / scapegoat element (blame the Jews for everything), and over time elevated himself to quasi-divine status.
The Left is following the Mussolini / Hitler pattern, but incrementally rather than wholesale. The COVID-19 panic has been a great help to them by providing an “emergency” rationale for the seizure of unprecedented power. Among other things, it’s greatly eased the vote fraud by which they “won” the November 2020 elections.
We’ve spoken before of Gramsci’s “long march through the institutions.” That campaign has already deeded the schools, the media, and the entertainment industry to the Left. That’s why they’ve leaned on those institutions as their primary weapons. Through those three mechanisms Americans are being told that they must accept subjugation. Their children are being used as subsidiary weapons in the contest.
And Terry McAuliffe and his henchmen intend that no one shall get in their way.
Sep 30 2021
A limited audit authorized by the Dodd-Frank Act found that between 2007 and 2010, the Federal Reserve committed over 16 trillion dollars to foreign central banks and politically influential private companies.[1]
That’s eight (8) foreign wars of aggression we could have fought around the world to build democracy, dispose of foreign governments lacking our wisdom and moral superiority, and ramp up the hunger for American “leadership” exemplified by (1) Nikki Haley, Samantha Powers, John Bolton, George II, John Brennan, Mike Pompeo, Antony Blinken, Mark Milley, Madeleine Albright, and that Kenyan-American fellow and (2) the general elegance of our Exalted Wokeness in addressing our internal problems. “This too could be yours, chumps” is, I think, the essential message to the various peoples around the world with a bone through their respective noses.
“Chump” is an interesting word denoting someone who doesn’t have the smarts to find his self interest with both hands. “Chump change” is a term whose origins are lost in the mists of time so far as I know but the meaning appears to be that amount of money left to the suckers of this world who are deluded enough to allow their perfumed and coifed betters to roam freely across the vast corporate, banking, and political Serengheti plain like dumb asses on a Victor Mature safari.
There’s no telling what that 16 trill and the two that evaporated in Afghanistan could have accomplished here in our climate change-stricken, white supremacist, slavery-corrupted, neo-liberal, corporatist, Christo-European Homeland. But I take it that I’m supposed to take it on faith that all the people who had a straw in that giant mothertrucking parfait of Benjamins really were the ones who deserved the largesse, they being the one’s who live and breathe that ancient principle of Salus populi suprema lex.
It’s a thought of no small interest to me just who exactly was holding a straw of the requisite length during the Great Recession of 2007-08. If nothing else, I’d like to know whom to thank for helping keep this mighty engine of human betterment (MEHB) ticking right along.
Mr. Paul is correct. Auding the Fed would really help us here by giving us a look at who was taking care of business so adroitly all these years.
Shares of gross domestic income: Compensation of employees
Notes
[1] “The Biggest Federal Reserve Scandal.” By Ron Paul, The Unz Review, 9/27/21.
Sep 29 2021
“The threat is more powerful than its execution.” – Aron Nimzovich
“Not if the probability of execution is zero.” – Me.
I’ve been seeing a lot of online bravado of the sort that runs “If they go any further, we’ll rise up and…” – You get the idea, don’t you, Gentle Reader? The threat is supposed to convey a message of unacceptable consequences to our political masters: Don’t push us any further or it will cost you! A lot of Americans think the threat is all that’s required to keep the Ruling Class in line. Have a sample:
Well, “a lot of Americans” have been wrong before. It’s odds-on that they’re wrong now.
Few people really grasp the insidious power of gradualism. Even fewer appreciate how completely the American people have conditioned to respond to statements such as “There’s a crisis,” “People are dying,” “If it saves just one life,” “It’s a temporary measure,” and “It’s a necessary evil.”
All by themselves, the infringements on our right to keep and bear arms should stand as proof that we’ll put up with damned near anything if we can first be convinced that there’s “an emergency” or “a crisis.” Remember how Andrew Cuomo got the “SAFE Act” passed after that shooting in Newtown, Connecticut? Remember how thoroughly private New Orleans residents were disarmed after Hurricane Katrina? Remember the 1994 Assault Weapons ban and how that one was propagandized?
