Chaos is, well, chaotic. Let’s face it, the Left has succeeded in screwing things up so royally that their strategy of creating chaos so as to make the most people dependent on them as possible is working. While some are just getting back to some sense of normalcy after the “pandemic”, getting used to responding to an alarm clock and heading back to on-site work, others are still cowering in kitchens and walking around in masks. There are still virtue signaling “Hate hath no home here” and “We Believe” signs on some lawns but they’re now cockeyed (Occasionally I see a Biden-Harris sticker although it’s usually on a Prius driven by a recycled hippie.) For the moment, gas is available though getting more and more expensive by the day. The truck convoy has been moved to the back pages of the media, and cat food is still hard to come by in the stores. Few at this moment are dutifully counting the number of illegal aliens slipping across our southern border. News channels compete for how “breaking”, how bloody their coverage is. Never has the slogan, “follow the money” been more apt. Even philanthropies are trying to exploit the chaos by flooding us with an unprecedented number of phone calls, text messages, snail and email. Selfishness and self-centeredness, “looking out for number one” have taken over.
It’s a mess.
With instant communication via the internet and social media, ANYONE can shape perception, thus reality. But how much more adept at “creating” reality are the pros in politics, government, Hollywood and the media than the average snowflake photoshopping an image to create a meme?
No matter how erudite the source, not one institution, organization or entity has a grasp of the totality of what’s going on. Politicians still pontificate, with even greater breathlessness and ever more shallow and poll-tested, made-for-the-cameras commentary. Never has the slogan “if it bleeds it leads” been more apt. And never before has information been so colored, absent or FAKE as it is right now.
What’s happening in Ukraine is overshadowing everything at the moment. It may not tomorrow, when Ebola is announced in Santa Barbara or murder hornets are found in Barrington, but this morning it’s Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine.
We all can absorb and assimilate only so much input, so fast. Trying to sort out what’s real, what’s relevant, what’s actionable and what’s just entertainment takes too much time, time we might spend more usefully doing things that will give us greater growth, prosperity, security and meaning.
In 1931 the president of Columbia University voiced the categorization that “The vast population of this earth, and indeed nations themselves, may readily be divided into three groups. There are the few who make things happen, the many more who watch things happen, and the overwhelming majority who have no notion of what happens.” Doomsday Preppers are stocking their shelves for the Apocalypse. Snowflakes are creating “apps” to hold and collectively wring their hands. Others bitch and moan and drink and return to their old routines.
So, what to make of all this?
Our recommendation is to stop, take a breath and re-dedicate yourself to the tried and true principle of critical thinking. Rather than define this principle myself, I’ll borrow from the description found here.
“Critical thinking is an approach to gathering data and making inferences about the world. It advocates an approach of data acquisition and rational assessment. When applying critical thinking, the goal is to collect as much relevant data as possible, assess that data for accuracy, and finally use the data to arrive at the most justified conclusions possible.
Critical thinking is an ongoing process, and even ideas that one feels are well supported need to be occasionally reevaluated to see if new information might change one’s mind. For example, critical thinking eventually showed that Copernicus was correct in claiming that the Sun was the center of the solar system, even though many people believed this to be false at the time. However, this didn’t make him completely correct either, since more critical thinking showed that he was wrong on other things (he also thought that the Sun was the center of the universe).
Critical thinking uses many aspects of formal logic and informal logic. It also focuses on discovering bias, propaganda, delusion and deception (more generally, logical fallacies) both in the sources of one’s information and one’s own views and approaches to reasoning problems out.
Leftists conflate critical thinking with critical race theory and postmodernism, the latter by using verbiage that implies one needs to look out for meanings behind words and determining for oneself what occurs, while at the same time advocating that all reality is fictional and that one can create their own ideas and reality.”
In short, be a skeptic of EVERYTHING. Remember Grumps’ First Law of Experts:
“On any subject one can find a minimum of twelve, world-renowned experts who can cite documented, empirical, irrefutable evidence to support arguments that are diametrically opposed to one another.” Translation: “Use critical thinking, form and trust your own judgment.”
Your livelihoods demand your silence. Speak out and you don’t just face ostracization but the potential loss of your employment. You see what’s going on in the country, but your employer, be it a public or private one, will overtly fire you or surreptitiously label and mark you if you don’t tow the leftist party line. The cancer has spread so far that iconic American companies have gone woke.
Why have they done that? Marketing. Some years back it was environmentalism. Companies had to demonstrate how ‘green’ they could be. That was yesterday’s woke. Today it’s jumping on the defund the police or LGBTQ+ bandwagon. Speak up and tell your employer how you REALLY feel about these topics and you do so at your own peril.
