Washington Rebel

Eroto-Sunday Madeleines, for Throw Backs

 
Stop! Do You Read Washington Rebel?!  Because Acquanetta Does!

Aroused by the Feral Ape Man --

The word erotica typically applies to works in which the sexual element is regarded as part of the larger aesthetic aspect. It is usually distinguished from pornography, which can also have literary merit but which is usually understood to have sexual arousal as its main purpose.

Erotica should be what arouses sensuality and sexual desire in the imagination. Pornography is a cheap substitute to genuine sensuality by replacing it with naked thrusts and bursts of faux gasps of passion. How trite compared to visions created in our minds stimulated by a simple touch, look or gesture. Last night I watched the TCM channel which ran a surprising example of true erotica-Tarzan-the Ape Man.  Alicia Colon: Appreciating True Erotica in Cinema

Thanks, Alicia.  As readers of Washington Rebel know, we don't go in for that Ho' Dog Rip Rap Shit.  The two things that keep a society strong and gentle are: (1) the Ten Commandments and (2)  The Golden Rule.  Even objectivists understand this, though you don't dare mention God, or you'll make them cry.

Conservatives get a bad rap for suppressing sex, as if a bumper sticker on your Volvo that reads Question Gender was somehow enlightened and expressive of something worthwhile.  What crap.  Y'all know what we think about that kind.

There is, also, a common thread here: Rock-n-Roll . . . . Ho' Dawg Rip Rap.  Bill Cosby connects the dots.

No, I don't mean race.  I mean loss of self respect.  Get it?

Modern Cinema Hasn't a Clue About Eroticism

As a teen and a young woman, I’d buy all the movie mags with their color pictures of beautiful people who could honestly be called STARS. Now I find it difficult to name one female star today who doesn’t dress or act like a skank. Sorry. I realize it’s a sign of the times but that doesn’t mean I can’t prefer a time when class was what determined stardom.  Alicia Colon

We appreciate what you're saying, Alicia.  Over here at the Rebel, we hope to start a Cultural Revolution. 

The Conservative kind!

 

1967

Sinister

A friend of mine and I were discussing secession the other day -- the fact that some people want to secede from the Union, particularly now that Obama's in the White House.  Secession is not necessarily a left or right thing.  There are folks from both sides who feel that way.  But, Secession is like the Silent Treatment.  Feeds the self-importance; doesn't solve the problem.

We conservatives tend to be principled.  Whether an individual conservative believes in a higher power, or "objectivism", he or she typically believes that character is the process of improving one's relation to the way things are -- to truth.   A "progressive" is someone who wholeheartedly believes the other sonofabitch must change.  This is why "liberals" consistently screw that up: "You're trying to control what goes on in the bedroom!", they shriek, school girls that they are.  I got news for you.  Most conservatives I know are pretty matter of fact about sex.   Some of us old conservatives are even lady's men -- more European in taste than the girly man "liberal."  Strong lovers are charismatic because they're not trying to change anyone.  They feed off an inner vitality no "liberal" I've ever seen has because "liberals" are running around making sure you're not driving over the speed limit.  The freaks putting on "gay" parades are people who are confident you need to change. It's a consistent pattern.

Unfortunately -- or fortunately, if you have my perspective -- neither side has a monopoly on evil.  I've seen prosecutors and cops in my lifetime whose lord and savior is Satan, and I've known Republican operatives who are real trash.  I never assume my side has a monopoly on sweetness.  25 years in the Biz has taught me to deal with human nature, not fairy tales.

The secret of America's success isn't the "faction."  It's limited government.  Contrary to what "liberals" strenuously believe, limited government doesn't promote evil.  It limits the damage factions can do.  The fact that "liberals" can't get that means their IQ never goes much higher than 70 or so.

Andrew Thomas has a little piece in today's American Thinker called The Pathology of Evil in Politics.  I wish more people would try to understand this: positions of authority attract skilled charlatans, sociopaths, and gamers.  It's just a fact of life.  Asking these folks to solve health care "problems" is like inviting the pedophile over to babysit the kids.  It's not just politicians, per se.  All positions of authority attract amateurs with big schemes.

And then there's the good old Left, of which David Horowitz says:

If you can’t describe the 3000 innocent victims of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as “murdered” and your first move is to describe your own government’s case as propaganda, and you are devising a case to “justify” the evil deed your client has committed and won’t say that you would be upset if your country were to lose the case, and also if you’re a Jew and don’t have any problem defending an Islamic Nazi who beheaded Daniel Pearl after forcing him to say “I’m a Jew, I’m a Jew” — there can be only one explanation. You believe in the justification defense you are preparing, you think America and the Jews are guilty and deserve what they get, and you are a traitor.  David Horowitz, The Traitor Class

These guys, like Ed Begley, are malicious sacks of shit.  Secession won't cure the problem.  Destiny, History, Providence, Kismet . . . . the forces of Karma will remove these turds from the lawn.  But at what cost to those of us who are principled and don't need to "change" anyone else?

Interesting, isn't?

Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now

The Meddling Classes/The Anxiety of Freedom

Where hard despotism brutalizes, soft despotism infantilizes. Hard despotism conquers the social spaces where citizens live their lives and exercise their freedoms. Soft despotism slowly and imperceptibly fills the vacuum formed when citizens voluntarily abandon those spaces.  Can We Outlast The Contradictions?

