Aug 24 2021

A Change in the Way that Americans Travel Through the World

Almost all Americans travel worldwide with the permission of the American government, through its passport program. That document enables them to receive what services are available in countries that we have embassies in.

Those services may be limited in some countries – China, for example, has imprisoned Americans in the past, and still does, should they decide to try it. Other countries with limited recourse are Singapore, where an American citizen literally got his butt whipped with a cane, and many of the majority Islamic countries. Offend local customs, and you may, despite your passport, not survive intact.

And, that’s just the countries that we have somewhat FRIENDLY relationships with. Others, Americans are explicitly warned not to enter.

Not that such warnings stop them. At which point, they expect to be rescued by the same government whose warnings were ignored.

I propose a two-tiered system for future travelers:

  • Those who travel to countries unlikely to pose a hazard, who will receive America’s best efforts to get them out, should they find themselves in peril. They would be protected against random events and dangers, that could not be intelligently anticipated.
  • And, the others, who want to “experience the Real World”, grit, dysentery, and terrorist activity. For those, they would have to find a sponsor who will guarantee their safety, and will be responsible for any evacuation, should the trip prove hazardous/their own actions land them in trouble with the authorities. Such a group would include:
    • Danger-seekers – those deliberately contacting terrorists (including journalists), those engaged in drug-smuggling or other illegal activities, and those who refuse to abide by border restrictions on travel or warnings from the local authorities. Would also include women who will not abide by local custom, and cover themselves as the local women do.
    • NGOs that operate in dangerous regions.
    • Missionaries that insist on proselytizing in hostile territory – Islamic, other native religions, atheistic.
    • Revolutionaries

All of those in the second group would NOT be permitted to use their American passport, but use an alternative type, under the auspices of that sponsoring authority. ALL expenses of any rescue/recovery/negotiation efforts must be born by the sponsoring agency. The agency has to put up money (perhaps some sort of insurance?), and will be unable to discharge that obligation by bankruptcy. If the agency goes under, their corporate shareholders or the agencies/foundations that funded them would inherit the debt.

For the duration of their travels on that alternative passport, they may not be referred to as Americans, but as ‘citizens’ of that sponsor.

That might go a long way towards curbing the feckless activities by Progressive/Leftist organizations internationally.

Aug 24 2021

Words Cannot Convey…

…how truly horrified I am at this.

Cuomo just pardoned some convicted murderers on the way out.

“David Gilbert, a Weather Underground member who was convicted of three counts of second-degree murder and four counts of first-degree robbery for his role in the crime that resulted in the deaths of Nyack police Sgt. Edward O’Grady and Officer Waverly Brown as well as Brink’s guard Peter Paige. He was serving a sentence of 75 years to life in prison with no possibility of parole until 2056.”

“Gilbert’s son, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, had lobbied Cuomo for his release.”

Lack of quotes corrected for.

THREE people, two cops, and a security guard.

Dead, from a DELIBERATE act. And, now free to be paroled.

And, as of this time – 11:28 am, STILL not worthy of being mentioned on CNN.

Aug 24 2021

It’s Happening Again

     …but then, it was to be expected. Yea verily, even by those who claim that it’s not happening.

     There are phenomena whose geneses we understand – “we” being interpreted to mean “those of us who study such things” – perfectly well. We cannot plausibly claim that we didn’t expect them to happen. Yet politicians and their lackeys will do so. Perhaps they hope that their pretenses of sincerity will drown out the voices of those who knew better from the start.

     Take inflation. When the average Joe perceives an increase in the overall price level – often referred to as an increase in the “cost of living” – he calls it “inflation.” However, what it is in fact is the consequence of inflation. In a market economy, such a rise will occur only when the supply of currency and credit is inflated by the central banks. Economists have known this for centuries.

     Or take aggression by covetous powers. When Russia or China begin to move on a neighbor nation, it’s not because their masters’ greed level suddenly surged to a new height. It’s a response to the perception by those expansion-minded rulers that the United States will not act to check their plays. The same is true for the actions of lesser powers such as Iran…or the Taliban. It’s been this way since World War I. Strategic analysts know it full well.

     Finally, take the recent sharp increase in the number of parents who have chosen to withdraw their minor children from the government school system. This isn’t because Mom got a sudden, inexplicable urge to teach them herself. It’s because the government schools have simultaneously become far less effective as educators and far more pernicious as propagandists. The kids are coming home from those schools with tales to tell that are enraging their parents – and increasing numbers of parents are deciding not to stand for it. What they say across the back fence notwithstanding, they love their children and won’t stand idly by while their young minds are being abused.

     Some will try to hide from what they know, but the consequences are always negative. No matter how many politicians’ spokesmen exhort us to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, those of us with open eyes will know he’s back there and what he’s doing.

     Contemporary political art can be summarized in two sentences:

  1. Take credit for the good developments.
  2. Avert blame for the bad developments.

     This summary applies to everything that can plausibly be caused by human action. (Politicians haven’t yet managed to take credit for good weather, but they’re working on it.)

