Washington Rebel

Year-end thoughts

 
Everyone, right, left, take a breather.

Americans, no matter how vehement our disagreements--we are not going to start shooting at each other. Remember: we’re just a bunch of guys (and gals) sitting at plastic keyboards writing down our thoughts.  If our American reality is going to disintegrate there are many, many intermediate stages we will go through. We will become Latin American for starters. But it is hard for me to see that happening. Americans do not smash glass bottles and glue the flame-jagged ends atop thick walls surrounding our property. We do not despise the poor. We are a compassionate and generous people and we do care about each other.

For you conservatives (or ex-leftys!) who would get inflamed by every leftist gesture from the White House or the media, take a breather. The left would have us live a totally politicized life. That’s the left’s game. Conservatives are clumsy when it comes to formulating rigid sets of ideals; we involved in life and life activities beyond mere politics. And worse, the left doesn’t know how to critique the right. They always get it wrong by the limits of their curiosity and the grandeur of their vanity. For the left we are all the religious right. The left never stops to reflect that their most solid political bloc--black Americans--pretty much affirm the same religious beliefs as the evil religious right.

I get irritated with the National Review crowd when they sit around compiling lists of The Top 20 Great Conservative Novels or The Top 20 Conservative Movies. This is nonsense. Conservatives can lay claim to the great works of art of the ages because they are about and for man (i.e., humankind). The left will always and forever diminish its own productions with politics. In what way is Tolstoy not conservative? He refuses to hate any of his characters--more actively, Tolstoy loves his characters enough to invest them with life beyond mere political stances. William F. Buckley started the National Review because he knew that conservatives needed a vehicle to work out the ideals of conservatism. But Buckley had vast interests beyond politics: reading, writing, sailing, conversation, ideas, music, religion; he was an immensely alive man who, while conservative, political, never made a religion out of politics.

Finally remember: there is no American Dream. To be an American is to dream and to live a life filled with dreams.

Dire Straits -- Skateaway

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:

Obama's Garbage Can Memos

 
MEMO To: President Obama
From: ESL, Seattle
Re: trashing Fox News Corp

(Photo: Reggie Love)

It's Tuesday. Do You Know Where Your Principles Are?

Liberty, Private Property, Consent of the Governed, Equality, Natural Rights, Religious Freedom, Rule of Law, Constitutionalism.  All the Stuff Congress "Gave" Us . . . . .

Give Those Rights Viagra!  Hope stirs in the electorate.

Obama Democrats are learning, painfully, that campaigning without George W. Bush is baffling, frustrating and scary. Worse, it offers a preview of what the congressional campaigning will be like next year. One Obama doorbell ringer, working neighborhoods in Northern Virginia for Creigh Deeds, says even the promise of free pizza.  Wesley Pruden, Halloween for Democrats

Here's a man who knows the difference between rights and ass-kissing:

Former President George W. Bush told more than 11,000 people at the Fort Worth Get Motivated seminar that he was confident he made the right decisions as president, even if it hurt his popularity.

Tell that to all the reporters who will smirk at the Get Motivated seminar they missed.  Say, why doesn't someone rename that seminar to, Never Surrender, Never Retreat?  They're in Texas, for God's sake.

Speaking of Profiles in Courage, The circulation figures for the top 25 dailies in the US are out, and they're horrifying.

Will Rebels never cease?  HuffPo and Vanity Fair send that bastion of nonconformity, Sean Penn, to Interview Fidel Castro.  This brings tears to my eyes!  The patriotism!  The courage!  Who else but Sean Penn could go that long without an independent thought?!

Dreary encrusted leftoidal Seattle: a town without a new idea in 35 years

Dreary encrusted leftoidal Seattle: a town without a new idea in 35 years

Ex Seattle-Lefty Speaks Out

I wish I could say more unambiguously that I am still a man of the left, but I can't. I may still feel like a man of the left but I know I don't pass muster with the contemporary left, especially Seattle's auto-pilot version of the same. After 9/11 I didn't like liberals embracing the weirdest ideas of the 1970s Socialist Workers Party, to wit, America brought 9/11 upon herself; I was repulsed by liberals agreeing, in spirit if not in word, with the jihadist attackers that, yes, fundamentally, America deserved it.

So the door kicked open. Or, put another way, I had gained some distance on my former thinking. Now I behold Seattle's encrusted leftism, and brain-dead liberalism everywhere.

Exhibit A: Seattle's National Public Radio feed, KUOW. Have you listened to a KUOW morning interview program lately?

Monday morning: we learn that Seattle water is fatally polluted by an exogenous charcoal bug. It will kill all the fish in a year and us in five.

Tuesday morning: we learn that our local air is fatally polluted by a local smelting firm. Unfortunately the firms' owners' pockets are deeply crammed with local politicians and there is nothing to be done. We'll all be dead in three years. In the second half of the program BBC World reports that an Egyptian waiter hates America. As does a French farmer and a Syrian newspaper editor. Basically the world hates America but maybe, sigh, just maybe, president Obama can get the world to like us. You know, the way it did back in...ah...you know......ah.....

Wednesday morning: we learn that impacted uranium is being carried across the city by airborne viruses and rain drops. Evil corporations are to blame and we'll all be dead in five years.

 

Thursday morning: we learn Seattle's parks are hopelessly, uniformly infected with Soylent Blue Virus. This is the legacy of Seattle's merciless and corporate logging past that has stayed in the soil and infected it beyond remediation. All our children will be dead in five years.

Friday morning: Group discussion by local liberal media eggheads. Seattle councilman X hates councilwoman Y. Seattle corporations are evil. Jihadists are indeed bad but not as bad as republicans. Republicans are evil. We'll all be dead in five years.

I picture an ordinary Seattle housewife, say a stay-at-home or part-time working mom, living in a liberal neighborhood like Ravenna. How does she keep from going stark raving mad after listening to this downer, politically correct drivel day after day? It seems to me the republican party could reconstitute itself by just enjoying life everyday. Make that your next political platform: We kind of enjoy life a bit! You'd have it all over the contemporary left. Instead, you go over to National Review Online and you've got all the conservative commentators fretfully picking over the 20 Best Conservative Movies of all time.