Apr 02 2022

A Long, Long Time Ago…

     …there was a company called Disney. Its products were aimed at American youth, typically below the age of puberty. The consistent quality and generally uplifting character of those products made it one of the most successful entertainment companies ever formed. Its founding genius, Walt Disney, was the icon of the company for the whole of his life.

     Walt Disney passed on to his reward in 1966. Part of his ethos remains, in bits and pieces, at the company he founded:

     If you roam the halls of the Imagineering department, you’ll encounter Mickey’s 10 Commandments, a distilling of storytelling wisdom that helps us stay on target when developing new projects.

  1. Know your audience—identify the prime audience of your attraction or show before you begin design.
  2. Wear your guests’ shoes—insist that your team members experience your creation just the way the guests do.
  3. Organize the flow of people and ideas—make sure there is a logic and sequence in your stories and in the way guests experience them.
  4. Create a wienie—create visual targets [wienies] that lead visitors clearly and logically through the experience you’ve built.
  5. Communicate with visual literacy—make good use of color, shape, form, texture—all the nonverbal ways of communication.
  6. Avoid overload; create turn-ons—resist the temptation to overload your audience with too much information and too many objects of interest.
  7. Tell one story at a time—stick to the storyline; good stories are clear, logical, and internally consistent.
  8. Avoid contradictions; maintain identity—details in design or content that contradict one another confuse the audience about story and time period.
  9. For every ounce of treatment, provide a ton of treat—you can educate people, but don’t tell them you’re doing it. Make it fun!
  10. Keep it up—everything has to work.

     These Commandments are complemented by Disney’s “Four Keys.” Every new cast member has these four keys drilled into them from day one: Safety, Courtesy, Show, and Efficiency. For over six decades, the Four Keys and Mickey’s 10 Commandments guided storytelling and experience-making in the Disney parks. These guiding principles have been in place, with only minor alterations, for roughly 65 years—nearly as long as the parks themselves have existed. They have helped a talented and dedicated team of Disney cast members tell stories that appeal across demographic, geographic, ethnic, religious, and political lines.

     However, things have changed. The Left, aware of the importance of capturing children’s minds at their most impressionable, made Disney a first-priority target. Appearances suggest that they’ve succeeded beyond their wildest dreams:

     During the month of February, much of the media’s reporting about [Florida’s Parents Rights In Education bill] was heavily negative. Vanity Fair flatly described it as “bigoted,” “dangerously anti-LGBTQ+ and hugely harmful to the young people it’s supposedly trying to protect.” This kind rhetoric continued to appear in the press for weeks, and was rapidly adopted by Democratic politicians, late night comedians, and social media influencers as their cause célèbre. Pressure began to build from activists within the company for Disney to take a public line and denounce the legislation, as a number of other companies had done….

     In less than two weeks’ time, the company had moved from principled neutrality to open advocacy. This new messaging, intended to mollify the company’s internal critics, accelerated Disney’s meltdown instead. “Brave Space Conversations” are now held at regular intervals—an absurd euphemism for struggle sessions designed to allow activists to vent their frustrations while drowning out dissenting voices. All regularly scheduled company meetings are cancelled to make room for these meetings, and park leadership opens the floor to hours-long performative recitations of grievances by hand-picked cast members. They conclude with grandiose statements about inclusion and fairness and understanding pain and listening, but not a single nonconforming viewpoint is heard, either from those who support the bill or those who think Disney has no business getting involved in this dispute in the first place.

     “At Disney,” the company’s website promises, “inclusion is for everyone. We reimagine tomorrow as our way of amplifying underrepresented voices and untold stories as well as championing the importance of accurate representation in media and entertainment.” But, as usual, “inclusion” only protects those who think like DEI activists. “Fairness” only applies to historically oppressed people groups. The only pain worth understanding is that felt by the subsection of LGBT cast members who believe that sex education ought to begin in kindergarten. Listening and seeing is restricted to the approved narratives, and even excludes those LGBT cast members who support the Florida legislation. I know many of them personally, and nearly without exception, they are all parents.

     The import of this is self-explanatory.

***

     This is what the Left does. It targets culturally critical institutions, infiltrates and colonizes them, and works from both within and without to capture and twist them to Leftist ends. It will do so for even the smallest of its coalition members, provided they can be “kept in the fold” politically. If some institution proves excessively resistant to capture, the object turns from colonization to destruction.

     The Left’s highest-value targets have nearly all been communications-related: educational institutions and media corporations, both in journalism and entertainment. Its successes have far outnumbered its failures, which gives impact to Robert Conquest’s Second Law of Politics: Any institution not explicitly right wing will sooner or later become left wing. And it is still on the march.

     The moral “should” be “obvious.” Do you seek to found an association, a company, a social circle, or some other institution? It doesn’t matter what your goals are. It doesn’t matter whether you can imagine that it could be turned to left-wing purposes. From the inception, you must institute a political filter that will apply to everyone that ever walks through your doors. Indeed, it should be posted on the doors:

No One On The Political Left
May Enter These Premises.

     Moreover, you must enforce it as ruthlessly as Tomas de Torquemada or Genghis Khan. Interrogate. Do background checks. Monitor social media! The Left does it; why shouldn’t you? Not only is it perfectly legal; you have no other way of shielding yourself against infiltration.

     Be fearless and resolute. Make no apologies and take no prisoners. For once a leftist gains access to your group, time will no longer be your ally.

     I have spoken.

Apr 02 2022

Celebrate Their Achievements! (UPDATED)

     I’ve come slowly but firmly to the conviction that, while our political class is generally vile, nevertheless its members display certain talents for which they should receive the credit due them. Some of those talents are demonstrably world-class. Consider, for example, the ability of the underappreciated Kamala Harris to speak at length, and entirely in English, without saying anything intelligible. Deb Heine presents a recent example:

     Harris met with the Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness at the White House on Wednesday to commemorate the 60th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the United States and Jamaica….

     In her remarks about the meeting with Holness, Harris offered the sort of absurd word salad she has become known for.

     “We also recognize just as it’s been in the United States, for Jamaica, one of the issues that has been presented as an issue, that is economic in the way of its impact, has been the pandemic,” Harris said. “So to that end, we are announcing today also that we will assist Jamaica in COVID recovery by assisting in terms of the recovery efforts in Jamaica that have been essential to what, I believe, is necessary to strengthen not only the issue of public health but also the economy.”

     C’est incroyable! Sixty-seven words, all of them recognizable English vocabulary, and in aggregate meaning absolutely nothing! She might as well have been speaking some wholly forgotten tongue. Sir Edward Grey is probably applauding vigorously in heaven.

     But that is merely a fresh example of the rhetorical genius of this modern-day Disraeli. Who could ever forget these stirring words:

     In an interview with Craig Melvin on the Today show, Harris was not prepared to say definitively whether we should be wearing N95 or KN95 masks instead of cloth, nor what the correct response might be to people who simply refuse to wear masks or get vaccinated, but she did deliver one illuminating gem about the nature of time. Melvin called attention to recent pleas from high-profile medical professionals urging the Biden administration to take both a longer view of the pandemic, rather than tackling it crisis by crisis, and a firmer stance on vaccine requirements. Is it time to change course? he asked. And, um:

     It is time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is every day. Every day, it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down.

     What verbal adroitness! What brilliance! Then there was this encounter on CBS:

     “Was it wrong to consider inflation transitory? These price spikes seem like they’re going to be with us for a while,” [Face The Nation’s Margaret] Brennan asked, referring to a previous statement pushed by White House press secretary Jen Psaki that insisted inflation was only “transitory” and should go down within the next year.

     Harris did not provide a clear answer and appeared to stumble on describing the process before pivoting to support for Biden’s Build Back Better plan.

     “We have to address the fact that we have got to deal with the fact that folks are paying for gas, paying for groceries, and are – need solutions to it. So let’s talk about that,” Harris said. “Short-term solution includes what we need to do around the supply chain, right? So, we went to the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Savannah, Georgia, and said, ‘Hey, guys, no more five days a week, eight hours a day; 24/7, let’s move the products because people need their product – they need what they need.’ We’re dealing with it in terms of the long term. And that’s about what we need to do to pass Build Back Better. It strengthens our economy.”

     Words fail me, Gentle Reader, though they certainly didn’t fail Kamala Harris. She had plenty for her purpose…whatever that purpose might have been.

     (I just checked, and Google Translate, which covers a multitude of languages, does not yet have the ability to translate Harris’s dialect. I’m sure they’re working on it, but I wouldn’t presume to predict when it will be ready.)

     Rumor has it that Joe Biden’s running mate was chosen to make him look more “presidential.” I disagree. It’s clear that Kamala Harris was picked so there would be someone to clarify the pResident’s sometimes murky statements on policy. After all, who could possibly do it better? Besides, the United States Senate already has quite enough clarity, wouldn’t you say?