Paul Rahe's description of the "meddling classes" reminded me of a pet peeve of mine in "free" America.  I had a boss who has actually interrupted my telephone conversations to tell me what to say.  a) He couldn't hear the other end of the conversation; and b) if he'd had a mother, there'd be a permanent dent in his head where his mother corrected him of that rudeness.  Since there was no dent, I have to assume his mother also lacked "fetchin'".  That describes way more Americans than is commonly acknowledged.

Here is why America's freedom is at risk: we look to authority at our daily jobs; we're not as self-directed and responsible as we need to be.  We believe authority makes superior judgment.  It's not just dumb ass Democrats looking for government fixes to unemployment and prices -- which encourages policies that worsen both problems.  It's also you folks, people who like this blog.  Your basic character has been at risk, now, for several generations.  There is not enough skepticism toward authority.  How many of you assume that all police officers and all military personnel are "heroes"?  You call yourself conservative?

Please don't give me the opportunity to berate you, because I will.

When my grandfather was a man in his 30s -- the 1920s -- only a buttery a-hole of a turd would believe all cops and all soldiers were wonders of nature.  No American had that in him.  There was a strong, strong streak of fuck you in the American character.  No icon was sacred.  My grandfather -- who served in the U.S. Army in World War I -- would have found the "hero" talk disturbing.  Sort of faggish.  I understand it's a reaction to the Sixties left that you and I talk that way, but I need to bring this point to your attention.  Our attitude toward the State is not consistent with republican virture.

We have become a meddling society with too much genuflection toward authority.  The boss I mentioned votes Republican.

If you want America to change a) You start with yourself and b) you infect other people with the virus of liberty.  We earlier described how fast things can change in America in a post called 1967.  Read it to see what I mean.

Prove me wrong.  I'm open to criticism on this argument.

Prepare for a response!

Consequential Ideas: Exploring the subtle dangers of 'soft despotism' in democracies.

Crisis in Calabasas

More Attacks on Redheads Reported at Calabasas School

Three students reported being beaten up by about a dozen students at A.E. Wright Middle School. Authorities believe the attacks are linked to a Facebook group based on a 2005 episode of 'South Park.'

Anti-Obama Billboard Stirs Mixed Poll Results on Health Care and Shit in Colorado

Google Uses Ad Space to Explain Offensive Michelle Obama Image in Search Results

 

No Accounting For Taste

Palin Derangement Tuesday

Avid Washington Rebel Reader Prepares for Bout With Andrea Mitchell, Hate-Filled Hag

Yesterday Liberalguy linked Michael Goodwin's Palin Derangement Syndrome Hits Hard.  Newsweek kiped a cover photo from Runner's World and ran the caption: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sarah?  And, per Goodwin, added "a snide kicker that 'she's bad news for the GOP--and everybody else too.'"

I once dated a Russian woman who was imperious in all her ways.  Would you like a tea cake, my little skookums?

NO!

May I massage you, or bring you something to eat?

NO!

Would you like some money and for me to disappear?

Whereupon this big, imperious Russian grin would break across her icy, Nordic face.

On politics, my Russian dainty opposed all forms of American "pattriotism."  She rejected religion.  She regarded capitalism as a kind of stupid man's sin, and yet . . . . .

She couldn't wait to leave the dreary Samizdata ("a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR") of her old country and come to the U.S., where using it, and trashing it, came as naturally as breathing.

Our final outing was a very posh banquet dominated by sophisticated Europeans and homegrown liberals.  I saw the most beautiful woman I have ever seen at this affair, a Persian who delighted in running down the U.S.  Well, it's ordinary people, at least.  A truth about Warm Fuzzy Liberals: "We Are All One", "it's all about Unity", includes everyone except "pattriots" and Jews.  The dinner conversation went distinctly anti-Semitic at some point.  That was the last I saw of any of those people.  I have no doubt they all voted for Obama, whether legally or illegally.  They're all very superior, you see.

I think of my Russian cupcake every time I analyze the words and deeds of Warm Fuzzy Liberals.

I'm kicking in $100 to the Palin PAC, in the hopes she'll come to Seattle, and I can be a part of the Racist Dunderhead Craze.

Sarah Palin and the Low Ebb of the Cultural Left

Sarah Takes Swipe at Girly-Man David Brooks

Obama's Revolution

ReasonTV: Hollywood's Love Affair with Che

Joe Stalin: Pure Evil

Remembering the Victims of Communism

Obama's Two-Front Offensive

With the election of Barack Obama as president, the liberals have launched a massive, two-front offensive they believe will end in victory. They have judged that our public education system is so degraded that only a few Americans are left who even understand what a democracy is, and how the free market actually works. They are convinced that the majority of Americans are too frightened by the current recession to care about preserving the principles that made us the most powerful, productive and innovative country the world has ever known. In short, the liberals are reaching for victory because they believe that history now is on their side.

The speed of their offensive is breathtaking.

Herbert Meyer, Revolution

Bring up the Soviet Gulags, so meticulously detailed by Solzhenitsyn.  What is the response you invariably get from "liberals"?

Hitler.

Did you know Hitler -- a rightwing Christian, just like Glenn Beck and George Bush -- killed people?  Lots of people.  Never heard that before, huh?  Well, just say 'Stalin' and you'll get the Readers Digest Sex and the City version of World War II!  Almost as entertaining as a Michael Moore movie.  And just as flaccid.