The 2nd Amendment has been touted for generations as our ultimate safeguard against tyranny. Yet we’ve permitted the political Establishment to gut it completely. The original idea was that the citizenry would have such complete access to weaponry of military grade that no army could possibly subjugate us…but today a private citizen isn’t even allowed to acquire an automatic rifle, much less a fully functional tank or artillery piece.
They did it in thin slices. A little at a time. Always with the most fulsome imaginable justifications. “There’s a crisis.” “People are dying.” Et cetera ad nauseam infinitam.
That’s the way we’ve lost all our liberties. It’s the way we’ll lose what remains of our right to bodily integrity under the Fourth Amendment. Remember the Fourth Amendment?
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Note that it began with federal employees and armed forces members. Such persons are subject to the dictates of the head of the executive branch of the federal government…we were told. But are they really? Even when such a dictate blatantly contradicts some Constitutionally guaranteed individual right? Who in the federal bureaucracy or the American military is willing to put his career and fortune on the line by standing forth and saying “I will not obey!” — ?
A declaration that “We will not obey” is made up of a lot of “I will not obeys.” So where are they? Where are the companies that are defying this supposed OSHA mandate that all their employees must be shot full of that non-vaccine vaccine? Yes, a great many employees are refusing The Jab, and are being deprived of their jobs for doing so – but to what effect? What company has gone out of business as a result of the mass firings and resignations?
We’re letting it happen, Gentle Reader. Just as we let the 1968 National Firearms Act happen. Just as we let the Volkmer-McClure Act happen. Just as New Orleans residents allowed themselves to be disarmed when the danger of looters and marauders was at its height. Just as New Yorkers have allowed themselves to be disarmed because a crazy person went on a killing spree in Connecticut. And we cannot say we weren’t warned:
“I could say to you that you do not serve the public good—that nobody’s good can be achieved at the price of human sacrifices—that when you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the rights of all, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction.”
And we’re letting it happen once again, by permitting private companies to be used as an arm of the federal government: i.e., to deny us our occupations and our incomes should we refuse The Jab. Each and every day the major media, which today are state-owned megaphones in all but name, trumpet the familiar refrain:
“There’s a crisis.”
“People are dying.”
“If it saves just one life.”
“It’s a temporary measure.”
“It’s a necessary evil.”
Think about it.
Sep 28 2021
We have arrived at a moment when making a gathering less diverse, according to the dictionary definition of that word is characterized as defending diversity:
Video out of Arizona State University on Thursday shows a pair of black activists ordering two white students to leave a “multicultural” center for being white.
“You’re white!” one of the female black activists screamed at two white ASU students who were quietly studying. “Do you understand what a multicultural space– it means you’re not being centered!”
“This white man thinks he can take up our space… he thinks he can get away with this!” one of the activists said.
The activists, who are both students at ASU, accused the white students of “violence” for having a “Police Lives Matter” sticker on one of their laptops and mocked the idea that “diversity” includes being inclusive of white people.
After one of the white students who got kicked out of the venue said they were making the multicultural space less “diverse,” the black activists burst out laughing, saying “oh wow, so diversity is about about including more white people?!”
“Oh yeah! Diversity is now about including white men!” another activist laughed.
Yes, this incident is a couple of days in the past, and other commentators have already dripped sarcasm over it. The lunacy of it is too obvious to require a Certified Galactic Intellect to tease it apart for the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch. However, it’s important to note such incidents and to ask what the reactions would be like with, as we chessplayers like to say, “colors reversed:”
Remember this cartoon?
I can’t speak for anyone else. It would be inappropriate. But I’m ready: Give them what they want: a “space” all for their “diverse” selves — that they cannot leave.
That is what they want, isn’t it? Well, isn’t it?
Sep 27 2021
Everybody is screaming a warning about something. Each of those everybodies is peddling a nostrum of some sort – usually something you can buy over the counter – he’ll tell you is essential to deal with the threat he hawks. And while it’s not perfectly uniform, a great many of the everybodies hope to fatten their bank balances by doing so.
PFUI!
There are a lot of threats out there. Most of them are perfectly visible. We don’t need to be alerted to them; we merely need to stop covering our eyes and ears and screaming “Make it go away!” That goes just as strongly for the doom-shouters as for anyone else. The typical doom-shouter has elected to ignore or downplay N-1 of the N threats so he can scream about his favorite: the one he hopes will make him a media personality who can command big speaking fees. That form of elective blindness is just a smidgen less blind than most.