     “Ridicule is the unanswerable weapon.” – Saul Alinsky

     UPDATE: Oops! I forgot one:

     The Governor and I and we were all doing a tour of the library here and talking about the significance of the passage of time. Right? The significance of the passage of time. So, when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time in terms of what we need to do to lay these wires, what we need to do to create these jobs. And there is such great significance to the passage of time…

     That might be the best of them all.

Apr 01 2022

Life Has Been Eventful

Mostly good, but sometimes stressful.

My dog has recovered. He is elderly, though, and likely won’t live for more than 3-5 years more. He is, however, a wonderful addition to my life. He gives me a reason to get up in the morning (something that I’m not always thrilled with – temps in Lorain, OH can be frigid in the winter). He reminds me to get up from working and walk around for a while.

He reminds me of how important it is to have someone who is completely delighted that I am home. He is always up for a cuddle after dinner.

I’m deep in Tax Territory. Working on getting ready for 2021, and wishing that the damned Flat Tax had been passed. Perhaps some leeway for larger businesses that want to deduct the costs, but – honestly – most businesses would do better with a straight Flat Tax.

Of course, it would put a lot of accountants out of business. You might still need someone to manage your income statements and cash flow accounting. For those businesses on the stock market, other financial statements would be necessary. But, mostly, it would put the emphasis of business on actual BUSINESS.

Now, for the foreign corporations (including those that are reputably American, but mostly assembled in the USA from foreign parts), a simple tax on imports would suffice. They would pay the flat tax in addition. We could structure the business taxes in two tiers – one for larger businesses (particularly the multinationals and interstate ones), and a lesser tax for the smaller businesses.

The Chamber of Commerce and other business organizations, along with the larger corporate companies, would have a shit-fit. (Yes, I think the stronger language is appropriate – they would be ENRAGED!)

I put together a post on Right As Usual – The Next Generation that was a mish-mash of miscellany.

Now, it’s back to work.

Apr 01 2022

From The Hollow-Laugh Files

     Legislators continue to ignore a law they greatly dislike. They dislike it because they can’t think of a way to repeal or modify it. But ignoring it is a short cut to disaster. Among other things, it makes plain the fatuity of their pretensions:

     Democrats’ environmental activism continues to backfire, as evidenced by the massive spike in consumer purchases of plastic bags in California, which banned supermarkets from using carryout plastic bags to package customers’ groceries.

     Researchers at the University of Georgia found that while the plastic-bag ban may have been well-intentioned, it did not stem the use of plastic bags. In fact, it unintentionally fueled enormous sales of commercial trash bags.

     “That’s because while plastic grocery bags are viewed as a single-use item, they often find a second use as liners for small trash cans,” Science Daily reported Wednesday.

     “When these shopping bags are taxed or taken away, people look for alternatives — which means they buy small plastic garbage bags.”

     The increase in sales of trash bags following California’s store plastic-bag ban was staggering.

     Amazing! Recycling and reuse motivated by ordinary household needs and incentives! Legislatively interfered with to ill effect! Who could have imagined?

     But this is the story of all legislative interventions into the preferences and behavior of private citizens. The Law of Unintended Consequences dismisses the legislators’ intentions; it acts directly on the incentives they’ve attempted to modify or thwart. Have a little Herbert Spencer:

     There appears no suspicion that in cases where it seems to fail, natural causation has been traversed by artificial hindrances. And yet in the case to which I now refer—that of the supply of houses for the poor—it needs but to ask what laws have been doing for a long time past, to see that the terrible evils complained of are mostly law-made. A generation ago discussion was taking place concerning the inadequacy and badness of industrial dwellings, and I had occasion to deal with the question. Here is a passage then written:

     An architect and surveyor described it [the Building Act] as having worked after the following manner. In those districts of London consisting of inferior houses built in that unsubstantial fashion which the new Building Act was to mend, there obtains an average rent, sufficiently remunerative to landlords whose houses were run up economically before the New Building Act passed. This existing average rent fixes the rent that must be charged in these districts for new houses of the same accommodation—that is the same number of rooms, for the people they are built for do not appreciate the extra safety of living within walls strengthened with hoop-iron bond. Now it turns out upon trial, that houses built in accordance with the present regulations, and let at this established rate, bring in nothing like a reasonable return. Builders have consequently confined themselves to erecting houses in better districts (where the possibility of a profitable competition with pre-existing houses shows that those pre-existing houses were tolerably substantial), and have ceased to erect dwellings for the masses, except in the suburbs where no pressing sanitary evils exist. Meanwhile, in the inferior districts above described, has resulted an increase of overcrowding—half-a-dozen families in a house, a score lodgers to a room. Nay, more than this has resulted. That state of miserable dilapidation into which these abodes of the poor are allowed to fall, is due to the absence of competition from new houses. Landlords do not find their tenants tempted away by the offer of better accommodation. Repairs, being unnecessary for securing the largest amount of profit, are not made. … In fact for a large percentage of the very horrors which our sanitary agitators are trying to cure by law, we have to thank previous agitators of the same school!—Social Statics, p. 384 (edition of 1851)….

     Writing before the repeal of the brick duty, the Builder says: “It is supposed that one-fourth of the cost of a dwelling which lets for 2s. 6d. or 3s. a week is caused by the expense of the title-deeds and the tax on wood and bricks used in its construction. Of course, the owner of such property must be remunerated, and he therefore charges 71/2d. or 9d. a week to cover these burdens.” Mr. C. Gatliff, secretary to the Society for Improving the Dwellings of the Working Classes, describing the effect of the window-tax, says: “They are now paying upon their institution in St. Pancras the sum of £162 16s. in window-duties, or 1 per cent per annum upon the original outlay. The average rental paid by the Society’s tenants is 5s. 6d. per week, and the window-duty deducts from this 71/4d. per week.”—The Times, 31 January 1850.—Social Statics, p. 385 (edition of 1851).

     See then what legislation has done. By ill-imposed taxes, raising the prices of bricks and timber, it added to the costs of houses; and promoted, for economy’s sake, the use of bad materials in scanty quantities. To check the consequent production of wretched dwellings, it established regulations which, in mediaeval fashion, dictated the quality of the commodity produced: there being no perception that by insisting on a higher quality and therefore higher price, it would limit the demand and eventually diminish the supply. By additional local burdens, legislation has of late still further hindered the building of small houses. Finally, having, by successive measures, produced first bad houses and then a deficiency of better ones, it has at length provided for the artificially-increased overflow of poor people by diminishing the house-capacity which already could not contain them!

     Spencer wrote all that in the Nineteenth Century / Victorian Era in which he lived. It was plain then, just as it is now, that laws that attempt to constrain people’s private choices cannot change anyone’s needs, desires, or priorities. The law can only attempt to penalize them, but to what effect? Yet legislators keep on trying to intervene in such matters, nearly always to disastrous effect.

     I’m sure my Gentle Readers can come up with a million examples of such “well meant” interventions in our own nation and time. I propose that the time has come for us no longer to grant the intervening legislators and regulators the presumption of benevolence.

Apr 01 2022

The Liability In The White House

     Concerning the recent concessions from the Usurper Regime’s media handmaidens about the legitimacy of the Hunter Biden laptop, people of all political leanings are asking “Why now?” After a year and a half of nonstop denials, deflections, and dissimulations, why are they ‘fessing up’ now? The questions and speculations are widespread. For example, consider this Robert Spencer article:

     After stories of Hunter Biden, his laptop from hell, and his massive web of shady dealings were ignored until Old Joe Biden was safely installed as pseudo-president of the United States and long after that as well, suddenly the Hunter Biden stories are everywhere. And so it must be asked: why now? Why has the establishment media, which has long been definitively established as a propaganda arm of the Democrat Party, suddenly decided that Hunter Biden actually exists after all, and is a very, very big problem?

     From the headlines we’re seeing these days, it’s as if Steve Bannon has taken over all the major media outlets. The New York Times started the ball rolling with a March 16 story in which the Gray Lady actually admitted the existence of Hunter’s laptop. That just opened the floodgates: “Inside Hunter Biden’s multimillion-dollar deals with a Chinese energy company,” was an actual Washington Post headline Wednesday. On the same day, Hunter’s dirty dealings made CBS News and, of all places, MSNBC.

     As my Gentle Readers might imagine, I have my own take on it.

“It’s not what you know; it’s who you know.” — Old maxim.
“It’s not who you know, it’s what you’ve got on ‘em.” — mystery writer Lawrence Block.