What’s so insidious about all this silencing is that the Damocles sword hanging over your head allows the evil to spread – silence equals tacit approval. But aside from an extremely small number of individuals who are so repulsed by the leftist agenda they’d rather suffer the consequences of quitting their jobs instead of putting up with the constant diet of idiocy, the majority of us keep quiet, bite our tongues and draw our paychecks.
The frustration I hear of teachers who are forced to deliver a curriculum they know is toxic for the children they teach, that of police officers I know who are forced to work with both hands tied behind their backs, the productive rank and file who are being told they can’t come to work unless they get the vaccine…all have muzzles on their faces, unable to say what they really think.
One of the things the Left is so good at is setting up a demagogue who can fill the heads of a critical mass of gullible, brain-addled sheep to believe their lies and drivel. These become acolytes and because they gravitate towards others who nod and go along to join the crowd and feed their other-directed egos by joining the team, they clump together and speak the dogma and talking points to create memes. These are then amplified by the media and whoosh, the Leftist drivel becomes gospel. It’s because of their collectivist hivemind that the weak losers of the Left become lemmings and don’t even know they’re headed to the sea and certain destruction. They just play follow the leader.
But it’s effective, because the demagogues thus have numbers on their side. In elections, that’s what matters. Millions of unthinking, weak-minded sheep follow the shepherds and in the aggregate, the Left prevails. That demagogue Jonathan Gruber, so-called architect of Obamacare, famously revealed the truth when he said “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage…And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass.”
The last thing the Democrats want is for people to question their diktats. Through lies, deceit and manipulation, not to mention high production values, clever slogans and memes, the Left pushes and pushes, screams louder and louder, uses its tech power to silence/cancel opposition, essentially saturates and carpet bombs the airwaves, billboards, cocktail party speech to petulantly, obstinately get their way.
So the Left, a.k.a. Democrats, prevail.
On the Right, because of individualism, self-reliance, critical thought, justified skepticism, we deliberate before acting, we consider others and the nation as a whole, we don’t clump and recite the canon. Thus it’s a lot harder to organize and control the masses. This hurts during an election.
But wait. Look at what’s happening in school board meetings around the country. Pushed over the edge, parents who would ordinarily never speak up have coalesced and with one voice thrown the bullshit flag onto the field. The Southwest pilots, in another display of solidarity, were able to send a strong message to the airline’s management by walking out en masse. Street cops and firemen in New York are together defying the vaccine mandate.
In other words, if the Right sets its mind to it, or gets pushed too far, the Left will get a taste of their own medicine.
This coming Tuesday’s election for governor in Virginia will be a real harbinger. First, it will be a test as to whether sufficient pressure has been generated by the outcry from November 2020 to ensure the vote is honest and fair. Second, if Youngkin, the GOP candidate, prevails, decisively, it will be another example of the repudiation of Leftist authoritarianism and nonsense, and perhaps represent a push of the pendulum to the Right. Third, it will demonstrate how the Right can succeed in vanquishing the Leftist behemoth.
On my morning walk today I passed a very nice neighbor couple walking their dog. They have a Biden/Harris sign in their front yard. In exchanging pleasantries, I decided to ask them the above question.
Simply put, they didn’t have an answer! The husband hemmed and hawed. The wife said “their family had always been Democrats”. In short, they were the archetypical example of non-critical thinking, upper middle class SHEEP! I deliberately did NOT offer my opinion, and framed my questions so as not to reveal where I stood on the political spectrum. It was truly breathtaking how they could hold the views they do.
Similarly, it continues to astound me that ANYONE listening to the drivel coming out of the Left’s mouths could possibly want them to take over leadership of this country. I understand how the professional political types can and do spew garbage to advance their aims and seek to enhance their power. What I can’t understand is how dumbed down ordinary, working, seemingly family-oriented Americans have been either brainwashed so effectively or numbed into allowing Leftist dogma to be tolerated!
I take great comfort, however, in the half (or more) of the country who silently, conscientiously, know better, are open-eyed, think about more than themselves, and who despite reservations about style and theatrics, will pull the lever for RIGHT candidates in a few weeks. As I pointed out to another neighbor the other day, one who has no lawn signs but flies both the Stars and Stripes AND the Marine Corps flags on his house, “For all the Biden/Harris signs you see out there, just remember that the vast majority of lawns that do NOT have signs could be, and probably are, part of the Silent Majority.”