     Let’s imagine that at some point in the foreseeable future, the incidence of COVID-19 infections falls dramatically. What would you expect the Usurper Administration to say about it? That it’s a consequence of our immune systems having become acquainted with the virus and having learned how to defeat it, as has been the case with every other infectious disease known to science? Or that it’s because of the Administration’s strenuous efforts to promote “social distancing,” mask-wearing, and The Jab? I know where my money would go.

     Ignore what they say. Watch what they do. In response to inflation, they’re borrowing and spending heavily, expecting to pay down their new debts with devalued dollars. In response to Russian and Chinese aggressive moves, they’re attempting to calm their trading partners while simultaneously reapportioning their stock portfolios. In response to the exodus from the government schools, they’re maneuvering to make private schools unaffordable and homeschooling much more difficult.

     If there ever was a time when the statements of politicians and their pet experts could be trusted, that time is in the past. Their incentive to dissimulate and deceive is too strong and too widely acknowledged. You know better, so act accordingly.

     Unfortunately, they know we know better. That’s why they’re trying to impede our communications, and enlisting their Silicon Valley allies in the effort. Few of the possible outcomes are pleasant to contemplate. The unpleasant ones are very unpleasant indeed.

     This is the point at which I’d normally say “be not afraid,” but it would ring hollow. Keep your powder dry and your loved ones close.

Aug 24 2021

Pearls of expression.

If our government took foreign terrorism seriously, we would not have a porous border.[1]

But look for more hand wringing over the threat of “terrorism.”

And let’s generate more terrorists by killing hundreds of thousands of foreigners becase we’re special.

Notes
[1] “The War Comes Home.” By Gregory Hood, The Unz Review, 8/20/21.

Aug 23 2021

Some Miscellany, Before I Break for Lunch

Here.

And, below, maybe a reason for the concern about getting this done by September 11.

Aug 23 2021

Why Are We Just Hearing About This Now?

Some of the barriers to training and utilizing an Afghani army.

The above link leads to a story sourced by NPR, called All Things Considered. One telling part of the story:

Years ago, a U.S. general told us that not only couldn’t many of the Afghan officers read or write, but they couldn’t count. He said the Americans at times would draw a large rectangle in the dirt, telling the officers they needed enough soldiers to fill that space.

Why are we just hearing about this NOW?

Isn’t NPR – National PUBLIC Radio – SUPPOSED to be the ‘unbiased news source’ – and, for that reason, is supported in the American people’s national budget? I know ONE item I’m in favor of jettisoning on the next budget.

Now, I applaud the soldiers for being creative enough to come up with ways to work with the locals. That’s kind of a standard American trait, and allied to the culture, that is intrigued with Redneck Engineering.

But, this information should have changed the mission, from trying to build a ‘modern’ military, to training the few educated people to lead the illiterate many. Which would have been a lower-tech military, which wouldn’t have pleased all those military vendors pushing their highest-tech equipment and materials.

We’uns, once we manage to take control, are going to have to track down all of the villains in this debacle, prosecute them, strip them of their assets, and put them in the pokey for a LONG time.

ALL of them – public AND private.

[UPDATE]

I found this on Taki today, and it makes some sense. Maybe we ought to be looking, not at parliamentary models of government, but at balanced monarchies with regional power strongholds. And, make it clear to the rulers that we would NOT continue supporting them, should they prove not willing to work with the others to keep the country stable. The only thing that all should agree upon is that both religious power centers and Leftist power centers should be kept from reaching the effective stage. Don’t really care about HOW they put down dissidents.

Aug 23 2021

Nobody Likes To Be Contradicted…

     …especially by RealityTM [1]

     Statistician William M. Briggs has a piece up today about Why Experts Hate Racial Differences In Intelligence. It’s a good piece, but it sounds a somewhat discordant note toward the end:

     Experts say intelligence is the highest good, and these test scores are indicators of intelligence. See the IQ post above for Experts’ limited understanding of intelligence: what they mean by it is incomplete and far less than it is. But here we use their understanding of its definition….

     Since all Experts aren’t stupid, they know that differences in intelligence have causes. It they can’t admit race, they have to say, they are forced to say, “racism” (or money, or whatever). Equality is thus a theorem and is not axiomatic. It is deduced from the premise that (their definition of) intelligence is the highest (by far, or only) good, and the premise that the implications of intelligence being the highest good are unkind.

     The only other choice is to admit intelligence is not the highest, or really only, good. Yet if Experts admit that, then they have to admit their own value is not as high as they esteem it. This is, as you might well imagine, unthinkable in an Expertocracy.

     I know a number of psychometricians, especially those in intelligence testing. Not one expert of my acquaintance believes that “intelligence is the highest good.” They believe only that intelligence – the ability to work with abstractions to reach valid conclusions – is real and somewhat measurable. So they don’t conform to Briggs’s characterization.

