Liberty's Torch

Saturday, August 10, 2019

Epstein Arkanicides

Found dead, no details.

A suicide risk, found dead. Let me guess - no witnesses, no cameras. The only thing that would make this more believable is multiple gunshots to the back of the head, with the gun missing.

I realized this was coming, but - dang, it's HURTFUL to be confronted with even MORE evidence that they think we'uns is stupid, and cannot connect the dots.

Sturdy Wisdoms: Qualifiers And Caveats

Remember what I wrote yesterday about returning this morning with something coherent?

I lied.

“Don’t draw to an inside straight,” they say. “Don’t open the bidding with less than 13 points,” they say. “Don’t hoard the Js and Ks hoping for a double-letter or double-word strike,” they say. And it’s good advice...most of the time. But there’s value in being unpredictable, too, or bluffs and fakes wouldn’t be so effective. Draw to an insight straight every once in a while. Open the bidding with a three-point hand every once in a while. It keeps ‘em on their toes.

Any Dungeons & Dragons veteran will tell you: Chaotic Amorals have more fun!

Debt is best avoided...most of the time. Debt is an anvil chained to your ankle. It saps your income and limits your choices. It pins you down: to your locale, to your job, to that layabout lounging on the sofa...well, perhaps I should say no more about that. But every now and then, it makes sense to incur a debt despite all those things.

A buddy of mine recently incurred a debt for a reason new to me. He borrowed to finance his divorce. Inasmuch as his wife had become verbally vicious and occasionally materially destructive toward him, I had to deem it a wise decision. In effect, he exchanged one debt for another, with preference going to the one he knew he would someday discharge.

What’s that you say? Borrow to afford a Corvette? Get serious. Yeah, I did it, but remember your mother’s favorite question: if all your friends were to jump off a bridge, would you do it too?

“It is better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” Words to live by, Gentle Reader...unless what you have to say is disruptive enough to create a dynamic you can exploit. Consider this example:

     Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden forcefully grabbed a young woman's arm on Thursday after she pressed him about how many genders exist and Biden seemed unable to provide an adequate response.
     The incident happened while Biden was campaigning at the "Political Soapbox" at the Iowa State Fair when a girl named Katie, who is a student in the state, approached Biden with questions.
     "How many genders are there?" Katie asked.
     "There are at least three," Biden responded.
     "What are they?" Katie asked.
     Biden becoming visibly angry, responded: "Don't play games with me, kid."

Sometimes one sharp question, properly timed, will let all the air out of some bloviating gasbag...and who deserves it more than Handsy Joseph “They’re gonna put y’all back in chains” Biden?

Some years ago I became embroiled in a legal dispute on behalf of my employer. I was asked to assist in finding a lawyer suited to the case. One lawyer I interviewed struck me as too full of himself – yes, lawyers have a tendency in that direction, but there are limits – so I asked him to comment on a piece of legal writing, a motion. Lawyers do a lot of writing...or they claim to do it while leaving it to their paralegals. The consequences can sometimes be funny – and useful.

The document was short. I’d edited it to omit the names of the lawyer involved and the case in controversy. I gave him a few minutes to familiarize himself with it and then asked what he thought of it. “Their position isn’t well stated. I would have put it completely differently,” he said at once.

I then handed him the original. It had his name proudly emblazoned across the top. “Really?” I said. “How?”

Why yes, I am a sneaky bastard. However did you guess?

I recently had an interesting exchange with long-time reader and friend Pascal. The subject was the distinction between cynicism and skepticism. Many Americans have become completely cynical about the political process and its fruits. (Make of that characterization what you will.) “They’re all thieves” has become almost as common a dismissal as is “I’ll get back to you on that” during a staff meeting. But armor-plated cynicism is seldom as useful, tactically, as skepticism.

The skeptic isn’t absolutely unpersuasible; he merely insists upon being convinced. You must do more than trumpet your own thinking to sway him. In particular, you must face his questions and answer them satisfactorily. In the process, he’ll discover much about you, including this supremely important item: whether you’re willing to allow that you might be wrong.

Thomas Sowell, one of the finest minds of our time, has suggested that three questions ought to be put to anyone who proposes a “solution” to some “problem:”

“How do you know?”
“Where’s your evidence?”
“How much will it cost?”

These are sharp questions that very few nostrum-peddlers and panjandra can answer. They tend to waffle, fudge, emit windy generalities, and (of course) change the subject. But there’s a fourth question I like rather a lot that really puts the screws to them:

“Let’s say I go along with you on this. If it doesn’t work out the way you claim it will, will you restore our rights and refund our money?”

I think that would make the overwhelming majority of them turn purple and explode, don’t you? Especially when the subject is “gun control.”

I know, I know: two “assorted” columns back to back is a bit much for the Resident Sage of Liberty’s Torch. Chalk it up to having many other things clogging my thoughts, including a host of as-yet-unresolved water-related problems. But as the proctologist said to his constipated patient, this too shall pass. In the meantime, have a nice day.

Friday, August 9, 2019

Brownian Notions

Look: even I, the foremost essayist since George Bernard Shaw if not Ecclesiastes, need to kick back now and then. This, plus the books, plus maintaining the Fortress against all enemies foreign and domestic can become too weighty for anyone. At such times, I just let my mind wander. (Yes, I put a tracker on it first; I’m not stupid.) If I’m lucky, I’ll stumble across a few snippets that might prove useful...or at any rate entertaining.

And you, Gentle Reader, are the beneficiary! (Don’t you feel special?)

To a sane man, women are a complete mystery.

I spent a little of yesterday reading about the affair of Mrs. Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII of England. Baffling! The man gave up a crown – the last Imperial crown in the world! – for a twice-divorced cast-off of two other men. She wasn’t a raving beauty. From the records, she was an imperious, demanding, never-satisfied social climber who resented Edward’s need to abdicate. Did she have that legendary left-handed thread, or what?

But even more baffling is this: She married him. Why? Third time’s the charm? He was completely besotted with her, so there was no possibility of his slipping away. Besides, if they’d remained unmarried, he could have kept his crown. Was she so envious of Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel that she had to do something as pointless as wedding a former king?

Women make no sense to men. Do they make sense to one another...or to themselves? Or is the whole notion misconceived?

While we’re on the subject of the fairer sex – and in that phrase is contained one of the supreme ironies of the English language – let’s talk about beauty and fashion.

Women constantly complain about clothing, fashion, and the “arbitrary standards of beauty.” Yet rare is the woman who doesn’t spend her entire disposable income (and as much of some poor guy’s DI as she can glom) on those things. Yes, even after she’s hooked her fish! And then what: she complains. The cosmetics don’t make her look at all like Angelina Jolie. The pretty clothes don’t flatter her the way they flatter the models in the magazine ads. The bras cut into her shoulders and the underside of her boobs. Wearing a thong is like having someone rub a bandsaw across her anus. And don’t get them started about the shoes. Oy!

But they continue to torment themselves with those things, throughout their lives...and when we ask why, given their complaints, the reply is always the same: “It’s for you, dear.”

The C.S.O. is no exception. I’d ask her if she’d consider staying at home, permanently naked, as a suitable alternative, but I’m no longer young and fleet of foot.