He agreed, and added, “I know of a couple of neighbors who have put out Biden/Harris signs just so they won’t be harassed, but who will vote for Trump.”
I pray for my family, my community and my country’s sake that Trump’s win is SO great no amount of flak from the Left will leave any doubt.
I know I’ve said this before but it’s worth repeating: Every election is billed as being “the most consequential” ever. That label notwithstanding, THIS ONE, irrespective of where it falls on the “consequential scale”, is a real tipping point. Either the country really IS divided right down the middle or the true character of America will be revealed with an overwhelming annunciation of where it is and where it wants to go. If it goes, as I believe it will, solidly RIGHT, it will mean we’ve had enough of Leftist nonsense and while our nation will not yet be cancer-free, it will mean we’ll continue the long, tough slog back up the slippery slope the Left has put us on for years and years. If it goes LEFT, may God help our children and grandchildren to quietly preserve what will be an even greater suppression of Good, Traditional Values and help our country survive Armageddon.
I pray it is not too late. I pray there are still places in our country where traditional values still prevail. But the other day I read an article in American Thinker: “When the Left Snatches our Kids” by Sally Zelikovsky, to whom all credit is due, that so closely reflects my fears that I’m going to “retweet it”, i.e. reproduce it in full. It is precisely the kind of alarm I’ve been trying to raise for my own children and grandchildren. It isn’t so much prescriptive as a call to arms. It succinctly rifles to the crux of all that’s going wrong with our society.
While I’ve been careful to distinguish between Conservative and Traditional in my writings, one could do a cut and paste, replacing the word Traditional with Conservative in the article and it would remain spot on. The italics are mine.
“I am skeptical that our efforts as conservative parents to produce conservative offspring will materialize. Even with the best of intentions, the odds are not in our favor to successfully counter the Democrat-Media Complex, the educational system, and pop culture. That doesn’t mean there aren’t success stories (some in my own family), but I hear more about the failure and the disaffection it engenders in conservative families.
Conservative parents have learned the hard way that how your kids turn out depends on a host of factors that, at some point during the maturation process, are way beyond our control — friends, personal experiences, a particular book or documentary, brain chemistry, friends, a teacher/professor/boss, personality, a romantic relationship, college activities, pop culture, hobbies, and…friends. Usually, it’s not one but an amalgamation of several factors and presto chango! The kid who was once the lone conservative arguing at the lunch table, now thinks David Hogg and AOC are bitchin’.
We see them everywhere — the emaciated college-age vegans working at Starbucks, hysterical young girls pounding on Supreme Court doors, attractive anti-Semites leading the charge in Congress. I’m sure some of them had conservative upbringings — you cannot assume they were all raised by liberals. Yet, in her reporting about out-of-control liberal college students some time ago, I heard Laura Ingraham link their behavior to their upbringing. Only a parent whose children hadn’t yet attended high school could make such an absurd connection. We can try but we cannot guarantee what our children will believe.
Once again, I find myself referencing Red Scare movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It resonates. We have to be vigilant, stay informed, understand the arguments of the other side and how to combat them. If we don’t, eventually the pods take us over. I graduated high school a Reagan Republican whose political arguments were admittedly my Dad’s. When I arrived at a competitive college filled with smart, often private-school educated Merit scholars, I lost every political debate. I just didn’t have the breadth of information and understanding of history to counter their arguments. Thus, I graduated college…a Democrat. In time, I fell back on those critical thinking skills my parents instilled in me. A desire to understand more as I graduated from law school and entered the work force, led me to self-educate and, eventually, return to my conservative roots.
That was also in the ‘80s and early ‘90s when life was simpler and more balanced: when “gay marriage” was still an oxymoron; before triggers and safe spaces, the internet, social media, doom and gloom “climate change,” and legalized pot; before we had an alphabet of sexualities to choose from and the ability to change sexes; before blended families became the norm; before hatred became the quintessential reason for all of society’s ills.
Not all teachers and professors were proselytizing progressives, the media was less corrupt, and your politics were not a factor in getting or retaining a job. Because of the deep societal changes since then, not every Millennial or Gen Xer has the wherewithal, the background, or the backbone to recognize and then punch back against the forces of propaganda, fess up to and toil with their own ignorance, or simply engage in respectful debate with those who have another point of view — no matter how steeped in conservatism their childhood.
I am not suggesting we stop lecturing our children about competing points of view, stop teaching them to be skeptical about what they learn in school or from their peers, or stop challenging the false orthodoxies they are barraged with on virtually every topic from sexuality to climate, energy to food, and national security to border security. We should continue to bang the drum. We must. And we must remain hopeful that someday those we lost will return to the conservative fold because they see the wisdom of conservative principles. But for all of you young parents out there who think you’ll do better than those before you, be prepared for disappointment.