     Joe Biden, the first openly “installed not elected” president of these United States, was selected for his “electability.” That is, in the eyes of the Democrat Party’s strategists, his political appeal was deemed adequate, and his negatives weren’t openly disqualifying. They could deal effectively enough with his history of plagiarism, deceit, and self-aggrandizement. They could fan-dance around his racism and his less dramatic public missteps. All the other aspirants were deemed too dangerous, or lacking credibility for what the Democrats had planned: the theft of the White House by any means necessary. So they chose him as the front man for the November 2020 electoral coup.

     But Barack Obama warned them in no uncertain terms: “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up.” So the party’s bigwigs made sure that they would retain a means for getting rid of Biden. They probably tried to impress upon him that his tenure in the Oval Office would depend upon “good behavior.” Plainly, his behavior hasn’t been good enough. So that means — the evidence of Biden family corruption that reaches all the way to the top — has been pulled out, dusted off, and handed to the Democrats’ handmaidens in the media. The laptop is the central element in that array.

     This behavior is characteristic of oligarchical Establishments: No one, however highly placed, is permitted to be immune to control. The Soviets learned that lesson from their experiences with two autocrats who proved to be beyond control: Stalin and Brezhnev. The first experience shook them. The second convinced them that no Party Secretary or Premier must ever again be allowed free rein. All must be subject to some sort of kill switch. (Whether such a mechanism is being held over the head of Vladimir Putin is unclear, but then, the Russian “republic” is a relatively new development – completely new to Russia.)

     Biden was useful; now he’s a liability. And once the Democrats’ strategists figure out how to deal with the looming debacle of Kamala Harris, they will remove him from the White House. The end in view is plain; all that remains undetermined is the means.

     Surely we can expect a flood of exculpations from other major Democrat figures who’ve supported Biden. No one will want to be tarred with the brush of an aborted Democrat presidency. It will all be lies. But then, lying with aplomb is a skill long cultivated and meticulously polished by the Democrats.

Mar 31 2022

Credible Versus Conclusive

     Once in a great while, a mainstream media outlet “’fesses up.” That happened once with the New York Times, whose first “public editor” – a rough equivalent for “ombudsman” – Daniel Okrent admitted in print that the Times was a left-leaning organ. He attributed it to the Times’ Northeastern urban base…but he admitted it. He wasn’t around for long after that.

     It’s not common, but it happens. It’s a bit startling when the editors of a hard-left paper allow it. Which is what makes this piece from Megan McArdle about the Hunter Biden laptop newsworthy:

     Case in point is a story that ran in the New York Post in October 2020. The newspaper claimed to have been given access to a trove of Hunter Biden’s emails, from a laptop somewhat mysteriously abandoned at a Delaware repair shop. Among other things, those emails suggested Hunter Biden had possibly been trying to peddle his father’s influence during Joe Biden’s vice presidency.

     An election was looming, and of course conservative media leaped on the “incriminating” trove. Here on Earth Prime, the information gatekeepers scrambled to keep this story from polluting the mainstream’s pristine infoscape, condemning the story as Russian disinformation, pure distraction, so dubious that even the New York Post’s own reporters were skeptical.

     Twitter blocked the story, citing its policy barring “hacked materials,” then suspended the New York Post’s account for sharing it. Facebook allowed sharing but downranked the story in the news feed algorithms.

     That’s a whole lot of effort to suppress a story that seems to be … true? The New York Times reported March 16 that the emails are part of the evidence in a federal investigation now before a grand jury.

     One week into the “Oops, it was real” news cycle, I have now heard all the excuses as to why this actually is an instance of journalism and tech moderation working like they should. It was unverified, I’ve heard. Too close to an election. And even if the emails were real, they may have been obtained illegally — can’t have that!

     All of which might sound very reasonable if only my profession had displayed the same caution with stories that made conservatives look bad.

     AWWW! Poor Megan! That must have hurt to write. But this is the Washington Post, which means that even the admission of a grotesque journalistic failure has to come with a slap against the Right:

     As social psychologist Jonathan Haidt puts it, the difference in mainstream reporting is the difference between can and must. When it comes to stories that flatter Democrats, we often ask “Can I believe it?” If it’s not obviously false, we do. But if the story flatters the right, we are more likely to ask “Must I believe it?” If we can find any reason to disbelieve, we take it — and keep the story off our pages.

     The obvious retort is that the same thing is happening on the right, only more so. And indeed, some right-wing media have gone much further with crazy election conspiracies than any mainstream outlet ever did with Russophobia. But pointing that out doesn’t do a thing to solve the problem.

     “Crazy election conspiracies,” eh? I wonder how long it will be before Megan finds herself needing to walk that back. From the mountains of evidence already amassed, I’d say she’d better keep her contrition muscles limber.

***

     All that having been said, the “Can I believe it?” / “Must I believe it?” divide noted in the above deserves further thought. It goes to the distinction expressed by the title of this piece. While its epistemological significance is considerable, the import of its use as a justification for censorship is even greater.

     Religions generally stand or fall on their credibility. “Is what this creed asks me to believe within the realm of the possible?” That’s what makes miracles – seeming violations of the laws of nature – a sticking point for the skeptic. But a miracle multiply witnessed, recorded, and confirmed raises the stakes.

     Credibility is the foundation for the excellent recent movie The Case For Christ, which chronicles reporter Lee Strobel’s attempt to disprove the greatest miracle in all of history: the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Strobel, upset by his wife Leslie’s conversion to Christianity, did everything he could think of to establish a case for disbelieving in the Resurrection – possibly even to prove that it had not happened. He couldn’t do it, which led to his own conversion. Yet let it be said explicitly and without hedging: It is not possible to prove, in a rigorous sense, that the Resurrection did happen. The “Must I believe it?” criterion cannot be met by this assertion of historical fact.

     Concerning assertions about current events and the decisions of those who confront them, a third factor enters the room: “Do I want to believe it?” This can be a scale-tipper, as the McArdle column indicates. Many explanations for developments that are dismissed by large majorities at one point are later substantiated well enough to reach the “Must I believe it?” threshold. That’s going on today with the allegations that the 2020 presidential election was stolen through vote fraud. The mainstream media’s handling of the Hunter Biden laptop indicates how heavily on the scale the desire to disbelieve can weigh.

     “We believe easily what we fear or what we desire,” said La Fontaine. And it is so. But belief is an internal matter, more often determined by factors entirely personal to the believer / disbeliever than with credibility or evidence. If I may use a dispreferred word, it should not factor into decisions about whether to discuss a given proposition. It certainly should not be used as a justification for censorship of any sort.

     But until the Second Coming, media organs will do as they have done. Their editors’ preferences will factor significantly into decisions about what to cover, what weight to give the purported evidence, and how to frame their coverage. There’s no help for it except a degree of counter-censorship that no decent American would countenance. In this lies one of the great dilemmas of our time – and an irony of personal significance, as I very much want to disbelieve it myself.

Mar 31 2022

Start here.

Here’s the real story: Russia’s invasion is the end result of 14 years of provocation by the West, including repeated declarations that Ukraine will join NATO and a U.S.-backed coup d’état in 2014 that displaced a pro-Russian president.

“Rickards: I’ve Never Heard So Many Lies.” By James Rickards, ZeroHedge, 3/31/22 (emphasis removed).

Mar 30 2022

Too Plain To Permit Being Said

     I’m sure my Gentle Readers are all aware of the New York Times’s rather self-serving front-page motto: All the News That’s Fit to Print. There have been some send-ups of that bit of journalistic pseudo-piety. In these latter days of the legacy media, now that they’ve openly embraced the role of information managers for members of the Establishment, such pretenses have become more ironic than anything else.

     Consider these recent articles and events:

     Each of those stories pulls the covers off something the Establishment would greatly prefer that you not be aware of, much less introduce to active discussion. I’m sure the readership of Liberty’s Torch needs no deep explication of them from me. The point is too clear to need any such thing: These are things we are not supposed to discuss.

     Some of them point to frauds being perpetrated on us. One fraud has lasted for a whole century. All of them imply Establishmentarian agendas and methods for acquiring, retaining, or increasing elite control of American life. What coverage of them has appeared in the “major” media? I haven’t seen any, but then, I strive not to patronize those who seek to program me.

     Meanwhile the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are saddled and ready to ride:

  • War in Eastern Europe, with potential NATO involvement;
  • Food shortages are imminent, owing to fertilizer unavailability;
  • U.S. funded biolabs in Ukraine that possess “dangerous” substances;
  • Prospect of death by freezing as heating oil becomes ever more expensive.

     People have been wondering “Are these the End Times of the Book of Revelation?” for awhile now. I must say that from the above perspective, it’s not looking good.