Since the publication of The Wise and the Mad, a number of readers have written to ask for more fiction featuring Fountain, the somewhat mysterious futanari character who first appeared in Innocents and who’s acquired more stature as the series has continued. I’m tempted to oblige, but I fear I’ve written myself into a corner with Fountain. She’s too innocent, too good in too many ways...and too powerful. She’s gotten out of my control. Readers of the earlier volumes in the Onteora Canon will recognize the pattern.

Fountain has begun to approach “Mary Sue” status. There’s only one thing to do with a character that close to perfection. I’ve already done it to one beloved character, and my (female) readers have castigated me for it ever since. (My male readers are mostly relieved that the little bastard is well and truly dead. Especially the married ones.) I don’t think I could bear to do it to a character as sweet and innocent as Fountain.

And now, a few words about politics and political affiliations for the hard-core addicts in the audience. These thoughts arose from this recent essay of Sarah Hoyt’s.

We’ve all heard stories about families fractured along political fault lines, such that even the closest of siblings are no longer willing to endure one another. I’m personally acquainted with two persons so afflicted. It’s a painful condition. At this time there’s no cure. The core of this bitter apple is contained in one of Ann Coulter’s pithiest observations:

Liberals hate religion because politics is a religion substitute for liberals and they can’t stand the competition. [From Slander: Liberal Lies about the American Right.]

Though snarky, it contains an enormous insight, the sort of unspeakable truth for which Coulter has justly become famous.

The left-liberal political creed has assumed the character of a religious faith. In its current state there’s no other way to approach it. It incorporates more internal contradictions and more commands to believe the unbelievable than any other faith except Islam. (Islam is for savages, and while left-liberals may occasionally sadden us, they do shower once a day. Most of them, anyway.) The point is that affiliations based on faith are inherently beyond argument. Thus, anyone who dares to dispute the left-liberal creed is attacking that which is sacred to its holders. We in the Right are would-be destroyers of all that’s holy to them.

There’s no getting along with someone on the other side of such a political divide. Note the word “political.” Members of differing non-political faiths can coexist if they agree on certain premises, which C. S. Lewis has called the Law of General Benevolence. But politics is about the quest for power over others: power whose foundation is the privilege of dealing death to those who refuse to submit. Left-liberals cannot allow anyone except their own True Believers to wield that power.

In their underappreciated book The Descent of Anansi, Larry Niven and Steven Barnes include an insightful exchange in which one of the antagonists says to another that religious warriors never admit defeat: they win or they die. That is the Left’s posture. It’s why no setback can convince them to lay down their arms...and it’s why we in the Right, who defend individual freedom, impartial justice under objective law, and America’s national sovereignty cannot allow them to win.

That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. It’s a fine Friday here on Long Island. The lawn needs cutting, the fences need repairs at several points, and the dogs need to be walked. With luck, I’ll be back tomorrow with something coherent. Meanwhile, enjoy your weekend.

YAMSBU - Yet, Another Mass Shooting, Blame Us

It never takes long - often, even before the bodies are declared dead.

"This is ALL Trump's Fault!"

"The GOP need to Shut Their Extremists UP!"

"Gun Control!"

The "experts" start pontificating about their favored solutions - take all guns away, pass MORE laws outlawing violence, add on EXTRA prosecution/civil penalties/H8 crime legislation, etc.

Larry Correia, author of Monster Hunter International (and many other books), has one of the best written answers to the gun-grabbers. No, his words will not persuade the passionately stupid, but little will. It is, however, important for everyone involved in the fight for the 2nd Amendment to familiarize themselves with the basic arguments.

The Dayton Shooter seems to have been a Lefty So, why is that Trump's fault?

The El Paso Shooter was, apparently, an environmental nut/ZPG preacher. Again, not Trump's thing, so why is it HIS fault?

For those eager to eliminate inconvenient Free Speech, I have a Double Salute.

Crude? Yes. But, Heartfelt.

Thursday, August 8, 2019

“Too Much Like Work!”

Don’t expect the Left or its mascot groups to solve their own problems. They’ve been told – relentlessly, for decades – that their problems aren’t really theirs to solve. No, that responsibility belongs elsewhere...probably to “the government.”

What’s that you say? If they created the problem – perhaps by letting the garbage pile up until their neighborhoods are unlivable from the filth and the rats – why shouldn’t they be expected to solve it? You’re asking the wrong guy, Gentle Reader. I’m with you! Still, they who dwell in such places simply won’t stir their stumps for their own sake, nor for the sake of their children.

Whatever the problem, it’s always someone else’s fault, and someone else’s responsibility. That’s the code of the Left.

Now and then, some well-meaning sort – usually a conservative, politically – picks up the Left’s slack:

     MAGA fan Scott Presler was tired of all the constant bickering in the media about Baltimore's numerous problems, so he personally decided to do something about it. Rather than simply complain or join the online chorus, he has organized a massive trash clean up of the city set to take place in the near future. Presler just wants to help out in any way that he can.
     "I’m so tired of people saying, ‘We should do this, we should do that'....I was just like, ‘I’ve had, it. I’m going to go to Baltimore, even if it’s just me on a street corner picking up trash,'" he told The Epoch Times.
     On Saturday, July 28, the activist told his online following that anybody who wanted to come to help clean up Baltimore was welcome. He encouraged Trump supporters to wear Trump gear but told The Epoch Times that anybody can participate when the event takes place.
     "I just want the citizens of Baltimore to see [that] we do care. We do give a darn. And at the end of the day, we’re all American and if ya’ll are struggling in Baltimore and you guys need help, then we’re going to be there for you," he said.

Presler isn’t all talk and no action; he followed through. Over 170 volunteers descended on one of the worst districts in West Baltimore, attacked the trash and filth with energy, and cleaned it out. And what followed that effort? Why, this, of course!

     Look, we appreciate anyone who is willing to roll up their sleeves to help Baltimore. More than 170 people came from all over the country and cleaned up nearly 12 tons of trash, according to Mr. Presler’s Twitter feed. He doesn’t post any photos of the totality of the trash, so we’ll have to take his word for it....
     Whatever he says his motives were, Mr. Presler’s presence in Baltimore reinforces the tired image of our failing urban cores. That the poor people in this dilapidated city can’t take care of their own neighborhoods and all the public officials around them have failed as well. The bureaucratic, all-talk Democrats strike again. If a crowd of volunteers could clean up 12 tons of trash in 12 hours, how incompetent and helpless must Baltimoreans be if they can’t manage it in decades, right?...
     The silver lining in all of this is that the residents of West Baltimore did get a much needed cleaning up. That is something that they deserve. Streets and alleyways free of trash go a long way in improving the psyche of a neighborhood and its residents. Not to mention deterring crime. Mr. Presler says that people around the country are planning similar clean up events in their own communities. A loud round of applause for that as well. Spiffier neighborhoods are good for everyone.
     We also hope Mr. Presler keeps his promise to return to Baltimore once a month. It would definitely give his motives more credibility. It might also give him better perspective about the city’s problems than any single visit can provide. Maybe it could even lead him and his followers to advocate for federal housing, health care, transportation, education, criminal justice, civil rights and anti-poverty policies aimed at urban communities.
     In the meantime, we’ll see how clean the neighborhood still is when he returns in September.