     Before I proceed, remember this: Intelligence is an asset – a tool. It is not an end in itself, but a tool one can apply to certain kinds of problems. It wouldn’t help me to lift and relocate my safe singlehanded. However, it would help me to work out how my safe could be lifted and relocated. In other words, if and only if a problem is one that is intellectually soluble, then high intelligence is an asset that can be usefully applied to it.

     Now, let it be admitted that many experts in various fields do pride themselves on their intelligence. Whether that pride is justifiable is a subject for another time. Whether they are as intelligent as they think themselves is something to be determined from their approach to their work:

  • Do they apply the appropriate methods to the phenomena they study?
  • Are the conclusions they propound validated by experience?
  • Do they admit that their conclusions have a limited domain of application?
  • Do they allow that they might be wrong?

     It would be highly unintelligent to believe that intelligence is the right tool with which to tackle every imaginable problem. But enveloping that fact is a deeper truth: one that is especially distasteful to certain categories of self-nominated experts:

Not every problem has a solution.

     Indeed, not every condition nor phenomenon someone calls a “problem” is a matter that the application of human ingenuity and energy could improve at an acceptable price.

     This brings us to the consideration of a common form of linguistic trickery. It’s especially prevalent in the realm of politics. Smith sees some condition he dislikes – perhaps it’s the persistence of “inequality,” meaning economic inequality – and decides to make it his personal cause. But the history of “inequality” is the history of Man. There has never been a society in which all persons are equally well-to-do. Moreover, if by some unthinkable miracle we were all “equalized” at breakfast time tomorrow, “inequality” would be back by dinner time at the latest.

     “Inequality” is therefore a natural feature that arises from human variation. But this displeases Smith. So he uses a linguistic trick: he labels “inequality” a “problem.” And “problems,” as “everyone” knows, exist to be solved – indeed (cue the pious music) they must be solved. Moreover, the tool to be applied to them is intelligence…for political purposes, probably Smith’s own.

     (Tired of the sneer quotes? So am I. They stop now.)

     It doesn’t matter whether Smith achieves any of his personal goals. If he succeeds in persuading the public to regard inequality as a problem to be solved, he will have laid the foundation for decade after decade of fruitless labor and expense. The attempts to equalize will continue until the society has exhausted itself…possibly eventuating in a revolution. This is what the Progressives, starting in the late Nineteenth Century, have done to us.

     The humble man admits that there are problems he cannot solve. The insightful man recognizes that there are huge classes of phenomena, whether we call them problems, conditions, or kumquats, that are insoluble no matter how great the intelligence of those who address them. Those classes include many of the most poignant conditions known to Man. The most we can do with such phenomena is to ease some of the suffering and discomfort that results from them…and even efforts such as those sometimes come at a price we will ultimately decide that we cannot afford.

     Concerning Experts: The late Richard Feynman, legendary educator and Nobel Laureate in Physics, once humorously defined science as confidence in the fallibility of experts. It’s well to unite that recognition with another: Intelligence is only one asset among many. Energy, humility, generosity, fellow-feeling, and others all have their place. The Expert worth listening to will know and admit this. The others may be dismissed with prejudice.

[1]: Reality is a registered trademark of God Almighty.

Aug 23 2021

If I Hadn’t Seen This, I wouldn’t Have Believed It

Trying to explain to Afghanis how terribly important a picture of a urinal was to American art.

No, really – read the linked article – the video is near the bottom. You will be renewed in your determination to Root the Bastards OUT of American Life.

Aug 22 2021

What a CF!

Afghanistan is confiscating US passports, we’re on the brink of another hostage situation, and China is smiling in the background.

What to do?

Nothing. The Left MADE this mess – let them clean it up, or take the blame for whatever comes.

Now. If there were a Machiavellian kind of person/group lurking around in the background, once the situation has resulted in China making their usual moves into the country, they MIGHT:

  • Secretly recruit some Asian-looking and Black volunteers/mercs, and send them in to screw with the Taliban. Have them rough up locals, wearing the kind of clothing worn by Chinese/African peoples. Have them insult them in Chinese and/or an African language used in a country that China controls. Have them call the women sluts, and offer the men money for their women for the whole team to abuse.
  • Allow themselves to be chased off by gunfire in the distance. American cigarettes and food will be left behind, but no people.
  • Do this in different parts of the country, again and again, for a few weeks. Let the Chinese deny it. They will begin to be mistrusted.
  • Mess with the money system, dropping loads of fake Taliban money. Or Chinese. Get a lot of counterfeit money circulating.
  • Make fake videos of Chinese soldiers sharing stories about the “easy” Afghani women. Spread them on TikTok and other social media.
  • Send text messages to random Afghani numbers leaving links to “secret” videos of Chinese abuses of Afghanis (unfortunately, as the Afghans really only care about their own, we can’t use the crimes against the Ughyers to stir them up). Show them disrespecting all religions, but particularly Islam.