The conservative path is littered with the bodies of well-intentioned parents who are devastated when their formerly straight kids come out of imaginary closets, transition to the opposite sex, or demand to be called “they”; when their Jewish Day School educated children announce their support for the BDS movement; when their evangelical children support blatant infanticide; when their happy, well-adjusted kids go off to college and return believing weed is innocuous, struggling with drug addiction, or suffering from mental illness.
These cultural maladies affect liberals and conservatives alike, but are unusually bitter pills for conservatives to swallow because they are packaged in a lifestyle and value system antithetical to everything we teach our children — resilience, pride, integrity, honesty, open-mindedness, self-reliance, individuality, taking responsibility for our actions, doing right when we screw up, and teaching a man to fish. Liberals cast us as hypocrites whose principles clash with reality, but what they don’t understand is that we believe in taking responsibility for and learning from our missteps so we constantly evolve into better beings (and don’t get mired in unbridled, misplaced hatred and lifelong victimhood).
Secondly, conservative parents are treated by their children with a level of hostility that doesn’t seem to afflict liberal parents with conservative children. Loving, nurturing conservative parents find themselves catapulted to Holocaust-denier status and demoted to homophobic, intolerant, racist, privileged, religious zealots. Relics of an oppressive past. It is painful when your kids reject everything you raised them to value. Despise you. Scoff at you. Turn against you. Align with your political foes. Resent you for brainwashing them with yourhateful, 1950‘s agenda.
Now, some of that is typical teenage/young adult angst and rebellion. When frontal lobes are soothed by the right combination of hormones and our insecure little monsters segue into more confident adults, those nasty side effects often dissipate. But much of the antipathy they are exposed to is encouraged by “the man” in the liberal camp — we’ll call him “the burning man.” He instructs us to hate authority, hate anything established, hate tradition, hate the moral code you grew up with, hate anyone who is white or successful, and hate those who embrace any of this. Hence, hate your parents. Hate your old neighborhood. They are the problem. And while today all you have to do is oppose them, someday you might have to actively go against them, even “turn them in.” The burning man says this is okay because you are right and the end justifies the means. I’m not being paranoid. Our entire educational system is based on appropriating the minds of our children and undoing all they have learned at home, turning them into weapons of mass societal destruction in the burning man’s toolbox.
We have all participated in holiday dinners and family vacations ruined by dissension and door-slamming. Family harmony devolves into family discord, function into dysfunction, and closeness morphs into estrangement. Parents are instructed to just shut up already! Politics and religion are off the table. Dinner conversations revolve around silly cat videos and trivial drivel. Soon there is little left to discuss. After all, everything is political now — from your sneakers to your bus commute during Pride Month.
Once upon a time, we could fall back on cultural interests like music, movies, theater, travel, and sports to avoid potentially explosive conversations at family gatherings about politics and religion. Now, virtue signaling is so ubiquitous that everything seems to fall into the Realm of the verboten. It becomes more and more difficult to find common ground. Constructive input I like your haircut and simple questions Did you decide on a major? What are you doing for break? How do you like your job? are potential triggers. Family get togethers are so contentious there is an increasing tendency to minimize interactions. Even life’s big “hatching, matching, and dispatching” events are often fraught with tension — relatives who couldn’t be seated together because of some family squabble are now separated because one has a worldview the other finds detestable.
Some parents give in. They don’t want politics or values to stand in the way of their relationships with their kids, so they re-visit their Weltanschauung. Constant pressure from your 20-year-old bubelah goes a long way towards re-educating Mom and Dad. Senator Rob Portman was against gay marriage until his son came out and then… he evolved. I’d rather fight than switch is a paean to another time.
This is nothing new. Many parents drank the Kool-Aid and became part of the 60s counterculture their children brought home. Ironically, many of their hippie children became yuppies and did the unthinkable — morphed into their conservative parents. Hmm. I suppose we can be clear-eyed about the transformative societal and political forces pulling our children away from conservatism, at the same time we cling to the hope that our liberal progeny will switch and fight for conservative principles and maybe even cling to their bibles and the Constitution, too.”
Wish I could have said it like that!