Allow me to say this, right out front: The editors of the Baltimore Sun are villainous scum. They deserve to be stripped naked and flogged through the streets of their own city. Here’s the giveaway, right from their own despicable editorial:

...the residents of West Baltimore did get a much needed cleaning up. That is something that they deserve.

They deserved it? By what right? By what standard? And from whom? Why weren’t those alleys clean in the first place? Who put them into the condition Presler’s volunteers found and remediated? Are these “editors,” who deserve to spend a month sleeping in such an alley, suggesting that all that trash and filth was brought there from afar? Are they suggesting that the precious “residents of West Baltimore” had no part in its creation – or that they had no responsibility to see to its removal?

We both know better, don’t we, Gentle Reader?

Kim Du Toit once wrote a visionary article about another benighted place: Let Africa Sink. He understood that savages cannot be civilized by external means – that they must rise into civilization by their own efforts. First World involvement with Africa, however well-meaning, has only deepened its problems by providing its savages with more and better tools of savagery.

So also with our domestic savages.

Know the savages by their works, Gentle Reader. Know them by what they produce...and by what they tolerate. Know them by the degeneration of their neighborhoods into crime-ridden, rat-infested middens. Know them by the conduct of their progeny. Know them by their complete spinelessness in the midst of such violence and squalor. Know them by the way they disavow all responsibility for those things. It’s always someone else’s responsibility to put it right.

But when someone else lends a hand, they denigrate it. They cast aspersions on the charitable one and question his motives. It makes them look bad, you see. It suggests that remediation was always possible – that they could have helped themselves, for the volunteers are persons much like themselves who merely took it upon themselves to act. It implies that they’re the irresponsible savages they appear to be – and they can’t have that.

The solution to Baltimore, and to comparable zones of savagery in other parts of the nation, is to wash our hands of them. Wall them off! No one should be allowed in or out, lest the savagery prove infectious and propagate to other regions. The residents are willing to tolerate crime and filth, so let them keep it to themselves. An occasional overflight – not too low, Chopper Dan; the natives throw stuff – would be useful for producing instructional videos to show our young’uns about the standards and behavior of savages.

Quoth Du Toit:

It sounds dreadful to say it, but if the entire African continent dissolves into a seething maelstrom of disease, famine and brutality, that’s just too damn bad. We have better things to do — sometimes, you just have to say, “Can’t do anything about it.”

Replace “African continent” with “city of Baltimore.” Repeat as necessary for other savage districts, here and elsewhere. Chill and serve cold.

Yes, I am perfectly serious.

Wednesday, August 7, 2019

What They Want

I’ve been having more and more days when it’s almost too difficult to write for this site. I’ve forbidden myself to use emotional maladies as an excuse for slacking, which is why my Gentle Readers still get (on average) an essay per day. That having been said, my stress level has been higher than ever lately. I have no reason to think it will recede any time soon.

My stress arises from politics and the political milieu itself. Much of what’s going on is enough to make my fists clench. It’s an inducement to lashing out. But a Certified Galactic Intellect doesn’t lash out lightly. He knows how to distinguish between temper tantrums and effective actions, and he strives always to do so. His problem...all right, enough referring to myself in the third person...my problem is that we in the Right have deliberately forbidden ourselves to take effective action, while our enemies’ actions escalate ever higher and become ever more effective.

Have a few links:

Add to the above the recent reports that AntiFa monsters are preparing “milkshakes” filled with caustics and balloons filled with hydrochloric acid to throw at free-speech demonstrators. Apropos of which, has anyone given five seconds’ thought to why such things are AntiFa’s weapons of choice? Anyone? Bueller?

Exactly! Because they don’t look like weapons. They give the police no “probable cause” under which to detain and interrogate them, as would guns or knives. So they can tote dangerous substances around, hurl them at their ideological adversaries, cause great harm, and get away with it. Genius, madness, or a fine blend of the two?

The deterrent effect of Leftists’ tactics upon persons who might otherwise be minded to raise their voices for freedom of expression, or in defense of President Trump and his administration, cannot be measured. How does one determine the magnitude of something that didn’t happen? How does one count the bodies of those who refrained from attending a free-speech rally? Still, ordinary good sense suggests that the effect is significant.

Pressure is building. The Left is preparing a “Battle of the Bulge.” Meanwhile “our” legislators and executives are maneuvering to betray us on gun rights, immigration and border control, federal spending, and foreign military interventions. It can’t lead to anything good. Growing general awareness of these things among decent Americans must eventually cause an eruption.

My fear is that we’ll soon see violence on a scale unprecedented in peacetime. What do you fear, Gentle Reader?

I’m a thinker and a writer. It’s pretty much all I do. It’s pretty much all I can do, given my age and declining health. I’m not about to don camo, break out the arsenal, mount my stallion, ride into the middle of the street, and shout “follow me!” But I’m not the only American disturbed to the point of fear and righteous anger over these developments...am I?

Who out there is doing anything effective against the would-be tyrants of the Left and their agitators? Who out there is doing anything to keep “our” legislators and executives faithful to their supposed promises?

At this point The Left is winning. Despite de jure control of the federal government by the GOP, they’re getting what they want. Present trends continuing, the results of the 2020 elections won’t matter. They’re making inroads against us on all the most important issues of the day, while “our” officials wring their hands and plead with the Left to “compromise.”

The Left is supported by several major donors, by the media, by the Deep State, by AntiFa, and by external forces that would be pleased to see the United States collapse into chaos. Where is the Right’s support? Who stands for the Constitution? Who stands for freedom?

With more than just lip service, that is.

There are days on which I emit something like the above, return to my senses, and delete it. This will not be one of them.

Something drastic is required of us, if we’re to have a nation worthy of respect and defense. I think we’re at the point where counteraction twice as loud and violent as the tactics of the Left is what remains to us. Yes, that means doxxings, harassments, assaults, and armed attacks on those who would attack us. They’ve gotten away with it; so can we – and with apologies to the shade of Jim Morrison, we have both the guns and the numbers.

There: I’ve said it. Give them back exactly what they’ve given us, in doubled quantity and with doubled fury. Make them feel unsafe in their homes. “Milkshake” them – use chocolate – and let them wonder whether the stains will ever come out of their clothes. Don’t bother yourself about what the media will say; they’re already against us. They report on any harassment or violence against us as if we caused it.

Above all, give up on civilizing them. Our impotent reliance upon passive rhetoric is another element in what they want: it freezes us in place while they advance.

How could things get any worse?

That’s enough for this morning, I think. Excuse me while I harvest a fresh piece of rebar to chew on. And do have a nice day.

Tuesday, August 6, 2019

The Cycle Of Desire Part 2: Fulfillment

Desires are subject to a dynamic of their own. Any given individual’s desires occupy a priority scheme that dictates which ones will receive his immediate attention. Such a scheme is mutable. It often goes through several transformations in the course of a man’s life as desires are added to it and subtracted from it.