1967

The Soul's Destiny Takes Shape in the Heart

If I was asked to give an opinion on how we got to where we are, and what it all means, my answer would be:

1967

In the course of three months, American society was changed forever.

All young men like myself were taught that you never called an older man by his first name -- too familiar, and disrespectful; you didn't extend your hand, but waited for him to extend his; you never spoke first, but waited for him to speak.  A boy was a boy.  He was obligated to defer to men and he wasn't allowed to speak unless that door had been opened by an elder.  When's the last time you saw that kind of honor in America?

If you observed anything like it now, some glib woman would be happy to describe it as a perversion.  Some girly-man Sullivan would apply all kinds of adjectives to it, completely missing its real import: a boy was taught from the ground up that he had to pay his own way.  You didn't arrive just by grabbing your cock and crowing.  Today that developmental step has been outsourced to gangs.  Is it any surprise that many pockets of our military -- the American military, with deep reserves of traditional honor -- operate like a criminal gang?

When you look at Chris Matthews, do you see a man, or a chipmunk?

1967.

Paris 1919

Paul Cowan's Paris 1919

Had a chance to grab this piece of depression on the Military  channel this morning.  First, a personal comment: my father was born in February, 1919, which seems portentous in light of the fact that he would step off a landing craft at Normandy 25 years later.  His father -- who served in the Army during the Great War -- said throughout the 20s and 30s, 'The Treaty of Versalee will cause the next war."  If my grandfather had been in Paris, 1919, he would have advised against reparations, I'm thinking.  When you hear someone say 'reparations', that usually means they're trying to start a fight.  One has to wonder how things would have turned out if the French weren't staring at blood-drenched trenches and seas of crosses while they negotiated.  Suppose the peace talks had taken place in Wichita, Kansas?  The British were pricks, and short-sighted.  The whole thing was a nasty mess.  The seeds were planted for the Chinese-Japanese conflict, Saddam Hussein, and Mr. Tap-and-Dance, Adolph Hitler

37,000,000 People Left Earth Prematurely Between 1914 and 1918.  The French lost 1.3 million; the Germans lost 2 million.

Second, the show is a study in how sick and dangerous international players can be.  Poor, idealistic Wilson was no match for cynical European assholes.  As Cowan's documentary points out, even though no League of Nations was in place, in fact there was a World Government. 

I don't know about you, but I doubt a world government today could be any more enlightened then what happened then.  The leaders of those times were assholes.

Just like now.

Grimmest scene in All Quiet on the Western Front: the Graveyard Scene!

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

Apocalypse Maybe

The Outer Limits - Original _ The Man Who Was Never Born (1963)

At lunch today we discussed possible outcomes of what is going on right now.  I'm the most apocalyptic of the bunch.  It runs something like this: our politicians are the same kind of critter that ran things in the 20s and 30s.  In addition to ordinary human blindness -- which we all suffer without abatement -- the dynamics that operate without hindrance are greed, lust for power, egotism, weakness, stupidity, and so on.  Those dynamics are the body and the antibody, the proton and the neutron, of political structures.  In other words, if constructive action could be taken to, say, rescue the dollar from collapse, our politicians would be explaining those things to us and laying out options for us to choose from.  Instead, our politicians make promises that can't be kept and assume, I guess, that as long as we voters like to play Bitch to their Bubba, all is well.  Apply this calculus to a darker vision, as Vanderleun did in this Afghanistan post, and you get the Ritalin version of history.  That is why I'm apocalyptic.  Systems have to be destroyed.  We're going into a death phase with a chorus of fools singing a sociopath's praises.  I'd call that the equivalent of a bird going to a cat fight.

Nuclear weapons?  Stephen King visions?  Why not?  What I had in mind, though, was more along the lines of what was posted here: Getting Ready.

I'll be more candid with you.  You can make fun of me if you wish.  I feel in my bones that our own government will be putting people in jail in my lifetime -- for political reaons.  Paranoid?  Rationally, I have to say yes, it's paranoid.  Still, I feel what I feel: there's a plan in place to literally, at an instinctive level, break the American spine.  I believe the people dominating this country from behind the scenes are slave masters.  To the extent a strong America impedes that play, some of us will be broken.  I believe this.  You can make fun of me 10 years from now, if I'm alive, and wrong.

Our friend Fuchs sent along this link: The Doomer Case.  I guess Fuchs and I wouldn't make such good company for Tea.  We're Doomers.

The Gay Guys in Boystown, Chicago, Get it

The World Grasped His Bullhorn and Squeezed: Strange Days, Indeed!

Readers of Washington Rebel know we are given to old-fashioned Pacific Northwestisms such as, "It's far easier to pooftify than it is to de-pooftify.  So don't pooftify!"

(I'll bet they talk that way around Maggie's Farm when no one's looking.  No? They don't, eh?)

After reading that mindblower at Hillbuzz, I may have to mend my aphorism to: "It's far easier to Barackify than it is to de-Barackify . . . ."

Kidding aside, tonight's Hillbuzz was proof to me that some folks have American spirits.  Das and I have been asking for a decade, at least, "Where's the rebellion?!"  Between 15 and 40 everything your parents say gets offered for sacrifice.  It's only around 45 or so that you start to realize you're a real horse's ass and should have been shot.  These kids don't even quiver that much -- can't look up from their X Boxes, I guess.  If their parents say, "The Democrats are the party of the working man," they parrot it back, even though they never met a 'working man'!  You know what Hoh River Boy would say!