***

     I’m very tired. I’ve been blogging at one site or another since 1997. Twenty-five years of writing about this crap has left me wondering whether there’s a point to any of it. It’s getting steadily more difficult to soldier on.

     I’d be unsurprised to learn that the majority of my colleagues in this pastime are just as tired. As for those Americans who consume our output: How do you feel about the state of play? Are you beginning to think your time might be better spent packing your basement with canned goods and ammunition?

     Oh, don’t mind me. What am I? Just an old crank, after all. I have no greater power to predict the future than any other man…but some predictions are so short-range that the possibility that they’re wrong seems below the threshold of plausibility:

John Anderton: Why’d you catch that?
Danny Witwer: Because it was going to fall.
John Anderton: You’re certain?
Danny Witwer: Yeah.
John Anderton: But it didn’t fall. You caught it. The fact that you prevented it from happening doesn’t change the fact that it was *going* to happen.

     The predictions:

  • that our currency will continue to be drained of its value;
  • that the Death Cults will continue to campaign against the right to life;
  • that nations – including ours – will continue to develop plague weapons;
  • and that as the price of necessities rises, the poorest among us will die of it;

     …are so short-range, and so well supported by the evidence of history, that to bet against them would be the act of a fool.

     But we’re being systematically deflected from discussing those predictions. The Establishment doesn’t want such things in the public discourse. If you can be silenced, you will be silenced. This too is well supported by the evidence of history. Too many rice bowls could get overturned to respect your “freedom of speech.” It’s a matter of national security!

     With that, I believe it’s time to take my dog Sophie to the vet. Forget all the above. If you can’t, perhaps you should “keep it under your hat.” And do have a nice day.

Mar 29 2022

Ramblin’

     It’s the 29th of March, I’ve just bought a tankful of oil to stave off indoor frostbite, and I’m feeling…scattered. (Yes, a little broke, too.) So this will be a scattered piece.

     Tuesdays are to your Curmudgeon as Thursdays are to Arthur Dent.

***

     First, have a passel of links:

     Enjoy or not, as your preferences incline you.

     (Say, how many are there in a passel?)

***

     Change is constant, or so they say. Not long ago, that was brought home to me in a personally striking way.

     A church, as I’ve written before, is supposed to be a fundamentally conservative institution. It’s supposed to have a base of doctrines that it maintains over time and promulgates to a slowly changing – hopefully enlarging – body of adherents. That requirement to keep its teachings constant despite pressures to change them is one of the things that collectively distinguish churches from other sorts of institutions.

     Today, it’s getting to be hard to tell a Christian church apart from a marketing organization, at least here in America. (My acquaintance with trends on other continents is slender.)

     The Catholic Church has been an exception in many ways. Mind you, for the purposes of this tirade, it doesn’t matter that I differ with my Church on some issues. Catholic teaching has been largely constant for two millennia. For a creed that claims the backing of the highest of all Authorities, that is as it should be.

     But recently, things started to change.

     I was conversing with a priest a little time ago about matters the specifics of which I can no longer remember, when he said something that blew me out of my seat. In an almost offhanded way, he said that the Church’s doctrines about salvation, surely among the most important of its teachings, are moving away from the traditional emphasis on mortal sin, repentance, and absolution. According to this priest, the Church is moving toward a doctrine of salvation that focuses on how well each of us has followed the two Great Commandments:

     But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
     Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

     [Matthew 22: 34-40]

     That stunned me beyond my ability to express. (Not that I have any problem with the two Great Commandments!) I didn’t argue the matter; I was too shaken. But it’s left me wondering whether that really is what’s being promulgated from the Vatican in this Year of Our Lord 2022. Does any Gentle Reader have something to contribute on this subject?

***

     Now, a few words about indie fiction. The Gospel According To Michael Anderle has taken hold among hundreds, perhaps thousands of aspiring fiction writers. That gentleman has exhorted those who listen to him to emphasize output: i.e., to turn out books as fast as possible, so that they acquire a significant body of work in which those who like their stuff can wallow. “Keep the pipeline filled” is how others have phrased this dictum.

     While it might not be obvious, an emphasis on rapid production conflicts with the goal of a high-quality product. This is the case regardless of the nature of the product; fiction is no exception. He who writes swiftly is likely to generate lots of errors of every sort, including plot burps, poor and inconsistent characterization, and unconvincing dialogue. His reputation won’t be immune to that blemish, regardless of how loyal his fans might be.

     I’ll admit that there are some exceptions to this effect. A writer I’ve been enjoying recently is among them. He makes a fair number of mistakes, but somehow his tales don’t suffer appreciably from them. But the dynamics are opposed to a rapid-output-with-high-quality product.

     Supposedly, the “keep the pipeline filled” approach has salutary effects on revenue. I suppose that if that’s your highest priority, you can’t be criticized for adhering to that approach. But I’ve been sampling and discarding an increasing fraction of the indie novels I encounter, for reasons of quality. And while I’m no better at predicting the future than any other writer, I can’t help but wonder what fraction of the pump-‘em-out community will ultimately be happy with the long-term consequences of the “Output Uber Alles” approach.

***

     Finally, a few words about my own fictional directions.

     After the release of The Discovery Phase, a friend asked me about my recent forays into romance. He wanted to know what had impelled me in that direction. I had no answer for him, other than that I had a few attractive Supporting Cast characters sitting around who seemed to me to deserve some love. He smirked rather dourly and said “How large is that fund of characters?” That made me wince. This gentleman has been pressing me to get to work on a sequel to The Warm Lands, so it was fairly easy to divine his preferences. (And his dispreferences)

     As it happens, I’ve been working on a quasi-time-travel story. If that surprises you, it damn near paralyzed me to realize that that was what I’d set out to write. I hate time-travel tales. There are very few good ones – good by my criteria, which include not only originality but logical / metaphysical consistency. Only two come to mind as I write this: Alfred Bester’s short story “The Men Who Murdered Mohammed” and the great Gregory Benford’s award-winner Timescape.

     But that’s what I’m writing…and no, it doesn’t take place in Onteora County. For this one, I’ve decided to invade Stephen King’s bailiwick and situate the action in the woods of Maine.

     It’s premature to say much more about this story. It looks as if it will bear some resemblance to a “classic” novel (viz: “A book everyone wants to have read, but no one wants to read”) that was once part of my high school American Literature curriculum. That, too, surprised me. But then, the specifics of the core motif seem to militate in that direction.

     I mentioned some of this to the C.S.O. just yesterday. She was other than pleased for two reasons. First, she too wants me to get to work on a sequel to The Warm Lands. Second, I mentioned the “classic” novel I had in mind and she immediately scroaned. (That’s a scream and a groan together, with intense feeling.) She remembered it much as I did: both the effulgent praise our instructors slathered on it and our shared inability to imagine what supposedly made it so great.

     Well, “Of tastes there is nothing written,” as the Talmud says somewhat self-contradictingly.

***

     That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. Enjoy your Tuesday.

Mar 28 2022

Unrealized Income?

     I won’t speak for anyone else, but when I call a development “unrealized,” I know what I mean by it: it hasn’t happened yet. And of course, something that hasn’t happened might never happen. So what shall we say, Gentle Readers, about this resurrected notion of unrealized income?

     Many billionaires can pay far lower tax rates than average Americans because the federal government does not tax the increase in the value of their stock holdings until those assets are sold. Billionaires are able to borrow against their accumulated gains without triggering taxes on capital gains, enabling huge accumulations of wealth to go virtually untaxed by the federal government.

     Plainly, the Washington Post’s Jeff Stein approves of taxing that “unrealized income.” He treats it as a real thing: spendable money already in the hands of its “owner.” So why not clip off a nice chunk for the federal government, eh?

     (Remember when, during the Clinton Administration, it was proposed to tax homeowners on the “unpaid rent” they saved by owning a house? Wasn’t that clever? I wonder why Congress didn’t pass it.)

     Mind you, nowhere in this tax proposal does it say that the federal government would refund that tax bite should the value of those stock holdings subsequently decrease. Governments simply don’t do that. Frankly, it’s a miracle that the IRS still issues tax refunds to those who over-withhold. You’d think that by now they’d have changed the tax code to include a “Sorry! Your mistake!” provision that allows Washington to keep the money.

     These are the fruits of allowing a government to decide what portion of what you have is yours to keep.

***

     Back when the Republic was in its birth pangs, it was understood by the Founders and those closest to them that while the nascent government did need revenue, it must not be able to take whatever it wishes. After all, the Revolution was triggered by the British Parliament’s imposition of taxes on the colonies. And so the Founders made it difficult to impose direct taxes:

     The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; [Article I, Section 8, first clause; emphasis added]

     The requirement that those things be uniform means that they must apply strictly and equally to all those persons, institutions, or activities they affect. The state governments could object Constitutionally to a tax bill that affected them non-uniformly: i.e., without regard to their populations. That made indirect taxes – taxes solely on transactions the citizen could avoid – the preferred method for raising federal revenue.