Comment by DOC DURACOAT August 3, 2019: “All you people should move to Boca Raton, Florida! Our public high school has been rated A for the last 10 years straight. We have a very active ROTC program, and it is routine to see these kids in the halls wearing military uniforms. The flag is respected, everyone stands for the pledge of allegiance, even the minority students. Graduation rates and college acceptance rates are very high. Discipline is enforced, disrupting class is not tolerated. My kids and their friends all graduated as sports playing, modest dressing, great conservative kids. Come on down and bring your guns and bibles! Your kids will graduate with a great education and strong conservative moral values.”
IBM used to give away desk name plates with the word THINK on
them. Perhaps that’s what the title of this post should have been. Pausing to
think is as much of a challenge today as how one thinks.
We are becoming increasingly scatter-brained. Business and
Life at the Speed of Thought leaves no time to smell the roses unless of course
the scent comes packaged as aromatherapy. “Ready, fire, aim,” we’re told. “If
you snooze you lose.” “Just do it!”
When was the last time you had the patience to watch, much
less actually watched a show on television that wasn’t comprised of five minute
segments, where the people interviewed weren’t forced to rush their answers because
of “hard breaks”? As an aside, when was the last time you saw commentators who
actually presented meaningful analysis or had something truly substantive to
say? (Answer: the only contemporary show I can think of is “Life, Liberty and
Levin”.
FOMO. The Fear of Missing Out. It’s not just a millennial
thing. I see countless supposed adults with their noses pinned to small screens
studying the latest (within the last 2 minutes) pop-culture meme. Too many of
us to block out the real world and live in a virtual one. FOMO causes shallow
thinking. No thinking, really…just reaction to often heart-string-tugging snippets
or easy-to-remember, catchy slogans and phrases.
Since information, whether true or false, right or wrong,
good or bad is always at our fingertips through Google! (it’s a verb now), why
bother to memorize, remember or LEARN anything? Fewer and fewer people actually
concentrate on a single subject or topic. And thus, increasingly, we have an
entire generation who are a mile wide and an inch deep. And fewer and fewer
people actually think. Most just respond to stimuli.
What happened to “Less haste, less waste?” What happened to
Critical Thinking?
Laziness. What the internet and exponentially growing
databases of “stuff” has done is condition people to obtain information from
sound bites, with no real depth, no substantive corroboration, no skepticism.
If it sounds good, or “feels” right, it’s accepted.
Talk about mind control! The demagogues of the Third Reich
would have loved this medium. An ability to influence/brainwash an entire
population of dumbed-down, lazy people would have meant we might all be
speaking German today! Oh, and by the way, the Russians and Chinese and the
LEFT have figured this out and are doing
precisely what the Third Reich would have done…broadcasting propaganda with an
efficiency and effectiveness that only “The Matrix” could improve on.
Think. Think! When so much garbage is constantly overloading
our input circuits, at an ever-increasing rate, we have to force ourselves to
stop and think. And it’s not just stopping to think. It’s compartmentalizing so
as to shut out the noise. It’s not just turning off the ring tone. It’s turning
off the vibration notification as well. It’s finding a quiet spot and moment
amid the chaos to consider what’s important, what really needs to be done, not
what the voice in your ear or the face on the screen are telling you to do.
And it’s being skeptical, increasingly. We used to say,
“Don’t believe everything you read.” That became, “Don’t believe everything you
hear.” Whether you liked him or not, everyone expected and relied on Walter
Cronkite to give us Real News. Can you say the same of the 6PM news anchors
today? Sure, the Bon Ami folks tried to convince you that their product would’t
scratch your porcelain surfaces. But we all recognized that as advertising.
Now, “infomercials” abound, and ALL the news is biased, colored, i.e. ‘fake’ in
the sense that it never just reports what’s happening. We need to listen to or
watch EVERYTHING with a major, not just healthy, dose of skepticism.
It’s sad that we can’t count on anyone or any organization
to provide honest information anymore. But that’s the current reality. The only
antidote is Critical Thinking – forcing ourselves to sort the wheat from the
chaff, to make decisions and form opinions based not on what the firehose of
noise directs at us, but on what reasoned judgment emerges from pause and
reflection.
When information is presented to us, the conclusions we reach at first glance may be what the presenter wants us to conclude, and may not reflect reality. For example, how MUCH hypocrisy; how MUCH falsehood; how MUCH racism; how Much of ANYTHING (!) is relevant and important.
Split a screen in two. Put a Leftist on one side and a Traditionalist on the other. Let the subject be Hypocrisy. The Leftist will cite example after example of conservative icons demonstrating hypocritical behavior. The Traditionalist will cite example after example of liberal/’progressive” icons demonstrating hypocritical behavior.
The casual viewer will conclude, “Both sides do it, they’re EQUALLY wrong!”