Sit back and watch the distrust and pushback rachet up. The Chinese will try to use muscle, but it ain’t gonna work on the goat-herders.

Aug 22 2021

Renters

     One of the long-time controversies in economics concerns the behavior called rent-seeking. Crudely put, the rent-seeker seeks to amass wealth without doing anything to get it. This does not describe a conventional landlord, who accepts the responsibility for maintaining his property in acceptable condition, in exchange for regular payments of rent by its occupant. Rather, it pertains to one who seizes control of something – for example, a fordable spot in a river – that he’s done nothing to produce or maintain and for which he accepts no responsibility, and then charging others for its use.

     Rent-seeking is usually a sociopolitical phenomenon. The guilds of pre-Industrial Revolution Europe engaged in rent-seeking by limiting their memberships and forbidding the practice of their trades by non-members, thus elevating the market price of their services by restricting competition. Today, labor unions and professional licensing organizations do much the same, in this case with the collaboration of various levels of government.

     A subtler case of rent-seeking, which can be more difficult to detect, concerns the corruption of public officials and bureaucrats. These discreetly let it be known that their favor is for sale. This attracts purchasers, who use the access they buy to acquire privileges for themselves or to impose burdens on their competitors. Occupational licensing agencies within government are prone to this disease.

     Of course, a governmental rent-seeker needs renters to provide his unhallowed gains. Someone must pay him. Though the official or bureaucrat is corrupt by the fact of offering his “services” to the renter, the renter makes his corruption profitable. Which brings us to this intriguing graphic:

     Now, the doctors notionally depicted above might not be getting direct payments from the companies on their jackets. Their rent could be of a different kind: for example, a pharmaceutical company might restrict access to its products to a particular specialist, who thus becomes a monopolist of sorts. Or a company might promote the services of certain specialists who’ve agreed to use only that company’s drugs. Other arrangements are conceivable.

     The possibility of bring treated with inferior drugs or therapies is one that should worry the American layman. The federal government heavily regulates the production and distribution of many drugs and other medical products. This gives pharmaceutical companies favored by the Food and Drug Agency (FDA) great power. While it would seem that they pay for it in several ways, the consumers of medical products and services must ultimately foot the bill. The FDA bureaucrats and the pharmacorps both practice rent-seeking in their turn, while the patient, obedient to the recommendations of his physicians, pays the rent.

     When a regulatory bureaucracy is allowed discretion in its decisions – and this is inevitably the case when such a regime is imposed on an occupation of any kind – rent-seeking is practically inevitable. For where would the bureaucracy find knowledgeable people in whose hands to put such decisions? Plainly the first place to look is at the leading companies in the relevant field. Some companies will perforce be unrepresented in the bureaucracy. Those that are represented are very likely to favor their former employers over competitors. They might even ask those employers to write the regulations to be imposed on their industry; it’s been known to happen.

     Nobel laureate George Stigler called this regulatory capture.

     Allegations are rife about the emergency authorizations granted Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and others to release their hastily developed COVID-19 vaccines for general use. The aggressive promotion of those vaccines by various levels of government suggest that those companies are paying rent to persons in government. However, the vaccines are being administered free of charge. This raises the question: What are those companies getting for their rent?

     But that’s not all. Those in government who are promoting the vaccines have also indemnified the vaccine makers against any legal liability for what the vaccines do or don’t do. This is a form of rent paid by government to the pharmacorps. This raises the question: What are the involved governments getting for their rent?

     Answers are lacking. There are highly credentialed persons on opposite sides of the “get the vaccine / don’t get the vaccine” debate. Laymen are unable to talk to one another without acrimony. Tensions are high. Yet there are persons who want to know why our trust the proclamations of “experts,” and in our governments, has largely evaporated. It is to laugh.

Aug 21 2021

Thinking about Afghanistan, and Previous Wars

Here.

Aug 20 2021

For Those Who Think Electing Republicans Will Save Us

     Have a few words from Joe Hoft of Gateway Pundit:

     The United States now has a bona fide ruling class that both controls and transcends government, which sees itself as distinct from the rest of society and as the only element that may act on its behalf. The ruling class considers those who resist it as having no moral, intellectual or even any civil right to do so.

     Republican leaders neither contest that view nor vilify their Democrat counterparts because they do not want to challenge the ruling class, they want to be part of it.

     The GOP leadership has gradually solidified its choice to no longer represent what had been its constituency, but to adopt the identity of junior partners in the ruling class. By repeatedly passing bills that contradict the views of Republican voters, the leadership has made political orphans of millions of Americans.

     Is there any evidence that this is false? I can’t find any.

     If it’s true – and I think it is – our salvation lies in our own hands.

     Draw the moral.

Aug 20 2021

The Gap

     The days have acquired an eerie regularity.

     I rise early – typically between 4:00 and 4:30 – get my (cardiac starter fluid) coffee, and settle at my computer to read through my list of news sources. As I read I make a handful of notes about topics for future essays, though on some mornings the news is too monochromatic for more than one. Thirty to forty-five minutes later I quaff my second (critically important booster shot) cup of coffee. Then comes a shower, a cup of yogurt, and a review of the day’s tasks.