Spooky!

Here's the deal about the Bush family: they're old-fashioned.  They don't run around showing their cocks.  They speak plainly and politely.  They're people of honor.  That's the truth.  You people who can't see it can't see it because . . . .

You don't know what it is.

The ugliest thing ever said about Junior was that he was a killer.  George W. Bush suffered for the decisions he had to make as our Commander-in-Chief.  The man is tender-hearted.

This clown we have in office now never suffered for anybody.

Christ, he's a "community organizer."  How goddamn gay is that?

Wait.  Sorry.

How goddamn Obama is that?

From Citizens to Stakeholders

A Prime Ciceronian Fantasy

Every educational system has a moral goal that it tries to attain and that informs its curriculum.  It wants to produce a certain kind of human being.  This intention is more or less explicit, more or less a result of reflection; but even the neutral subjects, like reading and writing and arithmetic, take their place in a vision of the educated person.  In some nations the goal was the pious person, in others the warlike, in others the industrious.  Always important is the political regime, which needs citizens who are in accord with its fundamental principle.  Aristocracies want gentlemen, oligarchies men who respect and pursue money, and democracies lovers of equality.  Democratic education, whether it admits it or not, wants and needs to produce men and women who have the tastes, knowledge and character supportive of a democratic regime.  Over the history of our republic, there have obviously been changes of opinion as to what kind of man is best for our regime.  We began with the model of the rational and industrious man, who was honest, respected the laws, and was dedicated to the family -- what in its decay has been dubbed the nuclear family.  Above all he was to know the rights doctrine, the Constitution, which embodied it; and American history, which presented and celebrated the founding of a nation" conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."  A powerful attachment to the letter and spirit of the Declaration of Independence gently conveyed, appealing to each man's reason, was the goal of the education of democratic man.   This called for something very different from the kinds of attachment required for traditional communities where myth and passion as well as severe discipline, authority, and the extended family produced an instinctive, unqualified, even fanatic patriotism, unlike the reflected, rational, calm, even self-interested loyalty -- not principles -- required in the United States.  This was an entirely new experience in politics, and with it came a new education.  This education has evolved in the last half century from the education of democratic man to the education of the democratic personality.  Allan Bloom

(Washington Rebel Hint: Indented portions, such as above, are NOT our composition, but quotes.  The indents render these renditions as "block quotes."   We ALWAYS attribute indented block quotes to their author.  If we don't, it was an oversight that will be remedied as soon as it's caught.)

So This is What Change Looks Like!  When and where the thief broke in and kidnapped the Baby is the subject of much dispute.  The Sixties radicals?  New Dealers?  Consumerism?  Corporations who, with their alien friends, plant chips in our heads as we shop?

Dude 

Somewhere America shifted from Citizens to consumers or, as Angelo Codevilla puts it, we've become "stakeholders."  In what ranks as the definitive description of my lifetime, Codevilla nails what ails America:

The trivialization of American citizenship into an audience format.

Warm, Fuzzy Catholics

Dear Cicero:

"This shy, reticent logger recently vented with big hearted, small brained Catholics. Some I meet with weekly. The others, well I hope that letter is not published. How could they support a health care bill that is based on an ideology dedicated to satan? Regardless whether abortion is limited, the death panels still exist. Maybe some will wake up. Most in my parish are on my side but they need help understanding the multitude of agendas that are working against us. Trying to synthesize an argument with corruption and bigotry would not be too hard. I need a word that helps me describe the scope of the corruption and they will understand bigotry as manifest by the seven deadly sins. Thanks for Hoffer."

Dear Anonymous:

Seems to me you've hit the synonym on its circumference.  Most well-meaning Americans, I think, are unwilling to consider the possibility that iniquity, faithlessness, abasement, perversion, subversion, rot, treachery, decadence, turpitude, evil, degeneration and corruption, as you put it, are so pervasive or, rather, so entrenched, that many who reckon themselves "good" are in fact imbecilic where fortitude and principle are in greatest demand.  They are, in fact, nitwits, insofar as the duties of citizenship are concerned.  They are the Ben & Jerry of martial rectitude, and ought to be regarded as such, though they see themselves quite different from that, as noted.

Multiple difficulties immediately confront our forensic efforts: how does one measure American decadance?  How can one be certain there has been actual degradation, or just the perception thereof?  After all, human nature has never exactly been pure, but has ever suffered from a most prodigious array of moral feebleness and vile secretions of character.  Look at Democrats.

We can be certain, I believe, of the following: 1) Where once Americans viewed family and community as authority structures, they now look to the federal government or, more precisely, bony narcissists like Obama, to make them feel good.  This would be an indication of moral and spiritual decay.  And 2) our political leaders have abandoned their posts where the integrity of the dollar is concerned.  The Democratic leadership has led the charge to flee national security responsibilities.  I don't know about you, but it looks to me like we will very shortly be in a situation where "gays" and Warm Fuzzy Liberals are seeking protection from the "religious right" they hate so much.  That's the problem with most Americans, in my view.  We've become a nation of school girls.  The only person who will shoot back at a revenuer or an Islamic "moderate" would be hillbillies and rednecks.