We’re all aware that new desires can emerge according to developments both foreseen and unforeseen. (No one desired a computer before 1950, a smartphone before 1990, or Christina Hendricks before Mad Men.) What causes a desire to be removed from such a list?

While there may be other forces, the one that functions most effectively to quench a desire is fulfillment. Once fulfilled, the typical desire ceases to motivate its possessor, at least for a time. That seems to be the pattern for nearly all the kinds of desires individuals have known.

Nearly all. Not all, by any means:

     He who lusts for power over others is inherently evil. I trust this requires no great argument in its justification. The evil man, once he has some degree of power, will use it to acquire more, for power is a drug that doesn’t sate. However, the enjoyment of power requires that it be used. For, as O’Brien said to Winston in 1984, to enjoy your power, you must be actually coercing your victim at the moment:
     ‘How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?’
     Winston thought. ‘By making him suffer,’ he said.
     ‘Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.’

Ponder that for a moment. Perhaps it’s the second time you’ve seen it here, or the third, or the twentieth. Do it anyway.

Every society has been afflicted by persons whose sole, unflagging desire is for power over others. Ours is not an exception. Nor are such persons always obvious about their aims.

It’s not widely known that Franklin D. Roosevelt campaigned for the presidency on a platform of reduced government spending, generally smaller government, and the maintenance of a strong, gold-backed dollar. Yet that is the case. How FDR actually governed was, of course, a hundred eighty degrees from those tenets. How much of that complete departure from stated positions and priorities was because he had intended it from the first, and how much arose from the ambitions of his “brain trust,” we cannot know. But we can know this: FDR intended to remain president until he died. By the end of his second term, he had become convinced that the office was his by right – that no one else was fit to occupy it.

Power was what FDR most wanted in this world. That marked him as one who must not get it. But once he was in the Oval Office, in command of the vast executive powers of the federal government, it was too late to prevent it.

Today there are many persons as avid for complete, unopposable power over these United States as was FDR. Twenty-odd such persons (and some of them are very odd indeed) are currently contending for the Democrat Party’s nomination in 2000. Perhaps one of them will be the nominee; perhaps some “dark horse” will arise late in the campaign to snatch the nod. Regardless of the identity of the nominee, he will be a person who desires power above all other things, for that is what it takes to be a Democrat of great prominence in our time.

The moral “should” be “obvious.”

Barack Obama greatly desired to disarm American citizens. He edged toward trying it through executive order at several points, but held back from the attempt. We cannot know what inhibited him. We can know this: It is the development the Left desires above all others.

I wrote not long ago that the Left is desperate, and that desperate people do desperate things. The unprecedented success of the Trump Administration, the Democrat Party’s realization of the inadequacy of its current “leaders,” and the impending storm of indictments it fears over the “Russian collusion” hoax and what powered it, are raising that desperation to new heights. The probability of a desperation play, a “political Hail Mary” from the Left, is higher than ever.

The imposition of true totalitarian rule upon Americans requires that we first be disarmed. Unfortunately for the Left, far too many Americans are aware of this. It has been said that the First Amendment depends upon the maintenance of the rights protected by the Second. It is equally true that the Second Amendment depends upon the awareness of events and trends made possible by the First. Thus, both those guarantees are under intense attack. Soon both might be the focus of a “Reichstag fire” event, after which the Left hopes the clamor for their suspension will be too great to resist.

If you’re not armed and ready to defend those rights, you don’t have much time left to get there.

The key to all of this is the recognition that the desire for power, once fulfilled, only excites that desire to a higher magnitude. Other desires are not like that. For that reason we cannot hope to appease those who want power over us. History speaks to this in a voice of thunder.

Be armed and ready. Know your neighbors and what they stand for, and make sure they know the same about you. And stay alert for power-lusters making false promises of peace and harmony if you’ll just give up a few “obsolete” rights. They’re more desperate than ever before.

Monday, August 5, 2019

The Cycle Of Desire

"In this life no one can fulfill his longing, nor can any creature satisfy man’s desire. Only God satisfies, he infinitely exceeds all other pleasures. That is why man can rest in nothing but God." – St. Thomas Aquinas

I have a hot flash for you, Gentle Reader. It’s in several parts, so please bear with me as I assemble and elucidate it.

Part One: Man possesses free will. He is individually motivated, and decides on his course of action as an individual.

Part Two: Desires are individual and arbitrary. That applies even to what we imagine to be “needs.” Not everyone sees them or prioritizes them the same way.

Part Three: While we possess acute perceptions and the faculty of reason, no power on Earth is capable of compelling us to use them. When it is possible for an individual to absolve or exculpate himself for some misfortune, he is likely to do so regardless of the facts. It is in the nature of things that he will then look for another agency to blame for his unhappiness.

Part Four: The numbers matter. As Mankind expands, the sub-percentages of Mankind that:

Choose to do evil; or:
Are insane and do evil out of their insanity;

...will increase in proportion.

Part Five: Those most ardent for power over others are those most likely to get it – and they’re exactly the sort of people who must be prevented from obtaining it. History speaks to this truth with an eloquence and a force that cannot be gainsaid without eliminating all knowledge of history.

These are well established characteristics of Homo sapiens terrestrialis and the reality it occupies. No scheme, regardless of its overt aim, that contradicts them can possibly work to general betterment. Neither is it possible to eliminate adversity, tragedy, or atrocity from our experiences without eliminating Mankind itself...and let it be said clearly and concisely that I oppose that particular route to Utopia.

Wait here while I fetch more coffee.

     “My lord?” Fountain murmured from his right side.
     “Yes, dear?”
     “Is Miss Rachel a special person?”
     Sokoloff smiled. “Yes, she is. Very special. She’s a great scientist who’s done wonderful things. She’s helped a lot of people.”
     “What is a scientist?”
     He chose his words carefully. “A person who works to add to what we know.”
     “Why would anyone want to hurt such a person?”
     “Fountain, there are people who want to hurt anyone we could name. There are people who simply want to hurt someone, it doesn’t matter who. We don’t always know the reasons. Sometimes they don’t either.”
     [From The Wise and the Mad]

Larry Sokoloff speaks an unimpeachable truth in the above: There are people who simply want to hurt other people. Some have reasons...or think they do. Others are aware that their real desire is to destroy, to wound, and to kill. Two such persons committed a pair of mass murders just yesterday, in El Paso, TX and Dayton, OH.

Those were not unprecedented events. Neither were they likely to be the last events of their kind. Once under way, there was only one way to halt them: by the countervailing use of extreme violence against their perpetrators. However, no one in the zones of impact was equipped to do so.

What do the Five Postulates of the previous section tell you about what occurred and what power-seekers have said in the aftermath? Do they hint at a means of anticipating and completely preventing such atrocities, or do they suggest that the effort would be futile? If the latter, do they suggest a policy by which such events might be more effectively limited than they were in yesterday’s slaughters? What course would a well-intentioned Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch adopt, assuming he is not prevented from doing so by external forces, to ready himself for such a possibility?

Yes, these are questions we’ve faced and answered before. But just now the power-seekers of the Left are thick on the ground and more vociferous than usual. Campaign season, don’t y’know. So it’s time to reassert the answers with additional force.