     It’s usually about then, as I’m pondering in what order to address the things to be done, that the full horror of…well, of everything…impinges upon me.

     How can life be this regular, this placid? The Usurpers are destroying the United States of America. In a bare seven months, they’ve crippled the most vibrant nation in history. We’ve been made a laughingstock in the eyes of the world. The Trump years seem like a joyous fantasy today.

     All it took was a fake plague and a stolen election to undo what could have been the mightiest resurgence of a nation and its people ever recorded. And the Usurpers aren’t done, Gentle Reader. They’ve got plans. They intend to reduce us to villeinage or worse, and they know exactly how to go about it.

     It’s not a replay of FDR’s New Deal or his Brain Trust. It’s a lot worse. The Brain Trusters didn’t have the tools of control the Usurpers possess. The Thirties didn’t know the ubiquitous computer, the database, the NSA’s ability to record and analyze 100% of the nation’s electronic communications stream, the “intelligence / national security” apparatus, or the all-enveloping fear in which the mainstream media have swaddled us.

     Yet life seems to go on as before.

     What’s wrong with this picture?

***

     While it surely varies from mine, most Americans’ mornings follow a routine of some kind. Despite the political convulsions of 2021, it probably hasn’t changed much. An individual American’s routine will be based largely on what he must do to meet his obligations: do his job, pay his bills, look after his dependents, care for his home, and so forth. Those obligations don’t typically make for a lot of discretionary activity or slack time. I could write for days about how we got here, but I’ll spare you.

     Conditions at the summit of American government haven’t yet touched most of us. There’s a gap between Us – the little people whose decisions and actions matter only to ourselves and our loved ones – and Them – the men who’ve seized the levers of federal power and are maneuvering to make their grip permanent. Developments in the corridors of federal power currently seem distant: abstractly troubling, certainly to be deplored, but less imperative than the pile of bills on our desks, Junior’s latest report card, the overflowing gutters, and the uncut lawn. For the moment, at any rate.

     So we go on living our lives essentially as we lived them before the Great Usurpation of 2020.

     It can’t continue forever. Therefore, pace Herbert Stein, it will stop. We just don’t know when. But for the moment, the gap in reality that separates us from the chaos in Washington seems to protect us. Mind you, the protection is purely cosmetic. It allows us to go about our days in a state of relative equanimity. As long as there’s food in the fridge and the lights stay on, that can seem like enough.

***

     I’m old. I know my life is coming to a close. These days, that seems a mercy. Present trends continuing, younger Americans will face oppressions and privations that I will never know.

     Will present trends continue? Will the Usurpers succeed in fastening their preferred brand of social-fascism upon us? Will our ability to go about our days unconcerned by their machinations be taken from us? Please, God, make it not so. But God helps those who help themselves, as the old saw runs. If we want a better future, or even one like today, we’ll have to fight for it.

     Apologies, Gentle Reader. You probably didn’t come here to wallow in my melancholy. But I write from what’s on my mind. Today, I ponder the gap that insulates us from the plans of the totalitarians who’ve stolen America, and I wonder how long it will last.

     For thousands of Americans in Afghanistan, there is no gap. Their fates are in the Usurpers’ hands. You and I can do nothing for them. It doesn’t look good for them.

     Time to pray.

Aug 19 2021

Time for a “You Can’t Handle the Truth!” Moment

Aug 19 2021

How Did This Happen?

     …grunt…wheeze… Sheesh! Getting rid of that Curmudgeon nuisance was a trial. He pops in at random hours, grabs the keyboard, and refuses to let go. I had to lever it away from him with a crowbar. (A few blows about the head and shoulders helped, too.) But all is well once more, at least for the moment.

     Now, on to the serious stuff: How did this happen?

     Did I hear that correctly? There are 10,000 Americans in Afghanistan? Civilians, I presume, as our troops were flown out well before this. What were those 10,000 Americans doing there? Giving courses on critical race theory and gender fluidity?

     Under what dimly imaginable circumstances, in answer to what compelling need, would we have more American civilians in that hellhole than armed, battle-ready troops?

     It could be a manifestation of our most destructive conceit: the notion that we can engage in “nation-building” of the sort we undertook in Germany and Japan after World War II. But beneath that madness lies another phenomenon that’s even more irritating: the insistence of every portion of the federal bureaucracy on getting a piece of everything. This tendency manifests itself most powerfully in the tensions between the Departments of State and Defense.

     Some years ago, I wrote:

     It’s not too much to say that averting war regardless of its desirability or justifiability is near the top of every State Department functionary’s list of priorities. In this pursuit, the State Department will often find itself opposing even peacetime operations of the military designed to improve its effectiveness, such as the acquisition of new weapons or the enlargement of its ranks. Tom Clancy provided a fictional example of this in his novel The Cardinal Of The Kremlin. The State Department set its face against the perfection of an American anti-missile defense, in no small measure because it would reduce the desirability of arms-control treaties with the Soviet Union.