Relax, Gentle Reader. I’m not here to tell you that everything is really just fine, that you can sit back, ignore all of today’s Nostradami of Doom, and enjoy your blended scotch and Cheez Doodles® while you wallow in your DVDs of Three’s Company. We both know, along with Howard Beale, that things aren’t just fine, so I’m not about to try to sell you that particular line of BS.
No, indeedy! I’m here to peddle my very own nostrum! Hey, why should a novelist / commentator from deepest, darkest Long Island be left out of the rush?
Nor will I keep you hanging from those nasty unsanitary tenterhooks for a single moment longer. Quoth Tom Kratman:
Explication to follow.
It occurred to me, quite recently, that every single “issue” in contemporary public discourse is at base a religious issue. Moreover, they can be reduced to a single religious issue, to wit: whether there is an absolute standard of right and wrong.
While it may not be apparent on first acquaintance, that is a religious issue:
In fact, it is the reason for the existence of religion per se. Every conflict among men, regardless of the specifics, is founded on that issue.
What’s that you say? You want proof? Some people are never satisfied! Oh well: here goes.
Imagine that there exists a Supreme Being, or if you prefer, a committee of same, that holds absolute power over our universe and everything in it. Imagine further – girls, hold on to your boyfriends – that the Supremacy, by whatever name He / She / It / They goes, is completely unconcerned with the way humans behave. In other words, there is no code of human conduct which, whether followed or not followed, would make any difference to one’s ultimate fate: i.e., no absolute standard of right and wrong.
Give that a moment to sink in. Postulate that Mankind could somehow ascertain it with absolute assurance, which is something we can’t do in our reality.
Would there be any religions at all under those circumstances?
Yeah, right. Why worship a God who doesn’t care what you do—who doesn’t care whether you even acknowledge his existence? And how could anyone promulgate a code of conduct and claim it to be somehow obligatory? Yeah, he’s there. So what? Let’s go back to our argument about whether Ginger was really prettier than Mary Ann, or just brought better cosmetics.
Contemporary conflicts of importance are about right and wrong. Most wars are, at base, about right and wrong. But the very terms we use have inexorable implications: right and wrong either exist or do not exist. If they exist, they must have certain fixed properties – and anything with fixed properties is not a matter of opinion; it is absolute by definition.
I don’t expect everyone to follow this. It’s a rather subtle argument, considerably more esoteric than my blather about time. But if I’m correct, it classes virtually the whole of the contemporary American political wrangle as a religious controversy.
It’s time for a bit of Jack Vance:
Thissell waited in silence. Ten minutes passed. Then Angmark reached to a shelf and picked up a knife. He looked at Thissell. “Stand up.”
Thissell slowly rose to his feet. Angmark approached from the side, reached out, lifted the Moon Moth from Thissell’s head. Thissell gasped and made a vain attempt to seize it. Too late; his face was bare and naked.
Angmark turned away, removed his own mask, donned the Moon Moth. He struck a call on his hymerkin. Two slaves entered, stopped in shock at the sight of Thissell.
Angmark played a brisk tattoo, sang, “Carry this man up to the dock.”
“Angmark!” cried Thissell. “I’m maskless!”
The slaves seized him and in spite of Thissell’s desperate struggles, conveyed him out on the dock, along the float and up on the dock.
Angmark fixed a rope around Thissell’s neck. He said, “You are now Haxo Angmark, and I am Edwer Thissell. Welibus is dead, you shall soon be dead. I can handle your job without difficulty. I’ll play musical instruments like a Night-man and sing like a crow. I’ll wear the Moon Moth till it rots and then I’ll get another. The report will go to Polypolis, Haxo Angmark is dead. Everything will be serene.”
Thissell barely heard. “You can’t do this,” he whispered. “My mask, my face …” A large woman in a blue and pink flower mask walked down the dock. She saw Thissell and emitted a piercing shriek, flung herself prone on the dock.
“Come along,” said Angmark brightly. He tugged at the rope, and so pulled Thissell down the dock. A man in a Pirate Captain mask coming up from his houseboat stood rigid in amazement.