Remember the prevalence of agendaism:

     The overarching principle of agendaism is that with the right tactics, the right publicity, and the right "slant," an event can be made to serve any agenda whatsoever, as long as the tactics are properly fitted to the event.
     There are numerous agendaists in public life today. Broadly speaking, any politically active person, whether he's a public official or a private citizen, who is indissolubly attached to his agenda, such that neither reason nor evidence could possibly sway him from it, is an agendaist. Some, of course, are more effective than others, but the defining characteristic is that unbreakable attachment to a set of unchanging political goals.
     Why would anyone be so fixated on a specific set of goals, even in the teeth of contrary reasoning and evidence? Unclear. Perhaps the only answer available is Aristotelian: action to advance those goals is what makes him happy, or what he thinks will make him happy. Always remember The Algorithm:

Select a technique that you think will get you what you think you want.
Will this technique require you to lose body parts, go to jail, or burn in Hell?

If so, return to step 1.
If not, proceed to step 3.

Do a little of it.
Are you at your goal, approaching it, or receding from it?

If at your goal, stop.
If approaching, return to step 3.
If receding, return to step 1.

     ...and bear in mind that "what you think you want" is not covered by the above; it's beyond all rational investigation.
     Gun control is an important item on many agendaists' agendas. Never mind that criminals are the least likely persons on Earth to comply with a gun ban or gun registration law. Never mind that removing weapons from the hands of the peaceable and law-abiding cannot possibly bring about a reduction in violent crimes or crimes against property. Never mind that disarming a man renders him helpless before an armed predator. A gun-control agendaist seeks to disarm us peones because he thinks it will make him happy to have done so. You cannot persuade him otherwise.
     Agendaists are like that.

It was true when I first wrote it. It remains true today.

The title of this piece might have puzzled you up to now. Long time Gentle Readers are aware of my quirkiness with titles. Nevertheless, this one has a sharp focus.

There are people who simply want to hurt other people. The rest of us – the men of good will – must be prepared to act against them wherever they might turn up. There are people who want to deprive us of the means by which we might do that. We must oppose those people and their gropings for power over us by any and all means necessary. For the latter group is in league with the former: perhaps not consciously but in ultimate effect, owing to the results of The Algorithm as they have run it.

We desire peace, safety, and public civility. They desire chaos, suffering, and bloodshed...or are willing to tolerate it as long as it will serve their purposes. Each of us decides, acts, and evaluates according to The Algorithm. Note that the mass murderers only appear where we have been forced to go defenseless. By now we should have learned the lesson.

As for the power-seekers who have allied themselves de facto with those who seek to harm others, there is no imaginable rebuff, however severe, that they do not deserve. Force them to confront our displeasure: publicly, baldly, and in the strongest possible terms. Tell them that the blood of the victims of El Paso and Dayton is on their hands. Forbid them to pontificate or self-exculpate. Weigh in upon them that they possess armed guards, whereas the rest of us aren’t even permitted to defend ourselves.

The stakes are at their maximum.

Some Nasty, Lifelong Diseases Around

This report, from Germany, about a major outbreak of TB.

Peeps, Americans don't know about TB. It's not just a little respiratory 'thing' that can be zapped with antibiotics, followed by a quick cure.

It can be a lifelong infection, that cripples, spreads, diminishes overall health, limits occupational choices and travel, and has the potential to wipe out most of the 19th -21st century advances.

America was lucky, both in the willingness to dedicate the money to wiping out TB as the 'normal' condition of living in the slums, and in being able to keep out those affected through rigorous screening and quarantine of potential immigrants.

Those methods didn't stop TB completely, but it did keep it from infecting beyond random outbreaks over the last 100 years. In my grandparents' lifetime, TB went from common, to extremely rare in America.

It wasn't scientific miracle drugs, just good old-fashioned public hygiene, good nursing of those affected, and rigorous and meticulous quarantine/sanitation procedures.

We're in danger of a major disease outbreak right now. We cannot continue to accept, and release into America, those coming in that could be Patient Zero on a pandemic like not seen since this Black Death - which, it must be reminded, killed about 1/3 of the WORLD'S population.

Some previous pandemics here.

How epidemics changed history.

Sunday, August 4, 2019

Wait For The Sequel

Recently, a young Trump supporter from Virginia named Scott Presler decided to act rather than merely point at a problem and speak about it. What was his target? Why, Baltimore, of course:

     MAGA fan Scott Presler was tired of all the constant bickering in the media about Baltimore's numerous problems, so he personally decided to do something about it. Rather than simply complain or join the online chorus, he has organized a massive trash clean up of the city set to take place in the near future. Presler just wants to help out in any way that he can.
     "I’m so tired of people saying, ‘We should do this, we should do that'....I was just like, ‘I’ve had, it. I’m going to go to Baltimore, even if it’s just me on a street corner picking up trash,'" he told The Epoch Times.
     On Saturday, July 28, the activist told his online following that anybody who wanted to come to help clean up Baltimore was welcome. He encouraged Trump supporters to wear Trump gear but told The Epoch Times that anybody can participate when the event takes place.
     "I just want the citizens of Baltimore to see [that] we do care. We do give a darn. And at the end of the day, we’re all American and if ya’ll are struggling in Baltimore and you guys need help, then we’re going to be there for you," he said.
     "I don’t want this to be an anti-Rep. Cummings event. That’s not what this is about. This is about helping our fellow American citizens," he added.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Everyone loves a noble volunteer effort to “help our fellow American citizens.” And how could anyone say a harsh word about the man who organizes one? Don’t expect to hear one from your humble Curmudgeon. But I do have some observations to make about the matter.

First, as this effort is likely to be heavy with conservatives and Trump supporters – hey, we’re the people who believe in doing things personally rather than delegating them to the Omnipotent State, remember? – a response by Antifa is virtually guaranteed. So Presler has to “keep the specifics under wraps for now.” That won’t preclude such a response completely, though it might help to reduce its magnitude. Given the political leanings of the city government of Baltimore, what provisions will the police make to prevent Antifa’s specialty: violence against people in the Right?

Second, I’d like to know how many Baltimore residents will take part in the cleanup, both as an absolute tally and as a percentage of the total cleanup force. It’s their city; they “should” participate more enthusiastically than an outsider from Virginia Beach, VA. Indeed, it should be Baltimore residents organizing and energizing the effort. But when it gets under way, my expectation is that the Baltimorean fraction of the cleanup effort is paltry, close to nonexistent.

Third and last for this morning’s tirade, what will really matter most is what follows the effort – i.e., what becomes of the improved districts once the volunteers deem their effort complete and go home. Mind you, the volunteers, however public-spirited they may be, won’t completely empty Baltimore of its public trash. They certainly won’t exterminate all the rats that plague the city. But I have little doubt that they’ll bring about a visible improvement in some delimited sector. What then?

You see, all that trash and waste didn’t materialize by spontaneous creation. It was produced and distributed by humans, as are all human products. Moreover, the humans that did so are the previous and current residents of Baltimore. Will more trash and waste replace that which the volunteers remove? If so, how quickly – and what will be done about it then?