     The Sixteenth (Income Tax) Amendment removed the impediment to direct taxation:

     The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

     That allows Congress to impose non-uniform taxes – and the income tax is decidedly non-uniform. No two persons in these United States face the same tax burden. Thus we entered the magical realm of ability to pay.

     In no other sphere of human conduct is “ability to pay” a consideration for determining the price of a good or service. Only the “goods and services” provided to us by governments are priced that way. Nor is there any objective definition of “ability to pay.” The IRS decides such things, not the taxpayer.

     Imagine if your corner grocer or pharmacist were to price your food or medicines according to your “ability to pay.” Imagine further if that gentleman were to demand that you expose the entirety of your financial affairs to him, so that he could determine what you “owe” him for you carrots or blood pressure drugs. Would you be happy with that, Gentle Reader?

     I shall twist the knife gently by asking: Does any government with the power to tax you provide you with anything that’s worth as much to you as those carrots or those drugs? Think about it

***

     The proposers of the “unrealized income” gambit are saying, de facto: “Of course you have the ability to pay! Just sell your stock!”

     The claim that Smith could sell his million shares of Galactic Hotcake, currently “priced” by the New York Stock Exchange at $100 per share, at will for $100 million is perhaps the most ludicrous of all Congressional fictions. Smith must find a buyer or buyers. What if there aren’t any? What if the sale of the first ten thousand shares causes the price of the stock to decline? That’s typical stock-market behavior: “Smith is dumping his shares! Sell before the run starts!” That’s usually the start of a stock collapse…sometimes a general market collapse.

     Besides, that’s not the endpoint; it’s only the beginning! Let’s imagine that Smith does succeed in selling 200,000 shares at $100, thus raising the $20 million he needs to pay the IRS. That leaves him with 800,000 shares, which will be taxed the following season. That would force him to sell another 160,000 shares to raise the payment, leaving him with 480,000 shares to be taxed the season after that. And so forth, until Smith has been mulcted of most, if not all, of his holdings.

     If you plan to tell me that pResident Biden is a “capitalist,” you’d better keep your hands where I can see them.

***

     Finally for this tirade, we have a hearkening back to 1913, during debate over the Sixteenth Amendment in the United States Senate:

     When the Sixteenth Amendment was being debated on the floor of the Senate, one of its opponents rose to ask the body what it could say to reassure the American public that this tax would not rise to seize some unconscionable fraction of their earnings — perhaps as much as ten percent! A pro-income-tax senator rose and replied that the country need never fear such a development: “The people would never allow it!”

     Another fine example arises from Social Security, which Franklin D. Roosevelt pitched as a “supplement” to the resources of American retirees. At its inception, Social Security promised to take no more than $7.50 per month from a worker’s paycheck. Today the limit is over $550.00 per month, and for many wage earners is the largest single tax they pay. To add insult to injury, the Supreme Court has ruled that no matter how large his payments to the Social Security system, no man has a right to any payments from it.

     Look at any of the political bonds that have been fastened upon us: labor law, environmental law, firearms control laws, laws that infringe upon property rights, what have you. In nearly every case you’ll find that the original collar was gently applied and loosely fastened. It simply didn’t stay that way.

     The term most commonly applied to such a slow, steady tightening of the screws is gradualism. Gradualism uses the power of habituation — the ordinary human tendency to accommodate and adjust to conditions we can’t individually alter — to solidify its gains and prevent retrograde motion. In her landmark book The God Of The Machine, Isabel Paterson referred to it as political power’s “ratchet action.”

     We have habituated ourselves to all manner of fetters. They were applied with such delicacy, and tightened so slowly and smoothly, that many of us cannot imagine life without them. Yet at any instant in the process, it was still possible to rear up against it. Despite appearances, it remains possible today. We simply haven’t done so, nor is it likely that we will.

     Hollow laughs are allowed, Gentle Reader. Indeed, considering what has been fastened upon us since those days of yore, they’re required for one’s mental health. And given that the $100 million “lower bound” of this “unrealized income” tax is legislative and arbitrary, what should we assume about its persistence? Isn’t it highly likely to be moved – downward — as Congress discovers new “needs?”

     That’s the way I’d bet. Moreover, the current proposal does not exempt equity holdings in 401(k) and IRA accounts. You can work out the rest for yourself.

***

     It has been said, mainly if not exclusively on bumper stickers, that “The Founding Fathers would be shooting by now.” Indeed! They’d be stacking bodies like cordwood. That we’ve done absolutely nothing beyond a couple of impotent protests suggests rather strongly that our will to resist governmental depredations has dropped all the way to zero. We are placidly grazing sheep, awaiting our moment to be shorn.

     Let him save himself who can.

Mar 28 2022

Winner! Winner! Chicken Dinner!

     This definitely wins the Internet for today:

     I’m going to go out on a limb and say that global nuclear fallout is slightly worse for the environment than drilling our own oil.

     (A comment to this Daily Wire piece about Biden and the looming importance of the 25th Amendment.)

Mar 27 2022

Sex As Strategy And Tactics

     It goes essentially without saying that sex, owing to our nature, is a principal attractor. However, the reverse of the coin is seldom discussed: it’s also a principal distractor. Clever sorts can use sex or parasexual matters to distract target audiences from what ought to be get their greatest attention, just as a stage magician uses physical flourishes to distract his audience from the setup for his next trick.

     A refinement on that strategy uses blatant sexual behavior to induce a kind of shock in the audience: shock sufficient to paralyze (or numb) them, such that they fail to react to associated developments that, in other contexts, would draw not merely their attention but their outrage. This tactic can thwart the enforcement of public norms, including the norms of justice.

     The Left has employed that method against normal Americans for some time now. This article provides an example.

     I’m not going to quote from that article; you can read it if you like. Here are some observations from Miriam “Mockarena” Weaver, co-founder of Chicks on the Right:

     It’s all about photographer Evan James Benally Atwood, who is a “queer, Indigenous artist.”

     I’ll let you take a moment to peruse the self-portraits of Evan at the sourcelink. Warning: His assular area is hairy and he wants you to know it.

     The Vice column is essentially a gushing puff piece on Evan, whose work is described as the undoing of “certain effects of colonialism – the desecration of stolen land, the imposition of a gender binary.” Evan’s photography, the article says, is a form of “visual sovereignty.”

     Is that what you think when you look at his work? Because what I think is that Evan reeeeeeally wants us all to see his ass.

     The Vice article leads off with Atwood’s sexuality. Why? What possible difference does it make to his subject matter? I can’t see it. But including – nay, emphasizing Atwood’s sexual variation provides the Left with a cudgel: If you find his opinions about “colonialism” to be stupid or vile, the Left will simply condemn you as one who hates fudge-packers.

     Let’s pass in silence over Atwood’s hairy ass…no, wait: we shouldn’t. The depictions thereof, which are even less relevant than his “queerness” to his notions about “colonialism,” are an example of the shock tactic mentioned above. The point is to shock and dismay anyone who might take exception to his aggressive anti-Americanism. It would work on a large fraction of Americans…possibly a majority.

     First the Left shocks us with sex and sexually related behavior. Then it mocks us for being shocked. If we persist in protesting, it labels us “haters” and says we just want to persecute those poor, misunderstood, harmless meat smokers and carpet munchers. The pattern is quite reliable.

     Nearly every normal person understands that sex should be a private matter – that parading sex and parasexual behavior in public is socially destructive. By flaunting it, the Left implicitly proclaims itself socially and legally privileged. By inducing us to accept bizarre public sexual caperings in silence, it performs the most important stage in any campaign to subjugate a people: it humiliates us with our own cowardice.

     Theodore Dalrymple noted that Communist regimes induce submission in their victim populaces by compelling them to repeat lies. No one can retain any respect for himself once he obediently parrots a blatant lie. It’s a quick and effective way to break a man’s self-regard. Indeed, we’ve known it since Orwell published 1984, if not well before that.

     The blatant lie that perverts and pedophiles promulgate by parading their perversions in public – “We’re just like everyone else” — is cover for their political agenda. (“Everyone else” does not proclaim their sexual orientations in their Twitter profiles, or flaunt their naked bodies or their sexual preferences in the streets.) The “sexual Left” is almost entirely on the political Left. Their “haters” gambit is an underhanded way of saying “Tolerate what we do to you, or we’ll make your life hell with accusations and depredations of every imaginable kind.”

     This is very much in the Communist tradition. Indeed, it goes beyond what the Soviets did. They never actually convinced the majority of the USSR’s populace that “the Jews” were conspirators out to enslave them. It was all too clear that the Communists had done that already.