Here’s the problem. The split screen and selection of examples demonstrate that the sin of hypocrisy exists on both sides. What it DOESN’T show is the DEGREE to which each side engages in it.
It’s like the games played with representations of statistics. The following two graphs show identical data. Which presents the rosier picture of growth?
Back to the Hypocrisy graphic. By splitting the screen into two equal parts and by showing the same number of examples on each side of the argument, one would be led to believe that the Left is no more prone to hypocrisy than the Right. Usually, the argument devolves into a shouting match (either figuratively or literally!) in an attempt to bludgeon the opponent.
Whom to believe? What are the FACTS?
I wish we could tell you. Unfortunately, all we can do is give you our OPINION. We recommend that you employ critical thinking, do your own research and arrive at your own conclusion on virtually any subject. JUST DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ OR SEE!
PS, our OPINION is that the Left’s circle in the Hypocrisy diagram above is in reality a hundred times larger than the one on the Right. Think of the representations you’ve seen comparing the circumference of the Earth compared to that of the Sun. THAT’s a better depiction of the imbalance!
TODAY IS
Thursday November 21, 2024
Quips & Quotes
January 2, 2024 "As we enter 2024, there is widespread public agreement about two things: (1) something big is about to happen, and (2) whatever that something is, it sure as hell won’t be pretty! While it may get pretty ugly pretty fast, though, there is an upside to what’s coming: as a country, we can finally pull this disgusting Band-Aid off, face reality for what it is, and stop pretending. However bad this year might prove to be, it might also be tremendously liberating.
Why? Because, one way or another, things will soon change. For too long, those who “run” America have had two things in common: (1) a hatred for individual freedoms, and (2) an even deeper hatred for the one country on the planet explicitly founded on their protection. As a national security surveillance State superseded the U.S. Constitution, leftists have controlled academia, journalism, the legal system, and entertainment. They have shoved anyone with a working brain out the door while assuring themselves that they deserve their privileged social positions and unearned accolades. They tell themselves that they are smart and enlightened, but anybody capable of self-examination knows this not to be true. Leftists are not happy people. They have not figured out any special meaning to life because, to them, life is meaningless. In other words, for too many years, a collection of the most depressed, least curious, morally relativistic, and intellectually homogenous people on the planet have been given pampered positions in exchange for acting as nihilistic and narcotic-dependent sea vessel captains willing to steer America into an iceberg of decline and failure." J.B. Shurk, American Thinker, January 2, 2024 "Do We Hit the Iceberg or Finally Change Course?"
November 3, 2023 "There’s a subtext to nearly all American political trends today. It’s hardly ever spoken about overtly and explicitly. But the topic is nonetheless always there. All insiders know about it. It’s also the central and critical debate concerning America’s future.
The question is as follows. Will the United States continue the present system whereby representative democracy persists as a mere veneer to keep the public distracted and defocused on the real rulers in the nation? Or will something dramatic be achieved whereby the swamp is truly drained, the administrative state gutted, the agencies disempowered, and we return to an actual constitutional system in which the people truly rule themselves through their elected representatives?
These are the two paths. It’s one or the other. They’re mutually incompatible." Jeffrey A. Tucker, November 3, 2023, Epoch Times, p A22, "Are You an Institutionalist or Anti-Institutionalist?"
October 30, 2023 "If you want an indicator of how lost Western civilization has become, go to your kids’ school and check their rules on fighting. Most likely, you’ll find out if two kids get into a fight, both get suspended, regardless of whether one was a punk bully who started it and the other was simply defending himself or some little kid. This is a moral disaster, of course – violence in the defense of what is right is a moral obligation and a symbol of a greater rot within society."
"The world's true nature is that good is forever pitted against evil."
"We must learn again to be ruthless in defeating our enemies. The big lie that Western civilization tells itself is that there are no real enemies, that there are no bad people – except the people of the West themselves, who bear some sort of original sin for not being corrupt and inept Third World barbarians."
"We have forgotten our strength and our courage. We have forgotten that we survive not through gentle hugging but through sword-swinging.The idea that Israel should somehow give these Hamas barbarians food, water, and electrical power even if it surrounds Gaza and prepares to attack is mind-boggling insanity. The moral illiteracy of expecting Israel to care more about the Palestinian people than other Palestinians do is simply bizarre."