No prob on the Hoff.  Thanks for stopping by.

Dear Cicero

Bug-Eyed Dodo

"Dear Cicero: Earlier today you mentioned a "bug-eyed dodo."  What is a 'bug-eyed dodo'?"

Dear Perceptive Reader:

Bug-Eyed Dodos are common enough.  You see them everyday.  The trick is to be able to distinguish them from your common "goofball" and "yahoo."  To do so requires practice.  Generally speaking, the British are particularly good at spotting Bug-Eyed Dodos.  Listen to Toby Harnden describe a perfect example of the "bug-eyed dodo":

On Friday, when most of the basic facts were available, Mr Obama tried again. It was scarcely any better. He began by offering "an update on the tragedy that took place" - as if it was an earthquake and not a terrorist attack from an enemy within - and ended with a promise for more "updates in the coming days and weeks".

Completely missing was the eloquence that Mr Obama employs when talking about himself. Absent too was any sense that the President empathised with the families and comrades of those murdered.  Bloodless President Makes Americans Wistful for George Bush

I hope this helps.  Oftentimes Bug-Eyed Dodos pose as "journalists", an example of which can be seen here:

CNN's Crowley Omits Sound Bites From Conservatives in Palin Report

A good way to practice spotting Bug-Eyed Dodos is to regularly observe the King of the Bug-Eye in his "natural setting" display, meticulously detailed to resemble a news room:

Keith Olbermann 6 November 2009

An Old Bull's Depression III

  

A Washington Rebel Reader Contemplates Cicero's Humility

Alan Caruba takes a run at untangling American self-destructiveness.

I am always wary of conspiracy theories. Most can be explained away as shared ideologies which, in the case of the current and recently past Congresses and White Houses, can be described as socialism. It did not and does not matter which Party was or is in power.  Wrecking America

Caruba doesn't have an answer, but it's instructive to read his post.

You'll need a bath after.

An Old Bull's Depression II

A Washington Rebel Regular Preparing for . . . . Company

After I post such items as An Old Bull's Depression, I think to myself that whoever reads these minor missives of mine must think I'm drowning in pig shit as I cry toxic waste, smoking roll-your-owns and drinking stale coffee cooked in a rusty piss pot.  That sort of thing.  Actually, I am optimistic -- long term.  My problem is that I am mourning.

I am mourning a country I once knew where men had pride and lived up to the best in themselves, instead of sitting around making smarmy little remarks so they can pretend they're smart.  A man who thinks he's already arrived is a boy.  Just like the one sleeping in the White House.  He's proved nothing yet, save his vanity.  And real live Americans think this is admirable.  It's nauseating.

I am mourning a country that was once proud of its Western heritage, and whose collective heart beat with pride for its duty as stewards.  The measure of intellect now is folks like Ward Churchill, Jimmy Carter, and Michael Moore.

A press that practices journalism?  Nah.  A duplicitous cabal of cackling lightweights.

Great Ideas at the University?  Nope.  Apologies for disonant bumper stickers sported by gnarly Marxist professors with no balls, and no record of real achievement.

In sum, I mourn for the Hell my country must pay for before it can once again earn the right to say "I am American", without sounding like a chump.

An Old Bull's Depression

The Cold, Hard Lessons of Fort Hood

The Muslim Brotherhood at Fort Hood   *   Jihad at Fort Hood   *   Radical Muslim Hails Fort Hood Massacre   *   J.R. Dunn: The Left and Terror

A Muslim fanatic with an Internet site praising Islamic suicide bombers as defenders of their comrades is a Major in the U.S. Army with access to military intelligence and lethal weaponry . . . . He was under investigation for six months because of his anti-American, jihadist rantings. He did not want to be deployed. He wanted to be discharged. But despite his identification with America’s enemies, the army kept him in its officer corps. How in God’s name was this possible? . . . . . . [A]fter calling America the “aggressor” in Afghanistan and Iraq, this Muslim jihadist traitor army officer picks up his semi-automatic weapons and heads for the center at Ft. Hood where soldiers are being deployed to fight the jihadists in Afghanistan to conduct his massacre. Yet this morning the Fox News Channel chiron says “Investigators search for a motive in the Ft. Hood killings.” Is Everybody Out of Their Mind?

Yes, David.  Most Americans are flinching at the idea of actually thinking.  It hurts their brains -- if they try at all -- so they pull back.

The Twilight of American Culture.  Take this blog.  One of the reasons why I blog is I made a decision years ago to not run for office.  If I ran for office, I would be pasted with all kinds of names -- courtesy of Warm Fuzzy Liberals who cannot truly distinguish between thought and ideology -- because they're ideological (and many don't really know that -- because it hurts to think).  I don't give them that satisfaction, but not out of fear.  It's because, for the moment, the average American would prefer to get a patty back and pablum via Oprah or Dr. Phil.   We live in a Tyranny of Kindness.

Dark?  Cynical?

Okay.  So it is.  But in a better informed, more vital America, I could serve my country without fear of folks going hysterical by merely . . . . discussing ideas and facts.  Couldn't I?  Is that such a far-fetched "rightwing" thing to say?