     In the real world, we often find the State Department opposing military decisions, for example about troop deployments or weapons development, specifically out of fear of the reactions of other governments. Objectively, if those decisions made the United States stronger and safer at an acceptable cost, it would be madness to oppose them. But to a State Department loyalist, who has no control over the instruments of force wielded by the Defense Department and whose primary goal is to avert war at all costs, what matters most is the reactions of those other States. If they make unpleasant noises or military adjustments of their own, the State Department man instinctively assesses the risks of war as increasing. Other governments know this, and exploit it.

     Not every new State Department employee enters his responsibilities with all these attitudes already in place, of course. But over time, the department’s institutional incentives and outlook will filter out those who fail to adopt the dominant view in Foggy Bottom: War always means failure — for the State Department.

     When a foreign war has erupted and our military has gained its objectives, the State Department functionary’s most imperative impulse is to grab a piece of the action. If he can, he might salvage something for the Department from what he would otherwise regard as a failure. The consequence is a flood of State Department personnel into the country at issue. Those persons might have no genuine justification for being there. However, their presence is a statement to the White House that State is “on the job,” and not a mere spectator to the war. It also provides a rationale for a funding increase in the next Congressional budget.

     And of course, where State goes, other federal departments will try to follow. There’s visibility, prestige, and money to be had from getting in on the act. Besides, those conquered savages plainly need someone to turn them into omni-tolerant liberal Democrats! The troops in theater soon find themselves babysitting significant numbers of civilians whose reasons for being there are dubious, to say the least.

     It’s the seedy underbelly of the “nation-building” conceit.

     I could be wrong about the above. I often am. But the dynamic that propels a huge portion of federal bureaucracies’ decisions and actions surely operates just as effectively after an American expeditionary force has conquered its opponent as during peacetime. So I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that of the thousands of civilians still in Afghanistan, the great majority were sent there by the State Department, in hope of reclaiming something from its “failure” to avert war in the first place. Bureaucrats are just that way.

Aug 19 2021

Random Miscellany in the Middle of the Night

It’s seldom that I manage to sleep through the night. The only thing that keeps me sane is that I can get up, read for a while, and eventually become tired enough to lay down again for a brief return to sleep before my day officially begins.

This is a problem that needs to be addressed before we accept masses of refugees without recourse, should they prove to be a detriment to the values of our society.

It’s the first article that I’ve seen that identifies Afghans as the problem in random sexual assaults – or, to put it more succinctly – violent rapes – on women.

I’ve been seeing these reports for some time. Rapes had been rare in Euro society for years; this sudden rise of rape was shocking and unprecedented. Many of the rapists/attempted rapists claimed incapacitation by drugs or alcohol. For a time, this got them leniency.

I really cannot suggest that any refugees try this in America – unlike the EU, we have guns, a tradition of NOT calling the cops, and a lot of space to bury offenders of the public order.

CRT is the hot new theory that Leftist educators are getting excited about. The CRT that the educators are talking about is NOT the same one that is being implemented in America’s classrooms. And there are few people that are schooled enough in both the theory, and how it is being used, to fight back against it effectively. Rufo is one that is able.

While I’m on the topic, I really hate the use of ‘Educator’ to describe those who DON’T teach, but merely have theoretical knowledge of the area of study.

Teaching is hard. You have to start with the kids you are given (and, in many systems, it’s AMAZING how many of those who are connected or allied with the principal who manage to get schedules teaching the less-troubled, more academically prepared kids. That practice makes those teachers able to take credit for the excellent results on state tests.

My suggesstion? No one should be able to call themselves a teacher if they have not worked the job for at least 5 years, preferably in a system that has not stacked the deck with cherry-picked kids.

It’s damn hard work, both emotionally and physically exhausting. You balance between delivering the brutal truth on progress, with offering extra assistance to the kids that are not meeting the standards, while trying not to piss off the parents whose child is “special, and destined to be one of the great future leaders of the country”. It’s possible, but not if that kid can’t manage to get his nose out of a cell phone for two minutes, or stay semi-coherent for more than a day.

Dissent will NOT be tolerated! I do wish that the distinction between ‘untrue’ and ‘we’d LIKE this to be not true’ formed the basis of decision-making. Simply declaring that a topic, or a position on a polarizing issue is Verboten (amazing how German is the only language that provides the proper words to use in this discussion), is not ‘fighting misinformation’.

FACTS are actual observed phenomenon. OPINION is what you use when you ‘declare’ that the science is settled. No proof required, simply an airy statement, followed by the willingness to use force to impose that BELIEF on the rest of the population.

It’s never about the science. It’s always about the control.

Shine the light on their shady dealings; the cockroaches always scatter when the light goes on. If you read the whole article, you’ll see that this is not a one-time tactic.