Angmark played the zachinko and sang, “Behold the notorious criminal Haxo Angmark. Through all the outer-worlds his name is reviled; now he is captured and led in shame to his death. Behold Haxo Angmark!”
They turned into the esplanade. A child screamed in fright; a man called hoarsely. Thissell stumbled; tears tumbled from his eyes; he could see only disorganized shapes and colors. Angmark’s voice belled out richly:
“Everyone behold, the criminal of the out-worlds, Haxo Angmark! Approach and observe his execution!”
Thissell feebly cried out, “I’m not Angmark; I’m Edwer Thissell; he’s Angmark.” But no one listened to him; there were only cries of dismay, shock, disgust at the sight of his face. He called to Angmark, “Give me my mask, a slave-cloth. . . .”
Angmark sang jubilantly, “In shame he lived, in maskless shame he dies.”
A Forest Goblin stood before Angmark. “Moon Moth, we meet once more.”
Angmark sang, “Stand aside, friend Goblin; I must execute this criminal. In shame he lived, in shame he dies!”
A crowd had formed around the group; masks stared in morbid titillation at Thissell.
The Forest Goblin jerked the rope from Angmark’s hand, threw it to the ground. The crowd roared. Voices cried, “No duel, no duel! Execute the monster!”
A cloth was thrown over Thissell’s head. Thissell awaited the thrust of a blade. But instead his bonds were cut.
Hastily he adjusted the cloth, hiding his face, peering between the folds.
Four men clutched Haxo Angmark. The Forest Goblin confronted him, playing the skaranyi. “A week ago you reached to divest me of my mask; you have now achieved your perverse aim!”
“But he is a criminal,” cried Angmark. “He is notorious, infamous!”
“What are his misdeeds?” sang the Forest Goblin.
“He has murdered, betrayed; he has wrecked ships; he has tortured, blackmailed, robbed, sold children into slavery; he has—”
The Forest Goblin stopped him. “Your religious differences are of no importance. We can vouch however for your present crimes!”
The hostler stepped forward. He sang fiercely, “This insolent Moon Moth nine days ago sought to preempt my choicest mount!”
Another man pushed close. He wore a Universal Expert, and sang, “I am a Master Mask-maker; I recognize this Moon Moth out-worlder! Only recently he entered my shop and derided my skill. He deserves death!”
“Death to the out-world monster!” cried the crowd. A wave of men surged forward. Steel blades rose and fell, the deed was done.[Jack Vance, “The Moon Moth”]
Seldom will you read anything with as much relevance to our squabbles as the segment above – and in Vance’s flowing, impeccably elegant prose, at that. What matters on the planet Sirene is one’s status, which is proclaimed, in large measure, by the mask one chooses to wear. Not to wear a mask at all is unthinkable. The face must be kept covered, by unanimous agreement – an agreement the Sirenians are willing to enforce at sword’s point.
Thus, the religion of Sirene is a good distance from anything we of Twenty-First Century Earth would recognize. However, to the Sirenians, it’s worth fighting over and killing for.
Makes a two-bit novelist feel just a wee bit humble.
Tom Kratman’s epigram has overwhelming relevance to our present age. The “sophisticates” of today chuckle contemptuously about the “religious wars” of earlier centuries, blithely unaware that the conflicts of today, from the merest difference of political opinion all the way to the largest and bloodiest of armed encounters, are just as much “religious wars” as any squabble of the Fourteenth Century. But then, “sophisticate” is in practical terms a workable synonym for “idiot.”
And so, at long last, we return to the title of this piece:
The lack of such an overwhelmingly accepted code is what’s killing us – and make no mistake about it: that’s very much in the interests of the worst men in the world.
Think about it.
Sep 26 2021
I’m filled with quirky thoughts today, for a variety of reasons. For one, our Gentle Readers have been writing to ask questions I’d bet few other Web blatherers receive. For another, I’m in the middle of yet another romance novel – to be titled The Discovery Phase, look for it soon at a website nowhere near you – whose protagonists are both rather odd (my specialty) and out of the usual age band for a popular romance. (Hey, it’s Onteora County. Weird stuff happens there!) For a third, the esteemed John Wilder has posted a rather pensive piece about time.
