Assorted

     Break out the hats and hooters! It’s Fran’s first “assorted” column of the year!

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1. Predictions You Can Trust.

     Over at David Drake’s Place, there’s a citation of a “psychic” straight out of the Life of Brian:

     ...we asked Psychic Nikki to shed some light on the year ahead. This is what she sees for the coming year.

     "The world will still be a tumultuous place[.]"
     [...]
     "[T]he stock market is going to be up and down."
     [...]
     "Extreme weather events will continue...The weather is very mixed up."
     [...]
     “People want to be happier.”

     The boldness of those predictions so awed me that I simply had to read the cited article – and it’s every bit as stunning. Psychic Nikki’s brazen certainty reminds me powerfully of the late, great Criswell... and of your Curmudgeon, of course.

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2. From One Who Should Know.

     Brock Townsend cites some refreshingly candid opinions from a man we expect will know something about the subject:

     Deputy Chief Border Patrol Agent Roy Villarea told Fox News on Monday that in his 30 years as an agent, he has never witnessed what agents are facing today at the border....

     Villarea said that “there is no singular solution” when it comes to curbing illegal immigration, and what they need “is a combination of factors.”

     He added that what he would like to see is, “a border infrastructure, roads that provide access to the border, technology, ground sensors, night vision cameras, drones and then, of course, wall or fencing to secure the border.”

     Many serious problems require a multi-pronged solution, if they can be solved at all. This is a soluble problem, provided we don’t insist on perfect impenetrability. Villarea has been part of the ongoing border-control effort for some time. He’s seen components of the solution he favors working as advertised. I’m inclined to trust his judgment.

     Of course, the Democrats’ approach to illegal immigration is to deny that it can be solved to any degree. When confronted by evidence to the contrary, they retreat to assertions that are equivalent to declaring that it’s not a problem at all.

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3. “Kinder And Gentler” Totalitarianism.

     One of the less well known victims of the Soviet regime died recently. His name was Zhores Medvedev. He was a biologist and a dissident. Like several other, better known dissidents, the regime did its best to silence him without actually killing him. He endured psychiatric torture from which his twin brother Roy, a historian and journalist, labored mightily, and ultimately successfully, to free him. The episode is well chronicled in their book A Question of Madness.

     Firehand points us to a chilling article about the pseudointellectual genesis of the Soviets’ “repression by psychiatry” technique:

     The warped thought process that led to the perversion and weaponization of psychiatry in the Soviet Union can be traced back to the communist icon and thought leader Karl Marx. Marx propounded a spurious doctrine known as “polylogism” to justify stifling dissent. According to Marx, different classes of people had different structures in their minds. Thus, Marx declared the bourgeoisie to be mentally defective because they were inherently unable to comprehend Marx’s (allegedly) revelatory and progressive theories. Since they were, in a sense, insane, there was no valid reason for communists to “waste time” arguing with them. On the contrary, communists were justified in not only ignoring or suppressing bourgeois ideas but in liquidating the entire bourgeois class.

     The practice of categorizing one’s enemies as “insane” became a ready tool of suppression in the Soviet state founded by Lenin and developed under Stalin. The USSR’s infamous secret police energetically wielded quack psychiatry as a club with which to destroy political dissidents.

     A dramatization of the Soviet technique is embedded in Martin Sheen’s 1982 movie Enigma.

     The “polylogism” canard actually has deeper roots than just Marx. Consider Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s invocation of “false consciousness” to explain how large sectors of society could deviate from his uber-conception of the “general will.” This sort of “logic” has manifested itself in the “Repressive Tolerance” thesis of Herbert Marcuse. The contemporary Left uses a vulgarization of the theses of Marcuse / Marx / Rousseau to justify the suppression, by whatever means are expedient, of pro-freedom / anti-collectivist opinions.

     Here’s Firehand’s evaluation:

     [E]very time some leftist starts calling opponents mentally ill or insane, it makes me want to buy another box of ammo. In case they decide I need 'treatment'.

     Indeed.

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4. The Ongoing Coup Against The Trump Administration.

     My Gentle Readers are probably aware that Senator-elect and failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney has already attacked President Trump. This must be seen in the light of the “conservative” NeverTrump / Establishmentarian efforts to delegitimize the upstart in the Oval Office:

     Don’t get so caught up in a furor over Senator-elect Mitt Romney writing a political hit piece against the President of the United States that we forget to look at the big picture....No, this attack was done with forethought and specific intent.

     Think rationally and logically. Why write the op-ed at all? What is the purpose behind writing the op-ed? What does the author have to gain by writing the op-ed?…

     And specifically, given the nature of the familial relationship between republican Senator Romney and RNC Chairwoman [Ronna] McDaniel [Romney’s niece], not to mention the political profession therein, with the senator writing something highly damaging; well, there’s obviously a larger intended purpose on Romney’s end of the equation.

     Romney has been one of the least politically successful Republican “big names” since World War II. He’s run for office seven times and has won only twice. His 2012 loss to Barack Hussein Obama was a bitter disappointment to Americans in the Right who’d been persuaded to back him, despite powerful misgivings, as “the only candidate with a chance of winning.” Donald Trump’s brilliant 2015-16 campaign must have made him feel like a fool as well as a failure, especially after Romney derided Trump in widely read print and pixels.

     Now he’s in the U.S. Senate. I wouldn’t bet on his readiness to support any element of the Trump agenda. Stay tuned.

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5. The Masks Are Off Dept.

     The black race hucksters and hustlers don’t even try to pretend any longer:

     You may think that you work hard for your possessions, but Black Lives Matter organizer Ashleigh Shackelford thinks otherwise. In fact, she doesn’t think you own them at all.

     Nothing you have is yours. Let me be clear: Nothing you have is yours. Also, Let me be see through: Reparations are not donations, because we are not your charity, tax write off, or good deed for the day. You are living off of stolen resources, stolen land, exploited labor, appropriated culture and the murder of our people. Nothing you have is yours.

     There are Americans – white Americans – who dismiss this as unimportant, “they don’t really mean it” rhetoric. Insanely, there are other white Americans who agree with Shackelford and her fellow travelers. They would denounce these sentiments as “genocide.”

     They have no idea what’s coming...what’s getting closer with every day that passes...and it’s all on the shoulders of Shackelford, her colleagues in black racialist incitement, and those who grant them the slightest scintilla of respect.

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     That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. I continue to hope that good morals and good sense will make a triumphant comeback in this newborn year. But hope is a fragile thing. Enough crap has already come around on 2019’s carousel to shake my hope: not irrevocably, but it required a bit of firming up.

     We can do better. Indeed, we must.

     Pray.