Here’s a round-up of many links, and commentary on them. Worth reading. I’m not a purist, only willing to link to people who echo my every opinion. I take my news and insights from a range of publications. Maybe the Left should try that?

And, if you find yourself returning to the same people on Substack, consider buying a subscription. We need to support alternative media, when we can. $5/month is just $60/year – less that many magazines/cable options.

Aug 18 2021

Defiance Or Gloom?

     Your Curmudgeon isn’t sure what he’s hearing.

     Some voices are elevated in anger, furious about events in Afghanistan and seemingly resolved to expel the villains and incompetents in Washington who are responsible for the debacle. Many of these are persons who’ve expressed similar intentions for some time. But other voices speak in the dreary cadences and tones of resignation, as if to say “Now that our decline from greatness is undeniable, let’s all sit back and enjoy it.” And among those are some who once expressed the same resolve as those in the former camp.

     Where does America stand?

     It was hard to tell after the fall of South Vietnam, too. At the top, we went from an inept caretaker elevated by the fall of his predecessor to a clueless peanut grower more concerned about getting people to like him than about mastering the job to which he’d been elected. Congress, needless to say, was no better; read William E. Simon’s books A Time for Truth and A Time for Action for the details. The ascension of Ronald Reagan appeared to reverse the trend toward decline, but the events that followed make that reversal seem more illusory than actual.

     So where do we stand? What does the future hold for the Land of the Formerly Free?

     We can no longer trust electoral processes. The nation is still half-paralyzed by fear over a disease only slightly worse than a bad cold. The Usurpers have strangled our energy production, emasculated our military, and are busily destroying our currency. Our “allies” around the world – they’re actually our client states, but that’s a story for another time – are in terror that what’s just happened to Afghanistan could soon be visited upon them. And dozens of outright political prisoners are being kept in solitary confinement in some Washington sub-basement, for the heinous crime of taking selfies in the Capitol building after having been invited in by the door wardens.

     The Founding Fathers would most certainly have been shooting by now. Indeed, the bodies of Usurpers and quislings would be stacked like cordwood. Yet Americans appear to be waiting for someone else to solve the problem. (Israel, perhaps?)

     That’s a rather plain indicator. It indicates that the problem is We the People.

     Hearken to a cri de coeur more than twenty years old:

     Over the past century, liberty has been flensed away from Americans, slice after thin slice. That’s the way to subordinate a free people. Get them used to bending the knee and tugging the forelock in little things first, things that don’t appear to be relevant to them personally. Get them thinking that only antisocial curmudgeons would raise a fuss over matters as trivial as zoning restrictions, or licensing requirements for hairdressers. Better yet, get them thinking that anyone who would resist these “obviously desirable” new requirements of the law must want to do them harm.

     With each slice of lost liberty has gone a little of the defiance that animates a free people. We’re closing in on the point of no return, the threshold that, once crossed, will become an impenetrable wall that forbids us a backward step.

     In parallel with the loss of personal defiance has gone a slackening of the national will toward foreign enemies. The recent contretemps with the Chinese is an important harbinger of things to come. Few have dared to suggest that, when America puts young men and women into uniforms and weapons into their hands, it’s preparing them to risk their lives for some purpose beyond a trade agreement. Few have dared to suggest that a country whose government dares to take Americans hostage, to stake their lives and freedom as counters in a game, has committed an act of war, an act to which a country with dignity could respond in only one way.

     We have become comfortable with subordination at home and humiliation abroad.

     The red and white stripes wobble and weave. The starry blue field softens and begins to run. The borders dissolve, the colors blend, and soon there is only a uniform dull brown. The color of mud. The color of failure, The color of the loss of hope. And the hand that holds liberty’s banner aloft slackens, and fails, and becomes cold.

     Is there another way to view things?

     Your Curmudgeon feels a fog enclosing us. He senses a deepening of national malaise, a slow but steady descent toward irrevocable resignation. The imperatives of personal and familial survival take up all our time and energy. No one seems to have the will to fight. Perhaps we’ve decided that there’s no point to fighting, that subordination and humiliation are our inevitable lot.

     Your Curmudgeon reports; you decide.

Aug 17 2021

You Can Extend this Thinking, and it Would STILL be True

The Truth About Bums.

It’s true of many things. If you think about it, avoidance of realizing that Truth is the Foundation of Progressivism.

Most people are responsible for much of what happens to them in life. Now, some events in life are random – being the victim of a crime.

Really? Because, although there are people who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, many, if not most of the victims have what the lawyers might call Contributory Negligence:

  • They deliberately go to a part of town that has a higher number of crimes, at the times when those crimes are most often committed.
  • They are chemically altered during the event. This renders them less able to determine that a crime might be eminent, or in progress, until it is too late.
  • Their friends are criminals, or morons. Criminals attract other criminals, and violent attacks are often the result. If they are morons, they will insult criminals (don’t do that, criminals are notoriously touchy about personal insults), hit on their girlfriends, or puke inconveniently close to one of them.
  • They will carry large quantities of cash, or make purchases in an ostentatious way that indicates their credit cards might have high limits.
  • They date drama queens. Really. Girls with attitude, whose mouth doesn’t seem to have a ‘close feature’.