"The hard truth is that the world contains bad people who must be crushed through ruthless violence, which shocks and horrifies modern sensibilities. But it is reality nonetheless. When people want to kill you, you are at a decision point. You can either let them kill you or stop them. But stopping them often involves aesthetically displeasing actions, such as blowing them into little bits with bombs or shoving a bayonet into their guts and watching them die in agony. And it necessarily means inflicting death and damage on the noncombatant camp followers around them. That’s why they say war is hell. And that’s why starting one is probably not a good idea. But when someone else starts one, you have to choose them or you. Someone’s going to die badly, and you know, I propose it is those other guys."
October 16, 2023 "Though around the world sociopaths stabbed some folks, the Day of Jihad fizzled in America – how many bummed patriots slammed in a mag hoping some mutant was going to choose his small town to prove Jason Aldean right? But it is only a matter of time. When you allow millions of military-aged males to come unvetted into your country, including many from bizarre hellholes where hatred for Americana is more common than food and indoor plumbing, there is a non-zero chance that some of them are part of sleeper cells waiting for the signal to murder Americans here at home." Kurt Schlichter, Town Hall, October 16, 2023, "We Are Sitting Ducks And Our Leaders Do Not Care"
August 22, 2023 "When arguing in federal court in HI in 2020, I had to get permission from the governor to enter his precious state to argue that his silly COVID lockdowns violated the Constitution. I lost. This same state, in real life, has shown how little respect for life its leaders really have. My perfectly healthy clients were not allowed to travel from one island to another to visit their own property. American citizens were turned away at the airport because they got the wrong COVID test on the mainland. The hotel gave me “parole” from the one way card key rule only to do my legal business and leave. I could not call an Uber or take a taxi at the airport. The National Guard met me at the gate to escort me to Hawaii COVID immigration to provide my information, which they verified with the hotel. I was to keep my phone on at all times so that they could track my location. This same police state didn’t turn the water on in Lahaina, didn’t have sirens, can’t begin to tell you how many children died from their incompetence. Or begin to explain it. Remember all this the next time you are asked to comply with farcical, unjust “laws” made by dictators. They are lying when their lips are moving about how much they care about you and your little life and your paper constitutional rights. Americans are beginning to realize how much we are on our own. Such a betrayal." Harmeet K. Dhillon, on "X", 8/22/23 12:44 AM
August 17, 2023 - A MUST READ!!!! The following is a transcription of Newt Gingrich's comments on Hannity last night. "“I think what you’re seeing tonight is one tree in a forest, and I think we are drifting towards the greatest Constitutional crisis since the 1850s, uh, and the rise of secession and the Civil War. I don’t mean that as hyperbole. Uh, if you read Andy McCarthy’s remarkable book, Ball of Collusion, which came out in 2019, he makes very clear that it is Barack Obama who corrupts the Justice Department, it is Hillary Clinton who routinely breaks the law and gets away with it. And now we have Joe Biden who’s learned, he’s learned from Obama that is doesn’t matter what you do, if you’re a liberal Democrat, you will not be prosecuted. He learned from Hillary that a person in high public office can get millions and millions of dollars. And they learned from watching Donald Trump that a true outsider, willing to take on the entire system, could destroy their entire machine. So what you’re seeing across the country, is a desperate, last-ditch effort by a corrupt machine to destroy their most dangerous opponent in a way which not only breaks the Constitution, destroys the rule of law, and establishes a moment of bitterness, uh, which I think will last for a generation or more. I think this is gonna be a horrendous period and we just need to understand: The people who want to control America and dictate to the rest of us will break any law, lie about any topic, and manipulate the system any way they can, and that includes a lot of the elite news media.”
August 10, 2023 "The fact that young men are getting more conservative is a cause for optimism. Remember, if you grew up male in the last ten years or so, every institution has been deployed against you. You’ve been told you are bad and horrible and evil and worthless. In contrast, every girl is an empowered girlboss ready to take her rightful place at the pinnacle of society. And to facilitate that, they must displace the dudes. And it’s no secret – that displacement, that consignment of men to second-class status, is not merely admitted but celebrated by our trash ruling class." Kurt Schlichter, August 10, 2023, Town Hall, "Angry Young Men Are Going To Disrupt The Garbage Paradigm"
Articles/Writings We Think Are A Must Read
Who Will Say No More to the Current Madness?
Once again, Victor Davis Hanson has nailed it. In his article there is a list of the most egregious crimes and failings of the Left and this Administration. Stronly urge readers to read the whole article. Here’s an excerpt of the most salient points:
“America is in existential danger.
The Biden administration has utterly destroyed the southern border — and immigration law with it.
Biden green lighted 7 million illegal aliens swarming into the U.S. without legal sanction or rudimentary audit.
China spies inside and over the U.S. with impunity. Beijing has never admitted to its responsibility for the gain-of-function COVID virus that killed a million Americans.