These are questions all decent Americans should be asking, both now and after the cleanup effort is over.

Cities attract predators. They also attract those comfortable with the centralization of services that characterize cities. A city in chaos, such as Baltimore, will be full of persons who find the conditions there acceptable. After all, they accept them today. They’re doing little to nothing to redress them.

So Scott Presler’s well-meaning volunteers might make a difference for the moment. But that they’ll make a difference that persists is doubtful. Indeed, they might encourage the very persons responsible for Baltimore’s trash problems to assume that “someone else will always clean up after us.” That, be it remembered, is part of the nature of a city: centralized, municipalized trash collection and disposal. Sensible persons are already aware of this. That probably includes Scott Presler. So what is he hoping to achieve?

I don’t know the gentleman. I have no idea of his ultimate objectives. But if he’s thinking clearly, he can only be hoping to embarrass Baltimoreans into taking care of their own city. What hope is there of doing so for this filthy, crime-ridden, utterly disordered city?

I can’t see it. I’m skeptical about the efficacy of an attempt to embarrass a city filled with welfare clients, petty criminals, drug abusers, and Democrats into better behavior. But I’m not cynical enough to say that it can’t happen. So I intend to watch the sequel as closely as possible.

In this regard, the news media will be critical. It’s in the character of our contemporary media to suppress stories that reflect badly on blacks, Democrats, and the Left. If they cease to cover developments in the portion of Baltimore most affected by Presler’s volunteers, that alone will tell a very grim tale. Let’s hope there are enough citizen journalists to fill the gap, as the sequel will tell us much about the city of Baltimore, those who live there, and those who rail against criticism of them as “racist” that all Americans ought to know.

Saturday, August 3, 2019

A Hopeful Look Forward

Now and then, the young do learn from the errors of their elders. Consider this example:

(Courtesy of the incomparable Charles Hill.)

Hilde Lysiak, if you’ve never before encountered her name, is quite an accomplished young woman. She’s a heroine of mine, despite her youth, for the reason set out so clearly in the tweet above: She maintains that a reporter is one who reports the news, nothing else.

There aren’t many genuine reporters these days. They all seem to want to be something more – call ‘em “influencers” – but to maintain the facade of “objectivity” that once went with the occupational title of “reporter.”

As others have said in their own idioms, one Hilde Lysiak is enough to renew the spirit of hope crushed by a thousand headphone-wearing, smartphone-addicted teen layabouts and whiners. But this is mostly prefatory.

I’ve cited this valuable article more than once. Its author was a colleague of mine, back when. A fine, courteous, Christian gentleman was he. More to the point, he was virtually alone in noting that “journalism” in the age of the national broadcast network – today we must include the many cable networks as well – had morphed into something untrustworthy. Upon first encountering his opinion, I resolved to investigate the genesis of the thing.

I concluded that much of the disease of contemporary journalism can be traced to the Twentieth Century’s several wars, especially World Wars I and II. Those wars had the effect of eclipsing all other events in significance to the average news-consumer. (They also had the effect of centralizing virtually all political power in Washington, D.C., but you already knew that.) “The news” was war news, and damned little of anything else. Certainly local events such as Hilde Lysiak has reported them since 2014 didn’t pose much competition.

Prior to the Spanish-American War, major news conglomerates were unknown. That war, the first of the “big” wars in which the United States was involved, was the horse the Hearst newspapers rode to national prominence – and dominance. As the years passed, “the news” steadily became less about local and more about things of national significance. The national audience became the audience to which the “journalist” directed his efforts.

It’s been said with some justice that politics is Hollywood for ugly people. This is just as true for the news industry, with the proviso that he whose face is to appear on the television screen can’t afford to be too unsightly. As “the news” grew ever more national, the requirements laid upon the purveyor of “the news” approached those of the entertainer ever more closely.

Add to the above that as “the news” became ever more about national developments, the news-makers became ever more the cadre of officeholders in the nation’s capital. For many reasons, such persons must limit the access others have to them. That added a critical skill to the “journalist’s” bag: he had to be able to find a way through the barriers between the common citizen and the federal official. Unfortunately, there’s a serious downside: access is nearly always accomplished through partisan sycophancy.

In this year of Our Lord 2019, local news organs – more exactly, news media that concentrate on local and state-level developments – have all but died off completely. What remain of them are mainly shopping circulars such as Yankee Trader and Pennysaver News. Mind you, those organs perform a function of modest importance, but they’re not full-blooded replacements for the papers that once chronicled the events that directly affect one’s neighborhood, village, county, and state.

But just as “Trees do not grow to the sky” (Baron Philippe de Rothschild), neither does any trend last forever. A counter-trend of citizen distrust in “the news” has been in progress for some years and seems to be rising close to a breakthrough level. The opportunity this presents for young, sincere reporters such as Hilde Lysiak “should” be “obvious.”

Whether we will see a renaissance in locally focused news media is as yet unclear. What is clear is that the national news media are losing credibility, and with it the loyalty of the private news-consumer. Whether the opportunities created by their gradual slide from grace will be exploited, and by whom, we have yet to see. But in these United States it’s a rare thing for a demand not to evoke a supply...and it seems to these old eyes that there’s a demand for actual reporting, of the sort to which Hilde Lysiak has committed herself. At any rate, we can hope.

Our moral bankruptcy.

America’s willful ignorance when it comes to the use of its own military exposes the moral bankruptcy at the heart of its political culture. Even worse, it makes future wars all but inevitable.
If no one can remember a war [Iraq] that ended merely nine years ago, and there’s little room for Tulsi Gabbard in the Democratic primary, how will the country react the next time a president, and the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declare that they have no choice but to remove a threat?^[1]

Cost of Iraq war: $1.1 trillion. Justification: dishonest. Human cost: off the chart. American self-examination: nonexistent. American arrogance and illegal and unconstitutional warmongering: balls to the wall. Tulsi Gabbard: despised by the War Party.

Notes
^[1] "Tulsi: A Living Reminder of Iraq’s Liars and Apologists. Gabbard calls out the betrayers; Dems try to forget their heroes Mueller and Biden are among them." By David Masciotra, The American Conservative, 8/2/19.

Friday, August 2, 2019

Will White Women Control the Outcome of 2020?

AP certainly thinks so - perhaps, HOPES so.

There have been many stories about women's - particularly the White women's - antipathy towards Trump. According to the article, women have an emotional reaction to his perceived crudity. Apparently, that distaste overwhelms any ability to analyze his performance on the job.

Style is the determining factor.

Funnily, actual crude behavior - JFK's and Clinton's boorish behavior with random women, Ted Kennedy's and Chris Dodd's "sandwiching" a waitress, or Johnson's practice of insisting on conducting conversations with subordinates while engaging in bowel evacuation (actually forcing them to be in the toilet with him) - seem not to bother these women.

But Trump bothers them.

I'm not convinced. Yesterday, there was a "news" report about the horrible situation of husbands/boyfriends who support Trump, and whose wives are adamantly anti-Trump. The girlfriend (engaged, but not married) was very emotional in her responses, indicating that she perceived Trump as a personal threat to HER.