We watched the Media elect a president.  Those of us who read and write blogs know there's an elite in control that gets angry if we take different points of view from what is "required."  This isn't Communism, necessarily, and it isn't always "leftist."  It's a poweplay, homegrown in the Democratic Party of the Thirties, radical leftists of the Sixties, and astute Suits who understand how to close the game in their favor.  In fact, America has already ceded its sovereignty to international forces.  I believe at this stage, our bankruptcy and subjugation are done deals.  It's only a matter of months; maybe years.

N.I.C.E.  C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien saw what was coming.  Think of it: two men who dealt with rats and blood and mud in the goddamned trenches of World War I, who lived in actual dread of what might happen under Hitler . . . .

Global Economic Regime.  Saw perfectly well that the real threats to our tyranny would be corporations telling us N.I.C.E. things.  Not a free market system, mind you, but a fascist set up of police power plus banking power -- a stranglehold that can't be slipped.  They were old-fashioned conservatives, Lewis and Tolkien.  Like yours truly.  Believe me.  My kind can't run for office.  We're museum pieces.

The fact is I don't trust most of my fellow countrymen.   They're far more spoiled brat than American, and we're going to have to pay for that indulgence in some God-awful, self-generated Hell, while Muslims -- and Leftists, presumably -- cheer.

It's a madness we're talking about, not responsible politics.  This old Moose is depressed, but I'm accustomed to it: Irish genes and a good mind for history prepare you for the truth.

Get ready to sit out their nightmare.

David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a Brain Dead Liberal

Diana West: Death of the Grown-Up

Larrey Anderson: Constitutional Chess  Brilliant analysis of how the game of American government is set.

Jeffrey Goldberg on the See-No-Evil Elite

American Power: Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano Apologizes, Reassures Arab Regimes for Fort Hood Massacre

The Deadly Curse of PC

Obams's Garbage Can Memos II (GCM I)

My friend Ex-Seattle Lefty called me this morning.  Had I seen this Larry King Video on the Fort Hood Massacre?

Former POW Shoshana Johnson Destroys Tom Kenniff for 'Dangerous' Assumptions on Ft. Hood Shootings

How the Left Was Won.  Dr. Phil and former POW Shoshana Johnson both say JAG officer Tom Kenniff's questions about whether Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was motivated by ideology is "a terrible innuendo" and "irresponsible" (Dr. Phil) and "dangerous" (Shoshana).  Note how Kenniff, the lawyer, is attempting to engage in genuine argument; Shoshona goes Warm Fuzzy Liberal by shouting down questions; and Dr. Phil is a snob who doesn't accept unacceptable questions.  In sum, as my friend DAS points out, more evidence that the West has gone AWOL intellectually.  We are not able to freely discuss things.  It is, in fact, "dangerous" to suggest Hasan was perhaps a Jihadist, as I found out yesterday: one of my prosecutor friends at their regular office meeting was asked to not put this incident in those terms.  He was silenced.

By the Deadly Curse.

Secondhand PTSD Contagion Kills American Journalism

Had I read "Wretchard's brilliant posts" on political correctness, das asked? To wit, Fort Hood:

Can there be such a thing as treason in a multicultural society or is that so yesterday? If so, Lincoln was wrong: a house divided against itself can stand. In a heap about an inch high perhaps, but maybe that’s cool. And cool in the end may best describe a house with no walls. Maybe Cole Porter got it right after all. Anything goes.

And Physician, Heal Thyself:

The US News report says “Hasan came to the attention of law enforcement officials six months ago because of Internet postings about suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades. Investigators had not determined for certain whether Hasan was the author of the posting, and a formal investigation had not been opened before the shooting, law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity told the Associated Press.” The Army refused to rule out the possibility that Hasan was not acting alone.

"A Natural Leader."   As das points out, the recent slaying of Seattle PD Officer Timothy Brenton was in fact motivated by a form of toxic political correctness -- the kind you pick up from college professors:

Today's Portion: Sociopathy and Freedom

Ayn Rand at 100: Loved, hated, and Always Controversial, the Best-Selling Author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged is More Relevant than Ever.

Cal Thomas: Communism's Enablers and Excusers

Synchronicity on Steroids: the Age of Obama is stimulating excellent thinking about individual rights, the State, and whether or not freedom is the stewardship of the few or the aspiration of the many.  We leave in a heady moment.  You'd have to be oblivious or dishonest to not confess it.

In The Great Mystery, Steve McCann expresses a sequence of thought we often engage in: the root of America's problem is that we've had it too easy.  He makes to salient points that are worth repeating.  First, the essence of elitist isms:

The inherent basis of Marxism and socialism is no different from that of earlier monarchies -- the domination of a state by a select class or individual. Today's believers in these "-isms" are no different from those in the past who believed they were preordained to rule the masses. Modern society will not accept the concept of an authoritarian dictator or monarch; thus, a powerful central government, with its trappings of public legitimacy, serves as a substitute.