President Joe Biden printed $4 trillion at exactly the wrong time of soaring post-COVID consumer demand and supply shortages. No wonder he birthed the worst inflation in 40 years.
In response, interest rates tripled, gas prices doubled.
Our military is thousands of recruits short. It lacks sufficient munitions.
Following Biden’s humiliating pullout from Afghanistan, vast troves of arms were abandoned in Kabul. Billions more in scarce weapons were sent to Ukraine.
The Pentagon’s woke agenda trumps meritocracy in promotions and advancement.
Our enemies — Russia, China, Iran, North Korea — are on the move, while the U.S. seems listless.
The Biden renegade Department of Justice, CIA and FBI have become weaponized. Ideology, politics, and race — not the law — more often guide their investigations, intelligence operations and enforcement.
The downtowns of our once majestic major cities are becoming unlivable.
They are mired in refuse and trash, violent crime and homelessness. Stores and businesses leave. Millions each year flee the blue urban coasts to the red west and south.
To even say there are still two biological genders, that global warming may not be entirely manmade or necessarily destroying the planet, or that class, not race, is the proper barometer of inequality is to face ostracism and career cancellation.
The public assumes that Biden is severely cognitively challenged, likely corrupt, and a serial fabricator.
Most know what must be done, but few will tell the truth: Balance the budget. Return to legal only immigration. Restore a well-funded, but unwoke Pentagon.
Insist on racial unity. Curb the overweening administrative state. Enforce the rule of law.
Produce more gas and oil. Reestablish civic education. Insist universities protect free speech and due process — and stop proselytizing.
In other words, restore what until recently made America the strongest, most prosperous, and freest nation in the world. And quit undoing all the great good that eight generations of prior Americans bequeathed to us.”
Victor Davis Hanson saying it better than anyone. Perfectly describes the childish, impetuous behavior of the Left. A quick and incredibly accurate take on everything we see before our eyes.
An excerpt:
“Cry-baby tantrums won’t win over the public. These nonstop puerile meltdowns have turned off most Americans who tire of whiny narcissistic hypocrites.”
Strongly recommend the artful summary of what the Left is trying to do with the Disinformation Governance Board canard written by Michael Walsh in “The Pipeline”, May 2, 2022. You’ll find the whole article here. Some excerpts:
“So now the mask has dropped and, for the first time, the American people can see the modern Left in all its hateful, unadorned, vituperative, spiteful glory. Case in point: the announcement last week that the Department of Homeland Security—one of the excrescences of the Bush administration, cobbled together in its panic over 9/11—has created the “Disinformation Governance Board” in order to combat what it has, via its hitherto little-known Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, already dubbed “mis-, dis-, and mal-information.” Otherwise known as alternative points of view, but shut up, citizen.”
“Let us now remind ourselves of the late historian and Soviet scholar Robert Conquest’s third law of politics: “The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.” At this point in American history, that is not only a theory but a fact. Having narrowly “won” the 2020 election by stealing it fair and square, the Left is putting pedal to the metal to accomplish as much of its anti-foundational agenda as it can before the clock runs out on its tiny congressional majorities this fall.”
On the Subject of “Things happening in the background to purge the illicit Biden administration“
The article in American Thinker by Dr. Brian Joondeph entitled: “Nothing Can Stop What is Coming. What if Nothing is Coming?” lays out the case for the increasingly skeptical that anything is going to halt the Leftist Leviathan. Strongly recommend this article not to throw cold water on all the hope so many of us have of there being some justice on the horizon, but to lay out the stark possibility that it’s all wishful thinking and we’re stuck with what we’ve got at least until January 2023.
On Climate Change Fraud
One of the best debunking articles/videos I’ve seen recently on the revolting fraud being perpetrated by the climate alarmists. In very calm, easy to understand terms the author shows how graphs and picking the right starting point for data visualization is being used to create the narrative that they rely on for their funding, their power, their nefarious attempts to alter society and our world. This same manipulation occurs with ALL kinds of data and the Left is expert in obscuring truth, altering perception and brainwashing a lazy, non-thinking mass of sheep to believe what they want them to believe. Strongly recommend watching this…12 minutes long and a must see!
Featured Friends
Straight Line Logic
Robert Gore’s blog. I put Gore up there with Victor Davis Hanson, Jordan Peterson and Thomas Sowell. His theses are chock full of substance.
The Burning Platform
Unabashedly conspiracy-theory driven, but thoughtfully so and well-written. Makes one think, “could this really be what’s happening?”