Her fiancee, on the other hand, was quietly matter-of-fact about his support of the president. The more emotional she became, the cooler he responded.

I've no doubt that this is a typical scenario - the Trump supporter making their choice on performance, the anti-Trump having an over-the-top emotional reaction. It's a peculiarly female (or quasi-female) response - Mumsy is going to be SO upset unless you fall in line with what she wants!

That Which Is Not Free

     "There is an old song which asserts that 'the best things in life are free.' Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted... and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears.
     "Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain."
     [Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers]

The above quote, one of the most significant statements of Heinlein’s personal convictions from one of his most influential novels, contains both a great truth and a misleading implication. That’s not a criticism of the conviction, mind you; the old boy sometimes stumbled on his way to his destination, as do we all...but he almost always arrived where he intended, whereas many of us do not.

I’m going to leave that there for a bit, and turn to another focus. This one comes our way via Mark “Mad Dog” Sherman. It’s a look behind the Left’s “free stuff” curtain:

Democrats see your paycheck as fair game for their endless social-improvement projects. Every Democrat vying for the White House backs federal legislation that would guarantee workers nearly three months of paid family medical leave every year.
Sounds wonderful. We all favor caring for newborns and sick relatives. And working nine months while getting paid for 12 will appeal to many voters. The issue is who foots the bill for paid leave. These pols want to force you to pay with a hefty federal payroll tax.

Please read the whole thing. Yes, the article is a year old. Even so, as an illustration of Heinlein’s central truth – “Nothing of value is free” – it’s a gem.

If Smith gets paid for work he isn’t doing, who’s providing the pay? Who’s producing the goods and / or services that make it possible for Smith’s employer to pay him for doing nothing? It won’t be the Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnibenevolent State. Someone has to pick up the tab.

Yet there is a freebie in the scenario. It’s just one the proponents of “free stuff from the government” don’t want you to see. And it’s very, very valuable – to them.

Take a moment over it. The effort is worthwhile; I promise you that.

To return to the Heinlein quote, the misleading implication is contained in the very same, beautifully concise phrase that expresses his central truth:

“Nothing of value is free.”

That depends on who gets what’s been purchased. If Smith pays but Jones gets the product while Smith goes uncompensated, the product is free to Jones. Taken one step further, the price Smith pays – either his labor or remuneration he acquired at some point as compensation for his labor – is free to Jones. Causing such divisions of labor from valued reward, with the reward being diverted to someone other than the laborer, is the central motivation of all political action. Politics exists for that reason alone!

Franz Oppenheimer noted this truth in The State, his magnum opus on the emergence of governments. We can see it in operation in every activity of governments, all of which are paid for by Us the People through taxation, conscription, or a combination thereof.

But the naive and the witless – a demographic that looms uncomfortably large in today’s America – swallow Democrats’ promises of “free stuff” uncritically, as if there were a fairy godmother who provides the federal government with good stuff to give us cost-free. That says more about the failure of American education than anything else that comes to mind at this admittedly early hour.

In one of my early short stories, there’s an illustrative exchange between a recently dead semi-layabout and the Great Whatever. The semi-layabout, Richard Schiffers, at one point in his middle years receives a mysterious credit-card-like item that bears only his name and the legend “20% Discount.” Though mystified by its provenance or the nature of the “account,” he joyfully puts to use. He’s never had any idea where the Card came from, or who stood behind it...but now that his life has ended, he seeks to know:

     Schiffers’s foretaste of the solitude to follow would have unhinged a living man. He feared with all his soul the approaching moment when the Presence would remove itself, but there was only one more question he could frame: the one he had actively suppressed for nearly fifteen years.
     - Tell me of the Card.
     It was tailored to your configuration of desires, strengths, weaknesses and insights. Presented with such an opportunity, a creature like yourself will either come to an understanding of the temptation, or surrender to the fulfillments available. Every intelligence that lives, that has ever lived, and that ever will live must face such a test.
     - How did I fail?
     In three ways: You never grasped the essence of your own nature, the things that are human. You failed to think enough about the basic features of your world to understand their functions. You failed to consider the implications of the existence of the Card, while you used it unceasingly.
     Schiffers could only feel incomprehension.
     - But what were these essences, these implications? You speak as if they ought to have been crystal clear, but during my life nothing was ever perfectly clear.
     Nonsense. Was it not clear that all things have a cost? Did you not know that the ultimate cost of all things is labor, physical or mental? Could you not have deduced that to demand a discount from others as a matter of right is to assert ownership of their labor, making them your slaves? Could you not have deduced that in a world with unbreakable natural laws, such as yours, you would never have been permitted a privilege such as the Card without being required to pay?
     - But how did I pay?
     With your own life. Each use of the Card caused a portion to be deducted from your lifespan.

What Schiffers received at a discount had to come from somewhere: specifically, the uncompensated labor of others. It only appeared “free” to him because the identities of those uncompensated others were hidden from him. And so it is with governments.

In the midst of his agonies and losses, Job cries out that “the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” And it is so. But the State giveth not; it only taketh away. It may redistribute part of what it takes – never the whole of it – but it cannot honestly claim to be the true source of the benefits it showers on it chosen beneficiaries.

Your tax dollars and conscripted, uncompensated labor are free to those at the levers of State power. They who seek to get their hands on those levers, and who promise you “free stuff” in any form as an inducement to vote for them, are vying for a position once prominent on slaveholding plantations, one far too many young Americans have never been taught about: The Overseer.

The Overseer was the whipholder who watched over the Slaves. He ensured that they attended to their uncompensated labors in the interest of their Master. He was generously paid for that “service,” out of the proceeds of the Slaves’ labors. It was a much-prized post in the antebellum years. In its new guise, it’s prized even more highly today. That the Master is a multitude of “beneficiaries,” and that the Slaves are effectively all of us, makes no essential difference.

“Nothing of value is free”...except to our Overseers: they who control the State. Remember that as Campaign 2020 progresses.

Thursday, August 1, 2019

Perfect Justice

     The clerks turned to humor to kill time as they waited to learn what was going on. One of [Lewis] Powell’s clerks, disturbed by his boss’s memo the day before, drafted a phony opinion and gave it very limited circulation to the clerks’ dining room. “We believe the principle of executive privilege is important....This cases is different from all others that will come before the Court. The Court should be guided by a solicitous concern for the effective discharge of the President’s duties and the dignity of his high office.”
     “However, we’re deciding this case differently because Nixon is a crook and somebody ought to throw the son of a bitch in jail.”
     [Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong, The Brethren, on the Supreme Court’s deliberations over the recordings of conversations in the Oval Office demanded by special prosecutor Leon Jaworski, in United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974).]

That forty-five year old case is considered one of the most significant Supreme Court cases of our time: specifically because it upheld the principle that no one, not even a sitting president, is above the law. The clerk’s joking “opinion” above illustrates what could result from the opposite principle: the notion that because “we” have decided a priori that some individual is “a crook,” he therefore lacks the protection of the law.

After all, that’s one of the defining differences between “a government of laws” and “a government of men:” what the law explicitly dictates is superior to anyone’s opinions or convictions, regardless of the identity and stature of both the accuser and the accused. The strict maintenance of that rule is essential to the general conviction that “a government of laws” is what we have.