     Imagine public propriety restored: sexual behavior and proclivities removed from public view and returned to the privacy they deserve. Never again to hear whining homosexuals demand to know why they’re unwelcome in a Saint Patrick’s Day parade. Never again to endure a “Gay Pride” parade! (What are they proud of, anyway?) Never again to hear about some “photojournalist’s” preference for sodomy, or small boys, or mackerel! What would you say – or do – to achieve that result? Would it be worth some name-calling, some confrontation, perhaps even some public scuffles?

     Your mileage may vary.

Mar 27 2022

Snark Level: World Championship Contender

     This (found at 90 Miles From Tyranny)) requires no comment from me:

     I do find it “cute” and “heartwarming,” though. (Did Mommy Tank ever get Junior back on his treads?)

Mar 26 2022

What Is The Diminutive Of “Snark?”

     Occasionally, I experience a spike of irritation that briefly deflects my train of though onto a semi-humorous side track. I think that henceforward I’ll indulge myself at such times. Like just a moment ago.

     Here’s “how it goes” in this Year of Our Lord 2022;

Speaker 1: Why aren’t your pronouns in your profile?
Speaker 2: Oh, sorry. Just an unintended omission. They’re he / him / his.
Speaker 1: Thanks. I wouldn’t want to misgender you.
Speaker 2: I know how easy it can be.

     But here’s “how it went” only a few years ago:

Speaker 1: Why aren’t your pronouns in your profile?
Speaker 2: Because I don’t concern myself with the obsessions of lunatics.
Speaker 1: What? You don’t care if I –
Speaker 2: I’m simply leaving it to you. Trusting your eyesight and judgment. You decide how you’ll refer to me, and I’ll decide whether to punch you in the nose. Clear enough for you?

     After sober consideration, I think I prefer the earlier custom. Strangely enough, there were fewer bloody noses per capita back then. More than coincidence?

Mar 26 2022

The U.S. propaganda deluge.

In foreign relations, here we are today: the US is in a de facto but undeclared war with Russia. No one calls it that, but that’s what it amounts to when the US is providing armaments through intermediaries to the forces that Russia is battling on its border. This intensifies and escalates conflict, same as sanctions. The dangers right now are intense, on all fronts. It’s not clear that decision makers even understand what they are doing.

Or maybe they do. Since the end of the Cold War, the US military-industrial complex has been searching for a reliable enemy that the US population could hate, as a way to distract from the misdeeds of the political elite at home. After decades of cycling through them, it appears that the old enemy was the best enemy. And with a small turn of a dial, vast swaths of high-end opinion are exclusively focused on the terrible plight of Ukraine.[1]

See, Zelensky, the stiletto-heels-prancing, 21st-century apotheosis of Churchill (with an allergy to Ukrainian political parties), is the new standard bearer of what is laughingly referred to as liberal democracy or, in Nancy Peloisi’s shorthand, “our democracy.” And you better believe that assassin Putin is hell bent on reestablishing the Soviet Union and communism.

See war pigs Hannity and Levin for the state-of-the-art hysteria and distortion:

(Link to video in case the above doesn’t take you to the video: https://video.foxnews.com/v/6301535562001#sp=show-clips)

If you were looking for nuanced, objective, fair, historically-informed commentary on a deadly serious matter instead of vapid war piggery, well then that was just a complete waste of nine minutes of your life.

And for a glimpse of real tire-iron and broken-bottle message whoring (AKA “strategic communications”) be sure you don’t miss this article by Dan Cohen at MintPress News: “Ukraine’s Propaganda War: International PR Firms, DC Lobbyists and CIA Cutouts.” (H/t: South Front.)

Notes
[1] “How Seventy Years of Progress Came to an End.” By Jeffrey A. Tucker, Brownstone Institute, 3/11/22. See also Craig Murray for the U.S./U.K./NATO need for a Russian enemy: “[Then, post-1991, the] truth, of course, was that it had always been in the interest of MI6, the Defence Intelligence Service, the British armed forces, of their American counterparts, and of all their NATO counterparts, massively to exaggerate the strength of the Red Army. Because the greater the perceived enemy, the more we needed to throw money at MI6, the Defence Intelligence Service, the British armed forces, their American counterparts, and at all their NATO counterparts.”

Mar 25 2022

We Won’t Get A Clearer Warning

     Sorry, Gentle Readers, but time is up:

     Earlier today, the hapless president of the United States emerged from one of his NATO huddles to answer questions from the reporters he had been instructed to call upon, as per his SOP. One of them brought up the potential for food shortages, and Biden’s answer was serious bad-feeling-in-the-pit-of-your-stomach material:

     “With regard to food shortages, yes, we did [random sounds] talk about food shortages. And, uh, and it’s gonna be real. The price of these sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia, it’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well.”

     If the connection between Russian sanctions and food shortages isn’t clear, it arises from Russia’s decision to halt its exports of fertilizers: a counterstroke to the sanctions the U.S. and other nations are imposing on it. Russia is the world’s #1 exporter of fertilizers. Don’t feel bad about only just learning about that; I didn’t know it myself until a few weeks ago.

     How’s your pantry looking just now?

     Granted that shortages are anticipated and not immediate, nevertheless: if the Green Revolution that’s made food cheap and plentiful worldwide is to continue, the fertilizers and associated chemicals needed to produce food in large quantities must continue to be available. The food growth cycle in the Northern Hemisphere is entering its ramp-up…but whether there will be fertilizers enough has become questionable.

     Thinking of running to the supermarket? It’s not a bad idea. Moreover, now’s the time, before inflation and the proposed Global Digital Currency can leach the rest of the purchasing power out of your wallet.

     Don’t look to government to save you. Governments worldwide, including ours, have collaborated in bringing this situation about. They want still greater control of you; total control, if possible. The prospect of food shortages is a proven way to go for it. Ask the North Koreans or the Venezuelans.

     If you haven’t yet hunkered down, you’d bloody well better get to it in the few instants remaining:

  • Fill your pantry to bursting.
  • Get a freezer or two and fill them as well.
  • Are you armed? If so, do you have enough ammunition?
  • Make sure that your oil, gasoline, and propane tanks are full.
  • Make any anticipated clothing purchases now. Emphasize practicality.
  • After you’ve attended to all the above, buy gold, silver, and copper coins.

     If you think the above exhortations are panicky or hysterical, because “things will be back to normal real soon,” see your brain-care specialist as soon as possible. The Usurpers have control, a program in progress, and no trace of a conscience to impede them or it. Elections? Trusting in them has been proved foolish. And anyway, can you be confident that the Republicans would relinquish totalitarian power rather than use it for their own ends?

     Perhaps I shouldn’t repeat myself this much, but Keith Laumer’s observation (through the mouth of his perennial hero Retief) has much impact:

     “Most people are willing to give up their preconceptions, once they’ve had them tattooed on their heads with a blunt instrument.”

     Don’t be one of the tattooed. Verbum sat sapienti.

Mar 25 2022

Pearls of expression.

Me and Musk are on the same wavelength. Except for him being born in a different part of the world, growing up to create the largest online payment system and eventually create re-usable rockets that launch into space and land vertically while seeding the lower Earth orbit with satellites that decoupled the internet from the deep-state controlled infrastructure on the ground, all while being the richest man the planet has ever seen, we’re pretty much the same.

“Elon Musk Puts Out Tweet on THE “Big Tech” Kill-shot: Open-Source Their Algorithm.” By DC, Conservative Hardline, 3/24/22.

Mar 24 2022

The Sane And The Insane

     Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson pulled off quite a lot of masks yesterday with her non-answer to a single, putatively nonthreatening question posed by Senator Marsha Blackburn (R, TN):

Sen. Blackburn: Can you define the word “woman?”
Brown Jackson: I’m not a biologist.

     I’m sure my Gentle Readers, as engaged with current events as you are, are aware of that exchange. The time has come to explore its significances – plural, for there are several.

***

     I titled the third volume in my Futanari Saga in a provocative fashion: The Wise and the Mad. The provocation, as you would expect from me, was deliberate. I wanted readers to think about what distinguishes wise men from the unwise, and mad men from those we regard as sufficiently sane. I chose the title of this essay with a similar objective in mind.

     There’s a little epistemology, and the metaphysical foundation for it, coming up, so readers who have no patience with such things should stay braced.

     Epistemology is the study of what and how we learn. Knowledge is its touchstone. That which does not produce or destroy knowledge, or which does not facilitate or impede the acquisition of knowledge, is excluded from the subject. But to make use of the definition – i.e., to say “this is an epistemological proposition, but that is not” – we must understand and agree on what constitutes knowledge.