Have a nibble:
Of things that have long fascinated me, time is at the top of the list. Even when I was a little kid, time fascinated me.
The idea that time, of all of the physical parameters of the world there was the one that we couldn’t control. Humanity has mastered the power of the atom, at least partially. We haven’t tamed fusion, but we can create it, and have several fewer islands in the Pacific because of it.
It’s worth reading in its entirety. (Skip the puns. They’re worse than usual.) But it’s germinated more quirky thoughts, for time is probably the least well understood of all “phenomena.”
Consider distance. How do you measure it? Why, directly, of course! You take a standard unit, you lay it down serially from your start point to your end point, and the number of times you must do so before you reach the end is your measurement.
Now consider weight. You measure that in a direct fashion, too: by putting the thing to be weighed on a balance-scale, and piling standard weight units on the other side until a balance is achieved. The number of those standard weight units is your measurement.
Time is different. We don’t measure time intervals directly. It appears to be impossible to do so. Instead, we look at some material process – the movement of the Sun, the burning of a candle of known length, the number of waves emitted by a hydrogen maser – and use that as the measure of the interval that has passed. This differs greatly from the techniques we use to measure other physical items.
If physical phenomena did not change, we would not have any concept of time. (Of course, there would be no “us” to worry about it, but that’s another and much more complex subject.) Yet we use expressions that connote ownership if time, as if it were something, pace Jim Croce, we could bottle and store. “Do you have time to do X?” “Let’s make time for Y.” “My time is my own.”
And with that, it’s “time” for a little C. S. Lewis:
It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening), or the friend’s talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a tete-а-tete with the friend), that throw him out of gear. Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption “My time is my own”. Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to his employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which he allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright.
You have here a delicate task. The assumption which you want him to go on making is so absurd that, if once it is questioned, even we cannot find a shred of argument in its defence. The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon as his chattels.
The insight contained in that passage eludes many brilliant men. Time is not an asset we can somehow store up. Neither can we confidently apportion it: so much to this, so much to that, and none at all to this other “waste of time.” Our schedules, by which we strive to perform such apportionments, are wish lists the events of our lives routinely override. Consider the weekday morning traffic jam.
The moment in which we exist – the one we call now — is all we “have.” Indeed, we don’t even “have” that in any possessive or retentive sense. By the time we’ve named it, it’s slipped away to be replaced by another “now”…if we’re still alive to discuss it.
But time matters. It’s our name for our perception of change, whether the change is for the better, for the worse, or irrelevant to our personal concerns. So we measure it, strain to control the way we use it, and speak of it in terms that physically speaking, are quite misleading.
I shan’t bludgeon this into the magma layer. Allow me one more observation: Whether we use it constructively, fritter it away on fatuities, or sit stiller than a yoga master N levels deep in meditation, time will pass. We will age. Our possessions will erode. Our energies will diminish. And we’ll forget where we left our glasses.
“My time” will pass. When it has, nothing will be left but the sole rigidly scheduled event in every man’s life: to face God at the Particular Judgment.
That’s it. That’s all. Just a few esoteric thoughts for your Sunday morning. Anyway, it’s time for Mass. Be well.
Sep 25 2021
Yes, yes, I took yesterday off from this dive. I’d been posting too much anyway, and I wanted some time to play with my dogs and cats, among other things. Speaking of dogs and cats and other things, let today be a break from news of the world and its many ills. First up, we have the incomparable antics of…Chowder the Skateboarding Bulldog!
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dog get so much happiness out of anything. Edible things included. Clearly, some obsessions can be harmless. Possibly even beneficial.
Chowder is considerably smaller than any of my three dogs, so I’m not about to go out and buy conventional skateboards for them. Maybe I could build three really large ones…naah. Silly idea. I live on too busy a street for that. Soon the C.S.O. would demand that I pave our backyard.
Hmm. Considering the state of my lawn, that might not be such a bad idea.
In response to this recent piece, a couple of my fiction readers have written to remind me that I have a disturbing penchant for writing heroes who are somewhat larger than life. Well, yes. I do tend toward protagonists who are a bit beyond the human norm, but give ‘em a break! With one exception, they’re not “super;” they’re just really, really capable and / or virtuous people. Individuals at the extreme edges of known human capability. Paragons. Anyway, I make sure to torment them appropriately.