Same thing with finance. No, it’s not your fault that the business you work for shut down, but it IS your fault that you didn’t have a ‘rainy day fund’ – some source of access to cash to get you through lack of cash flow.

It IS your fault that you live in homes you can’t afford, filled with furniture that cost too much, wear clothes that are the latest – and most expensive, and drive an oversized car that is leased.

It IS your fault that you have constructed a house of cards, in which the slightest disruption to the structure will bring the entire thing crashing down on you.

For such people, handing them the money to temporarily solve their problems only leads to them coming back later for more cash. There is no hope that they will learn from the experience, and CHANGE THEIR WAYS.

All of which makes them BUMS.

Aug 17 2021

Data Points

     Nations, like men, are best advised to heed one another’s actions rather than their words. A steady diet of diplomatic and strategic duplicity will nullify one’s ability to negotiate for anything – and that is what the American diplomatic and military establishments have fed the world since 1975.

     Vietnam.
     Iran.
     Libya.
     Ukraine.
     Afghanistan.
     Iraq.
     And coming soon…wait for it.

     Is there an “ally” or a protectorate we haven’t betrayed?

     The Taliban’s lightning reconquest of Afghanistan is the clearest imaginable signal to nations that might once have approached the U.S. for military defense or assistance: Don’t do it. As the Afghan army collapsed, all but literally dropping their weapons and fleeing in the face of the Taliban’s advance, America did nothing. The gains bought by America’s twenty-year investment of blood and treasure dissolved like a dream.

     The Usurpers stood by and let it happen.

     Yes, this is in part a consequence of the stolen 2020 elections. But beyond that, it’s a lesson to those who think America can export its security, prosperity, and overall civility to other lands. Our movies and television shows may travel well, but American values are more fragile. No currently available shipping container can preserve them adequately for transport across the seas.

     Regarding lesser nations plagued by chaos and despair, we face a dichotomy: Military Protectorate or Hands Off. When it comes to the Third World, there is no third way.

     The desire for justice after the 9/11 atrocities fueled our initial foray into Afghanistan. Your Curmudgeon will not denigrate that desire. At the time, he was as avid for it as any man. But the “nation-builders” and bien-pensants took control of that effort almost immediately thereafter. The consequences are before us.

     Today, any nation that regards the United States as an ally and a reliable protector is counting its chips. Any nation with territorial designs on its neighbors is surely doing the same.

     And coming soon…
     Israel?
     Taiwan?
     Japan?
     The nations of the Caribbean?
     Perhaps all of South America?

     Wait for it. It probably won’t be long.

Aug 16 2021

The Obscenities Are Peaking

     No, your Curmudgeon isn’t talking about Afghanistan. That particular obscenity already has enough commentators piling onto it. Our focus this evening is something closer to home:

     A group of 162 principals and assistant principals at schools in Minnesota issued a public letter calling for “de-centering Whiteness” and “dismantling practices that reinforce White academic superiority,” while claiming that their efforts meant they were making a “sacrifice” for “our children.”…

     They ask rhetorically, “How might we get in Good Trouble today?”

     They answer:

     By:

     (1) De-centering Whiteness. Understanding that traditional organized whiteness ensures domination through forms like PTAs and Unions. We purposefully call out and lift up historically non-represented voices of color in our spaces to hold weight and power.

     (2) Dismantling practices that reinforce White academic superiority like bias in testing and the labeling, tracking and clustering that reflect an Americanized version of a caste system in our schools.

     (3) Reconstructing “school” upon our full in-person returns where business-as-usual, like schedules and staffing, are open to drastic changes. and engaging in that preparatory work now.

     (4) Speaking truth to power. Where our commitment to holding ourselves and those who serve under us accountable to this work is just as importantly extended to those who serve over us.

     Your Curmudgeon is unable to think of a condemnation severe enough for the villains who penned that statement. They will condemn white children to a no-standards, no-learning “education.” They will castigate white parents for insisting that their kids do their homework, study for tests, and in general take school seriously. They will insist that black kids who refuse even to remain in their seats (much less study for tests or turn in their homework on time) are learning acceptably even so. They will say anything, anything rather than confront the fact of black intellectual deficiency.

     Persons who refuse to accept what has been so plainly demonstrated would rather see the whole of the American educational system kowtow to black “self-esteem” than confront the evidence and assess it soberly. Maybe they’re right. White kids seldom riot or assault their “educators.” But it occurs to your Curmudgeon that perhaps a few more assaults are what’s needed to rouse those aforementioned “educators” from their politically-correct slumbers.

     Americans with children in the “public” schools must get them out immediately. Anything less constitutes consenting to child abuse at the government’s hands. Paid for by your taxes, at that.

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