And then McCann gets to the heart of how or why Americans, in a sort of stupor, are allowing this revolutionary expansion of State power to occur:

Ronnie Sideliner

Obama Will Not Travel to Germany for 20th Anniversary of Fall of Berlin Wall

It is a coincidence not lost on political philosophers that the Wall fell on the same date as Kristallnacht in 1938, when the Nazi's — with lots of help from "otherwise decent people" — smashed windows and storefronts of Jewish homes and businesses, set fire to synagogues, and looted and plundered Jewish property, writing Adolf Hitler's preface for the Holocaust.  Suzanne Fields

Seems to me there's a fair amount of self-serving liberal revisioning going on where Reagan and the Berlin Wall are concerned.  I was looking over a fellow attorney's rather substantial shoulder today when I read the following:

20 years later, Reagan's role in bringing about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the peaceful end of the Cold War remains exaggerated, manipulated and misunderstood. To many of his conservative admirers, the challenge to Gorbachev in Berlin epitomized the toughness that made Reagan great: by refusing to compromise his core principles, he defeated communism and won the Cold War. But the truth is that Reagan was more adaptable, politically shrewd and open to compromise than either his champions or his critics prefer to admit. He may have called the Soviet Union an "evil empire," but he was not above negotiating with it. While others saw the enmity between the superpowers as immutable, he insisted that change was possible. And though today he is revered by foreign policy hawks, Reagan's greatest successes were achieved not through the use of force but by persuasion, dialogue and diplomacy. Conservatives Are Dumb, As We All Know 

The first argument is smarmy, stating explicitly that us Reagan supporters were all about pounding the table with no guile.  No guile?  Reagan was an Irishman.  That's an Irish trait: keep the room churned up over Aunt Mamie's teacakes while you charm the hostess out of her chastity.  No one sees it coming.  They just keep eating the cakes.

Suitius Emptius

Jesus Obamasattva

"If falsehood, like truth, had but one face, we would be more on equal terms. For we would consider the contrary of what the liar said to be certain. But the opposite of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field." -- French writer Michel Eyquem De Montaigne (1533-1592)

Narcissist, Empty Suit, or Radical?  "Too young for caution, and too old for fear", S.E. Cupp (?) takes a stab at the Obamanom in Barack Obama: Empty Vessel.  What Cupp concludes is actually more frightening than the other speculations:

So why all the radical friends and the radical proposals and the radical rhetoric if he’s not himself a radical? Because his lack of conviction and his inability to forge his own philosophical and theological identity, have made him incredibly susceptible to external influence and pressure. He is easily led. He is, as such, the perfect prospect for someone like Bill Ayers or Reverend Wright, whose radical agendas require vulnerable recruits who are malleable and willing. I don’t know if President Obama is a man of conviction, if he is a man of faith, or if he is the intellectual giant the left really wants him to be. He very well may be all of those things. But I haven’t seen proof of any of it yet, and neither have you, because there hasn’t been any.

So, I guess we'll have to start calling him Obamazombie, because that's what Cupp describes.  Why not?  (My best work yet was Narcisso and Malevola!  If anyone's funnier than me, please notify Iowahawk.)

How Democracies Become Tyrannies

How I Became a Pessimist

This is exactly what I think about our Teleprompter-in-Chief:

*He was elected only because a substantial number of Americans accept, on some level, that their rights come from government.  That's a basic misfire in our system.  That's how we've transitioned from a republic to a democracy.

*A second systemic misfire for America is the Amusing Ourselves to Death syndrome.  We elect entertainers more than leaders.  In fact, it is safe to say very few people under 50 know what a leader is (and that's a liberal cut), the strong exception being those with military backgrounds, where leadership is still generated and necessary.

*A third systemic misfire is the brutalization of education by America's indigenous Soviet mentality.

In sum, Obama was elected strictly because of the numbskull factor, i.e., people who worship the office of the presidency as some sort of godhead.  If you don't believe me, watch them rage when you question basic "liberal" assumptions.  They go mad.

Because they are.

The key to American freedom is separation of powers plus an ironclad committment to the Bill of Rights.  To the extent either of those is seriously compromised by our own deterioration, prepare to be Europeanized.

Where and How Will it End?

Lefward, Harch!

A Little Cheese with Your Whine?

Sinister Shadows

Obama's New World Order

As I lay down the other night I couldn't get to sleep until I wrote The Anti-Lincoln.  I couldn't help but feel alarm by what is a very obvious restriction of freedom -- in the name of justice -- where health care is concerned.  People like me do in fact want the best healthcare system in the world, but see a system wherein the federal government is the sole arbiter of rights and benefits as pretty much the final first step in liquidating America's freedoms -- I mean -- very literally -- a de facto anulment of the United States Constitution.  We haven't even touched the part about using a phony weather crisis as a means of roping the United States into a coercive international system.

America Signs Away Her Sovereignty to Run a Race Against Nothing 

I'm sure all this sounds alarmist and paranoid to the average person, but facts are facts, i.e., no one really wants to discuss facts.  You get called names if you resist the "natural progressive flow of things."

The Anti-Lincoln

The Emancipation Proclamation (1963); Inauguration Speech 1864

A subtlety not clearly understood by many, perhaps, is that Abraham Lincoln was not wild about unrestrained capitalism.  He did say:

“These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people.”

From what I know about Lincoln, it is safe to say that he abhorred man's inhumanity to man.  That, more than economic policy, was at the root of his revulsion to slavery.  For this, he was in accord with the Abolition movement, the folks in his time who were sometimes like our own "warm fuzzy liberals."  Perhaps their heart was always in the right place, but they weren't always solid players in the practical facts.  They were idealists, not pragmatists.

What is discussed less often is how, in many of Lincoln's earliest writings, he expressed many sentiments that a contemporary of his, Karl Marx, would agree with, to wit: that which a man earns with his hands is too often exploited by those who don't earn, i.e., "industry" is frequently thievery dressed up as virtue -- a public posturing, and a sleight of hand most likely to be found wherever one finds politicians and businessmen darting among the marble pillars.  Lincoln had a real problem with that.  He was not a huge fan of the corporate man of his day, though he did earn his money representing railroad clients.  Lincoln was a pragmatist.