The fad for superhero fiction is a response to a demand for heroes of any caliber. However, today’s writers and screenwriters have a problem with “normal” heroism. You see, they don’t believe in it. Having been “raised on antiheroes,” they can’t wrap their minds around the sort of “normal” heroism that runs into burning buildings or toward the sound of the guns. So they resort to creatures that cannot exist in reality: people equipped with powers and characteristics that render them specially capable of coping with extreme situations without great cost to them personally.
I can’t say this too often: If we want our children to believe in heroism and the virtues it exemplifies, their entertainments must show them heroes. But superheroes cannot and will not do the job. The reader / viewer looks at the superhero and says to himself, “That’s all very well for him, but regular people aren’t qualified for it.” Even minor children will react thus.
Frodo Baggins was a hero, not a superhero. Elwin Ransom was a hero, not a superhero. My favorite among Robert A. Heinlein’s protagonists, Lorenzo Smythe, was not a superhero but a hero…even if he had to be chivvied into it.
While we’re speaking of fictions, among the arts in which “reporters” and “journalists” must become proficient is the art of “putting the desired spin on things.” A story that tells a tale displeasing to the editorial staff can sometimes win their approval if “reported” in just the right way. This sometimes takes a careful choice of terms in the story itself. On other occasions, it requires the omission of certain unpleasant facts, in the hope that readers won’t notice their exclusion. And then, there are times when what really matters in the headline.
We have a case of the third sort before us today:
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – Execution dates have been set for seven death row inmates, after Oklahoma put capital punishment on pause for six years.
The Department of Corrections said it will be using the same three-drug cocktail used before the executions were put on hold. So far, no word how the protocol will be different this time.
Now, many editors are opposed to capital punishment, and would frown mightily on such a submission. But look at how Kenny “Wirecutter” Lane headlined it to appeal to the tastes of the editor whose heart bleeds for murderous thugs:
Masterful!
Let’s conclude with a moment of seriousness. After reading about this lunacy, which a number of other Web blatherers have mentioned, I pondered a challenge: to define the American culture. The critical word there is define. To define is to place boundaries on a named category of things. To define a category is not only to say what’s in it, but also to say what is not: i.e., what the definition would disqualify.
Some definitions merely say “This and that, and the other thing are in category X, but nothing else is.” That’s definition by enumeration or tabulation. For example, the category “powers of Congress” is defined by Article I Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States. The category “He-Man Woman-Haters Club” is defined by the current list of its members, though that list can change if the By-Laws permit others to join…or current members to leave or be expelled. The category “New York Rangers” as of today is defined by the roster of players the NHL has agreed may play for the Rangers in their next game…but that roster can change very swiftly indeed, under the NHL’s trading rules.
The more formal sort of definition is founded on Aristotle’s conceptions of genus and differentia. The genus of category X is an enveloping category – call it Y – to which the members of X must already belong. The differentia of X is that characteristic or combination of characteristics which distinguish members of X from those members of Y that are not members of X. This kind of definition has hard edges. It rigidly separates members of X from non-members, as is required by the operations of formal logic. In brief, you cannot reason about “things” unless you know exactly what “things” you’re talking about.
After some thought I decided that the American culture cannot be defined in either way – but then, neither can any other culture! Cultures are without enduring boundaries. There is no way to reach agreement on what’s in them and what isn’t. Large numbers of people may agree on what constitutes “Korean culture” today, but not necessarily everyone, and not necessarily for very long. As for fatuities such as “black culture,” or “Amerind culture,” such notions deserve nothing but a dismissive snort – especially today, when no one is prepared to define “black,” “Amerind,” or any other anthropological category.
Really, the secret here is that very few – perhaps none – of the terms people use routinely are susceptible to rigorous definition. So perhaps we ought to be a trifle more humble about our assertions than most of us are, most of the time. But that would mean agreeing that we’re all fallible – i.e., that we’ve been wrong in the past, we’ll be wrong in the future, and we could well be wrong right BLEEP!ing now. In fact, we probably are.
Sep 24 2021
After a very frustrating week of:
I’m tired, dirty, and sore. I’m going to check email, take a shower, and lay down for a nap.