     The fundamental presupposition of knowledge is that there is something to know. In other words, it presumes that there is a real world from which we can draw data and, with thought and effort, arrive at useful conclusions about its laws. This begins as a utilitarian pursuit – “can I use this to get somewhere or something I want?” – but, by a process of repetition and induction, arrives at the conclusion that there is an objective reality underlying our perceptions. As a Randian would say, existence exists. We are not helpless captives of Maya.

     Reality is indifferent to our opinions, preferences, assumptions, and convictions. Because it is lawful, it supports our efforts to learn about it – to acquire knowledge. But it won’t alter its laws, or morph from one thing into another, simply because we decree that it shall.

     A passage from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance makes clear the critical importance of this metaphysical foundation:

     [Phaedrus] didn’t jump from Immanuel Kant to Bozeman, Montana. During this span of ten years he lived in India for a long time studying Oriental philosophy at Benares Hindu University.
     As far as I know he didn’t learn any occult secrets there. Nothing much happened at all except exposures. He listened to philosophers, visited religious persons, absorbed and thought and then absorbed and thought some more, and that was about all. All his letters show is an enormous confusion of contradictions and incongruities and divergences and exceptions to any rule he formulated about the things he observed. He’d entered India an empirical scientist, and he left India an empirical scientist, not much wiser than he had been when he’d come. However, he’d been exposed to a lot and had acquired a kind of latent image that appeared in conjunction with many other latent images later on.
     Some of these latencies should be summarized because they become important later on. He became aware that the doctrinal differences among Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself….
     [O]ne day in the classroom [at Benares University] the professor of philosophy was blithely expounding on the illusory nature of the world for what seemed the fiftieth time and Phaedrus raised his hand and asked coldly if it was believed that the atomic bombs that had dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illusory. The professor smiled and said yes. That was the end of the exchange.
     Within the traditions of Indian philosophy that answer may have been correct, but for Phaedrus and for anyone else who reads newspapers regularly and is concerned with such things as mass destruction of human beings that answer was hopelessly inadequate. He left the classroom, left India and gave up.

     The author, Robert M. Pirsig, speaks of “Phaedrus” as a separate entity from himself – yet it is his own experiences he’s relating. At that time of his life, he was in the grip of what seemed an insoluble contradiction between two obviously true statements:

  • Knowledge is demonstrably possible;
  • Yet for any given phenomenon, the number of possible explanations is unbounded.

     Pirsig was not a fool. He simply “lived too much in his head,” a malady that afflicts many persons of high intelligence who have a penchant for the abstract. It took him years, a psychotic breakdown, and a course of electroshock treatments to get him back in touch with reality. A high price to pay for a best-selling book, eh what?

     The moral “should” be “obvious:”


Sanity demands the acceptance of objective reality.
He who rejects objective reality is insane.

     Sanity is the prerequisite of wisdom.

***

     The pursuit of knowledge, of course, has more requirements than simply conceding that existence exists. It requires that we learn how to define and measure; how to generalize and manipulate generalizations; and how to test our theses. Colloquially, we call the process reasoning. But beneath all our reasoning must be the acceptance of objective reality. Without accepting that the data our senses gather is real information about real things – things whose nature and characteristics are indifferent to our preferences – we can make no progress.

     The insane are impeded from doing that. Their impediment consists of a rejection – partial in most cases – of the objective reality the rest of us accept. Depending on the specifics of that rejection, they might be dangerous to themselves or others. Traditionally, those judged to be so dangerous were forcibly confined and protected. That is no longer the case today.

     Today, many people hold that reality is plastic before the human will; that each of us can decide “what is” for ourselves, regardless of externals and the convictions of others; in effect, that “reality” is a meaningless noise. But this is plainly not the case; it’s insane at its base. For thousands, perhaps millions of persons to believe it and yet be walking around without minders suggests that the world has turned into an open-air sanitarium.

     Some coddle the insane for political purposes. That doesn’t render their mascots sane. Indeed, it makes their condition even more threatening to them and to others.

     The problem goes well beyond the lunacy of allowing biological men to compete in women-only sporting events.

***

     We return to Ketanji Brown Jackson and her “not a biologist” farce.

     Why did a woman intelligent enough to be a federal judge – never mind her dubious allegiance to the law and the Constitution – say something so fatuous during her own confirmation hearings for a position on the United States Supreme Court? What possible explanations are there? Indeed, what advantage could she have sought, or disadvantage could she have hoped to avert, with so stupid a statement?

     Only one explanation holds water.

     The blatant attempt not to incur the ire of those who insist that saying “I identify as a woman” can make a biological man a woman was a kind of appeasement. From the side of her mouth, Ketanji Brown Jackson was saying – to militant transgender activists, and to the Democrat Party that has enfolded them into its political coalition – “Please don’t hurt me.” She knew that acknowledging objective reality would hurt her politically.

     Let’s leave aside whether the country can afford to have a Supreme Court Justice who’s willing to deny reality for political purposes. I don’t think there’d be much argument about it. What does it say about the Democrat Party that its strategists, policy makers, and elected officials willingly pander to the demonstrably insane in order to garner a few more votes for its candidates? And what does it say about the character of persons so disposed?

     Is there wisdom in supporting the aspirations of such persons? Could we expect anything good to come of awarding them power? Is it not time to put an end to such madness?

     I leave it to my Gentle Readers to decide.

Mar 23 2022

Outsourcing Tyranny

     Many Gentle Readers are already acquainted with this subject, owing to the rise of cancel culture and the impediments the giants of Big Tech have dropped upon our freedom of expression. Mind you, while there are many persons ready, willing, and able to offer opinions about what should be done, the subject is considerably more complex than most imagine. For cancel culture is made possible by private enterprise. The proximate cancellers are private corporations, whether their actions are moved by human wills or are algorithmically driven. So the guarantees of freedom of expression enshrined in the Bill of Rights don’t apply directly to those entities.

     Does that mean nothing can be done about them? Not necessarily. However, some of the remedies proposed are guaranteed to fail completely, while others will not produce improvements sufficient to satisfy the majority of those who reject and condemn the cancellers. In part this stems from the diversity of opinion, and in part from the network effect.

     But we have not yet mentioned one aspect of the political angle: the attitude of elected officials toward cancel culture. Those on the Left are largely fine with it. Indeed, some hope to see it expand still further, such that those who don’t share the Left’s positions and agenda are completely erased from political exchange. Those on the Right are likely to decry it, though the attitude is not uniform. The constitutionalist is caught between two fires, for he knows that the temptation to award governments the power to intervene in such things would inevitably be used against him when his political adversaries rise to power once again.

     It is, as the King of Siam said to Anna, a puzzlement.

***

     As enraging as contemporary cancel culture and the suppression of non-Left opinion can be, there’s worse in the offing – and this goes directly to the accounts of governments.

     At Tablet magazine, Michael Young is eloquent about the terrors that could easily be unleashed against us. The thrust of the article:

     The loss of real-world friction coupled with the increasing centralization of the financial system has opened up possibilities for new forms of coercion, control, and power—particularly when governments and the private sector decide to cooperate. Which brings us to the case of the Canadian prime minister….

     What happens when a government is no longer required to do the very difficult, friction-filled work of finding people, writing tickets, arresting them, charging them, granting them due process, obtaining convictions, and jailing the guilty? When the government can bring a person’s practical participation in society to a standstill with the push of a button, it becomes silly to even talk about individual rights or due process. In the face of this new kind of push-button power, exercised at the whim of the governing party with zero legal oversight, individuals can simply be deleted from the system—even if, technically speaking, they are never charged with or convicted of a crime.

     Please read it all. Canada’s Freedom Truckers surrounded Ottawa in hopes of compelling prime minister Justin Trudeau to lift the many restrictions that impede their practice of their trade. But Trudeau, who aspires to being Canada’s first Fuhrer, was unwilling to allow that he might have overstepped. Instead, he used “emergency powers” to blot hundreds, perhaps thousands of truckers and supporters out of “practical participation in society.” He even threatened law-abiding married couples with the loss of their children. How far his exertions have gone, I cannot say…but the mere possibility that he could do what he did – even to a single individual, and even if it were later reversed – is enough to freeze the blood.

     What makes Trudeau’s bullying possible? Young is specific:

  1. Digital communications technology;
  2. The digital integration of the financial systems of the Western world;
  3. The willingness of nominally private financial institutions to comply with the State’s decrees.

     Items 1 and 2 are generally considered major advances in efficiency and convenience. Item 3 is made possible by a species of political evil that I’ve condemned before and will again: licensure:

     Licensure, when it first appeared, applied to very few things: mainly the practice of medicine and law. The rationale was “the public safety:” the protection of the layman from the quack practitioner of little or no actual skill. That rationale now applies to trades as unthreatening as the braiding of hair.