Certainty of Death. Small Chance of Success. What Are We Waiting For?

Tolkien, Hitler and Nordic Heroism

The ideal . . . . is that all citizens shall be equal and shall be good, so that they shall all rule in turn, and all have an equal share of power; and therefore the friendship between them is also one of equality.  A Theory of Republican Character

That line from Gimli in Lord of the Rings, "Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?", came to me after I scanned John Jay's most recent effort(s), the title of which I have appropriately shortened to The Death of the Western World.  There may have been a time when John and I disagreed about this.  I have long predicted the self-destruction of the United States, even though I want to be contradicted.  Apparently John now shares my pessimism.

Here is a true tale of what happens when your leaders become like our contemporary Democrats:

From the first hour of the memorable twenty-ninth of May, disorder and rapine prevailed in Constantinople till the eighth hour of the same day, when the sultan himself passed in triumph through the gate of St. Romanus. …At the principal door of St. Sophia he alighted from his horse and entered the dome… By his command the metropolis of the Eastern church was transformed into a mosque…on the ensuing Friday, the muezzin, or crier, ascended the most lofty turret, and proclaimed the ezan, or public invitation, in the name of God and his prophet; the imam preached; and Mohammed the Second performed the namaz of prayer and thanksgiving on the great altar, where the Christian mysteries had so lately been celebrated before the last of the Caesars.  A Day That Will Live in Infamy

Blood on the Streets

Continue reading "Certainty of Death. Small Chance of Success. What Are We Waiting For?" »

Liberalguy and I were discussing the Oathkeepers promo video, and Chris Matthews.  First, the Oathkeepers:

Oath Keepers Declaration of Orders We Will NOT Obey

And then that manly patriot, Chris Matthews, came up:

It's the old line: We're expected to accept the Left's point of view; they make sure and call us Nazis if we attempt to express ours.  When Bush was in office, he was trying to destroy the constitution.  Now that Obama's in office, it's fair to use ridicule and slander against those who express fear or concern for the constitution.

Nice folks, those Warm Fuzzy Liberals!  So Principled!  Protectors of the Innocent!  Champions of the Strength!

Now . . . . if you really want to get depressed about our situation, check out Atlas Shrugs.

A God Who Hates.   While Our Dopey President Was Uttering Platitudes in Cairo, the Killing of Women in the Religion of Psycho Goes On Unabated.  No, I didn't watch the video in that link.  I already know Islam for what it is. 

A glimmer of hope: Atlas Interviews Wafa Sultan.

How many innocents will die before "progressives" own up to their stupidity and cowardice?

 

Eric Olsen Interviews Andrew Breitbart

One of the biggest -- I guess, the biggest -- change in my lifetime on the American landscape has been the destruction of intelligent conversation.  From the bumperstickerism of the Left to the reflex anti-governmentalism on the right, the shouting on Oprah and FOX News, et cetera, good old-fashioned conversation has gone to hell.  Why?  There's no one reason, so far as I can tell.

In this interview, Breitbart and Olsen are having an actual conversation, which makes it worth watching for that alone.  The other reason to watch it is that Breitbart threatens to bring back shows like the kind I saw when I was a kid:

Mike Wallace Interviews Mortimer Adler

And see an older post of mine: Gorged and Dangerous in which the loss of genuine communication is mourned.

The Rigors

Liberalguy and I were discussing the Oathkeepers promo video, and Chris Matthews.  First, the Oathkeepers:

Oath Keepers Declaration of Orders We Will NOT Obey

And then that manly patriot, Chris Matthews, came up:

It's the old line: We're expected to accept the Left's point of view; they make sure and call us Nazis if we attempt to express ours.  When Bush was in office, he was trying to destroy the constitution.  Now that Obama's in office, it's fair to use ridicule and slander against those who express fear or concern for the constitution.

Nice folks, those Warm Fuzzy Liberals!  So Principled!  Protectors of the Innocent!  Champions of the Strength!

Now . . . . if you really want to get depressed about our situation, check out Atlas Shrugs.

A God Who Hates.   While Our Dopey President Was Uttering Platitudes in Cairo, the Killing of Women in the Religion of Psycho Goes On Unabated.  No, I didn't watch the video in that link.  I already know Islam for what it is. 

A glimmer of hope: Atlas Interviews Wafa Sultan.

How many innocents will die before "progressives" own up to their stupidity and cowardice?

 

Soul Power

Eric Olsen Interviews Andrew Breitbart

One of the biggest -- I guess, the biggest -- change in my lifetime on the American landscape has been the destruction of intelligent conversation.  From the bumperstickerism of the Left to the reflex anti-governmentalism on the right, the shouting on Oprah and FOX News, et cetera, good old-fashioned conversation has gone to hell.  Why?  There's no one reason, so far as I can tell.

In this interview, Breitbart and Olsen are having an actual conversation, which makes it worth watching for that alone.  The other reason to watch it is that Breitbart threatens to bring back shows like the kind I saw when I was a kid:

Mike Wallace Interviews Mortimer Adler

And see an older post of mine: Gorged and Dangerous in which the loss of genuine communication is mourned.