     A case from some years ago, to which I was privy simply as an observer, involved a state official in Massachusetts who entered a unisex hair salon and demanded service. The attendant on duty politely asked if he could wait for the specialist in his sort of hair, who was expected to arrive shortly. When the official saw the attendant give immediate service to a subsequent arrival, he had the state police shut down the salon, invoking the state’s licensure laws for his authority.

     Yes, the official was a Negro.

     This is what comes of allowing the State to decide who may ply what trade and under what conditions.

***

     The contemporary financial system, of course, is made possible by fiat money: money that is not redeemable in some physical commodity. “It’s money because we, the Omnipotent State, say it is.” Fiat money is divided between physical currency – i.e., the Federal Reserve Notes in your wallet – and accounting entries in the computer systems of financial institutions. The physical notes are a tiny portion of the “money” now “circulating” in these United States…and for that matter, in every other nation on Earth. Most “money” is merely an entry in the digital accounts of some bank.

     The nature of “money” today makes it plausible that banks should be licensed and regulated. After all, we wouldn’t want the banks that hold our savings to play fast and loose with the numbers. They could pauperize us at the press of a button. So let’s have the State look over their shoulders to make sure they stay honest.

     Trouble is, that merely transfers the power to pauperize us to the licensing and regulating authorities – and to the officials to whom they answer.

     There’s a particularly stinging irony about the way Justin Trudeau went about his machinations. He didn’t impose fines on the truckers or their supporters; that would have been an exercise of penal authority – punishment – which in Canada as in the U.S. requires the verdict of a jury. Instead, he froze access to their accounts. Thus, he could say that he hadn’t taken a dollar from them; he’d merely limited their use of money. What banknotes and coins they had in their pockets was all they could use, until Trudeau should choose to relent.

     The banks had to go along with it. Had they demurred, Trudeau could have pulled their licenses to operate and destroyed them. Thus the integrated financial system that had seemed a pure convenience only a day earlier had been transformed into an instrument of torture. That instrument is as ready to the hand of an American tyrant as it was to that of Justin Trudeau.

***

     Inflation, the ongoing campaign against cash, cancel culture, and other current phenomena bear on the increasing fragility of our “money.” If the necessary realization hasn’t penetrated the majority of Americans’ heads, it certainly should. Perhaps it will take time.

     Time, however, is not on our side. The Usurper Regime is becoming desperate as the national economy declines. The Usurpers have no intention of relinquishing power this side of the grave. Now that they face electoral disaster in 2022, we must fear arbitrary, unpredictable incursions on Americans’ freedom to avert the loss of their perches. They’re aware of what Justin Trudeau did to the Freedom Truckers, and aware that the same lever is in their hands.

     Reread this essay. Buy gold and silver while you still can. And pray.

Mar 22 2022

Back In The News?

     No, not the Hunter Biden laptop. (I almost typed “Hunted Biden laptop,” which might soon be “breaking news,” but we’ll have to wait and see.) Rather, it’s one of the ideas that was floated shortly after Gregor Mendel discovered that fruit flies like sex: deliberately, eugenically breeding people as a way to improve us and our societies.

***

     Here’s the OED’s definition of eugenics:

     The study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Developed largely by Sir Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, eugenics was increasingly discredited as unscientific and racially biased during the 20th century, especially after the adoption of its doctrines by the Nazis in order to justify their treatment of Jews, disabled people, and other minority groups.

     In these “woke” days, a “definition” that’s mostly made up of slander or condemnations should surprise no one. In point of fact, only the words up to the first period – the first “full stop,” as our British cousins would say – constitute a proper definition. The rest is an attempt to tar eugenics with a brush of Nazi black.

     This article, which is mainly a book review, mentions some of the historical data about eugenic thinking:

     There was also concern, especially among scientists such Francis Galton and Charles Darwin, about “dysgenics.” Prior to the Industrial Revolution, social class was correlated with fertility, child mortality was approximately 50%, and so the genetically sick, and those with low intelligence and poor moral character (correlates of low socioeconomic status), were purged every generation. But, despite its reputation, the Industrial Revolution, and especially the rise of inoculation against killer childhood diseases, created easier conditions and, thus, dysgenics. This risked the breakdown of civilization, in the view of the early eugenics advocates.

     By 1900, eugenics was massively influential among Western elites. Conservatives such as former Prime Minister Arthur Balfour perceived it as a means of creating a great people. Leftists regarded it as a means of reducing suffering, and some of the most vocal advocates of eugenics were committed leftists—George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells. Opposition came from conservative traditionalists, such as G.K. Chesterton, who felt that eugenicists were playing God [Eugenics and the Left, by Diane Paul, Journal of the History of Ideas, 1984].

     Laws were passed in various countries, some not revoked until the 1970s, allowing the sterilization of “mental defectives” and, in some cases, encouraging those considered of good “quality” to be more fecund.

     The above is largely accurate and unbiased. Those were the prevalent opinions of those times. Moreover, they were founded on what was believed to be the best science of the times. An intellect as advanced as that of Oliver Wendell Holmes was wholly in accord with the desirability of a eugenic approach to the improvement of homo sapiens terrestrialis.

     Eugenic thinking has not been disproved in any rigorous sense. What happened to “discredit” it was the association of eugenics with Nazism in Europe, and the forced sterilization of mental defectives and the insane here and elsewhere. The moral horror those phenomena inspired were enough to put the idea of breeding a better human being by design outside the bounds of acceptable thinking.

     Yet eugenics itself, as a thesis, has not been disproved. Indeed, copious statistical evidence supports the idea that intentionally breeding a better man just might produce one. When above-average people get together and produce a baby, their child is likely to mature into an above-average adult – above average, that is, in whatever transmissible characteristic – physical, esthetic, or intellectual – makes us regard the parents as above average. Moreover, it happens too frequently to be ignored.

     Similarly, the inverse idea of dysgenics — that it’s possible to lower the general quality and survivability of Mankind through unwise breeding – has not been disproved. Laws that forbid the marriage of brother to sister, or of first cousins to one another, implicitly acknowledge the dysgenic thesis. So does what we know of the spawn of lower-class couples.

     So eugenics and dysgenics remain unrefuted. They’re not unthinkable because they’re wrong. We reject them because of the moral horrors implicit in imposing them coercively on third parties.

***

     Couples these days don’t fall in love, marry, and set out to produce children for eugenic reasons. Inversely, couples don’t…well…refrain from coupling because they fear to produce monsters, morons, or politicians. Other considerations usually prevail over the “what would our babies be like?” question. Oftentimes the key consideration is economic. At others, it’s “Damn, I’ve been alone a long time. Would he / she have me?”

     However, virtually all of us attempt to “marry upward:” i.e., to mate with someone whom others, at least, would say is somewhat “out of his league.” (Apropos of which, the romantic comedy She’s Out Of My League is a major delight. It’s available on DVD. See it.) At least, we (meaning heterosexuals) all hope to do so, even if unconsciously. In so doing, we practice an undiscussed version of eugenics. Inversely, when a pregnant woman decides to abort her Down’s Syndrome unborn child, she’s practicing a form of dysgenics. (No, I don’t approve, but you knew that already.)

     What renders eugenics and dysgenics undiscussable de facto is the implication that they should inform government policies about mating and reproduction. Apart from the laws that forbid marrying someone too close to you on the family tree, we don’t have any such policies in these United States. But intertwined with our distaste for eugenics and dysgenics as staples of policy is a much more dubious aversion: our reluctance to admit that certain characteristics are transmissible, in part at least, from parents to children.

     As I noted in the previous segment, we have ample statistical evidence that several physical, esthetic, and mental characteristics are partly genetically derived. Yet pointing this out can get you called “everything but white”…depending on who you are and “your angle.” A few years back, a deaf lesbian couple made the news with their avowed intention to produce a deaf baby. Of course, they couldn’t do so without male help, so they went looking, quite openly, for a suitable deaf sperm donor. “Deaf activists” – a phrase whose significance I didn’t grasp at the time – were vocal and more in defending that couple’s intentions and actions, despite the inarguable cruelty of deliberately inflicting a severe handicap on a helpless infant.

     “Your angle,” and whether there are loud activist groups that are for or against you and have the ear of the major media, very much determine what you can say about this subject. A prominent white man who would dare to say that whites should marry and procreate strictly within their race would immediately be condemned as a monster. Compare this to the immunity from criticism enjoyed by that deaf lesbian couple. Then go on to the open anti-white racism of prominent persons such as Elie Mystal.

     Some concepts are “unthinkable” not because of the concepts themselves but because of who seeks to discuss them. Eugenics is only one such.

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