It’s not really that way, of course. Prosecutorial discretion, police deceit and prevarication, evidence fiddling, “trial science,” the vagaries of courtroom combat, and other factors combine to render American justice something less than perfect. Of course, it should surprise no one that a human institution fails to be perfect in any sense. Humans aren’t perfect, so how could a human institution be better than those who create, maintain, and operate it? The flaws in our justice system are among the things we must tolerate to have a justice system at all.

Having read all that, you may be wondering why the next segment of this screed concerns itself with baseball.

Baseball is my favorite among the team sports. Being a lifelong New Yorker, I’ve been following the Yankees for as long as I’ve followed the game. When I lament the “Yankee strike zone,” a common complaint of this year’s team, other Yankee fans will immediately know what I’m talking about.

Only yesterday, the C.S.O., as aware of the problem as I, brought this article to my attention:

The Atlantic League announced Tuesday that their experiment with an automated strike zone will continue for the remainder of the season, starting Thursday night. The system mostly worked; players and managers were happy with it; even the umpire who gave it its inaugural run at the Atlantic League All-Star Game earlier this month thinks it’s a pretty swell idea, if for no other reason than it will get him off the hook with fans:
“People here in York love yelling at me when they think I miss a pitch. That part of the game is going to go away a little bit,” deBrauwere said. “I’m happy to blame the computer.”

An umpire is willing to give up part of his imperial authority to avert the ire of the fans! Will wonders never cease? But I digress.

A number of years ago, in an episode of C.S.I., lab chief Gil Grissom [played by William Peterson] opined that what fans most love about organized sports is the possibility of perfect justice: a set of objective rules that are enforced without reference to anyone’s identity. Needless to say, the “possibility” is somewhat diluted by the use of human observer-enforcers: referees and umpires. This is especially so in baseball, where it seems that every umpire has his own idiosyncratic definition of the strike zone. Because of this particular problem, many fans have shown an interest in the possibility that strikes and balls could be called by an automated system, just as are line calls in tennis.

However, the possibility has a significant number of opponents. Many of them oppose the idea because it would “take some of the human element out of the game.” (No, they’re not all members of an umpire’s union.)

Sort of cuts across the idea of “perfect justice,” doesn’t it? Over time, the robot ump could be brought far closer to perfection than any fallible human. Umpires are a support component to the game, not participants in it. Why would anyone prefer the less accurate human to the more accurate machine?

I shan’t trouble to argue the case. I merely note it to illustrate that “perfection,” however conceived or defined, isn’t always at the top of supposedly reasonable persons’ priorities.

     “It didn’t have to happen.”
     I waited. He’d told me the story two hours earlier. He’d sat there in his kitchen, silent and motionless, ever since. I’d almost despaired of getting him to talk at all.
     “I should have ruined him. I should have put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.”
     “As I recall, you nearly did.”
     His head jerked up. “How did you know?”
     I drained my coffee and shoved the mug aside. “What do you think brought you to my attention?”
     “I didn’t see you.”
     I smiled.
     He rose from the table and went to the kitchen window, leaned on the sill and stared through the gloom at the lilacs and azaleas that adorned the northern run of his fence.
     “You were wrong, Malcolm. Kings haven’t died off. The world has just raised the qualifications to a level no one can reach. You’d have to have a heart of stone just to deal with Onteora.”
     “Justice is seldom perfect, Louis. Nor is it always possible to make it perfect. Tell me something: have you ever taken a life?”
     He whirled, color flooding into his deathly pale face.
     “Have you?”
     “A human life?” he croaked.
     “That’s the only kind a king concerns himself with.”
     He started to answer, but the words caught in his throat. He stumbled over it once, twice, then slumped back into his seat at the table and clutched at his temples.
     “If you have,” I said as gently as I could, “then you know the dilemma. There is no way to restore the victims of certain kinds of abuses. Murder. Torture. Rape. Nothing works, not vengeance, not money, not time and not love. But the thing has to be dealt with all the same. You do it, and you point to it, and the world learns that as long as you’re alive and capable, there are some lines that it’s death to cross. And you learn that punishing the worst offenses takes nearly as much from a king as from the miscreants he executes.”
     The ghosts behind his eyes wrestled me for his soul.
     “My religion...”
     “Speaks of eternal life, doesn’t it?”
     He stared at me in that assessing way from our first encounter.
     “If you believe it, then you believe that God has the final word. And every religion, not just yours, preaches the importance of justice.” I rose. It was time for him to be alone. “Let God do His job, Louis. Yours is hard enough.”
     I let myself out.
     [From Chosen One]

As matters stand in this year of Our Lord 2019, machines have no emotions and no innate preferences. They operate according to the rules embedded in their construction and (in computerized cases) their programming. They certainly don’t feel sympathy, compassion, anger, or “closure.”

In our justice system, we appear to prefer humans, together with their human emotions and preferences, to be the operators and ultimate deciders. However, experiments have suggested that specific changes to trial procedures would reduce or eliminate the emotional and preferential factors from jury trials, resulting in more accurate verdicts. Those changes, according to one viewpoint, would bring the jury trial closer to the (admittedly only asymptotically approachable) ideal of perfection. Yet the justice system resists them.

It resists them for several reasons, but above all because no two persons under the veil of time can agree, absolutely and without qualification, on what constitutes “perfect justice” even in a single, completely specified case. We want human emotion in play, because it holds out the possibility of mercy – or vengeance – that supersedes the objective requirements of the law. Indeed, the possibility is integral to our individual, partly conscious and partly not, conception of “justice.”

Here’s another take on “justice,” from a science fiction writer of some modest altitude:

     “I assure you that the essence of the robot mind lies in a completely literal interpretation of the universe. It recognizes no spirit in the First Law, only the letter. The simple models you have on Earth may have their First Law so overlaid with additional safeguards that, to be sure, they may well be incapable of threatening a human. An advanced model such as R. Daneel is another matter. If I gather the situation correctly, Daneel’s threat was necessary to prevent a riot. It was intended then to prevent harm to human beings. He was obeying the First Law, not defying it.”
     Baley squirmed inwardly, but maintained a tight external calm. It would go hard, but he would match this Spacer at his own game.
     He said, “You may counter each point separately, but they add up just the same. Last evening in our discussion of the so-called murder, this alleged robot claimed that he had been converted into a detective by the installation of a new drive into his positronic circuits. A drive, if you please, for justice.”
     “I’ll vouch for that,” said Fastolfe. “It was done to him three days ago under my own supervision.”
     “A drive for justice? Justice, Dr. Fastolfe, is an abstraction. Only a human being can use the term.”
     “If you define ‘justice’ in such a way that it is an abstraction, if you say that it is the rendering of each man his due, that it is adhering to the right, or anything of the sort, I grant you your argument, Mr. Baley. A human understanding of abstractions cannot be built into a positronic brain in the present state of our knowledge.”
     “You admit that, then— as an expert in robotics?”
     “Certainly. The question is, what did R. Daneel mean by using the term ‘justice’?”
     “From the context of our conversation, he meant what you and I and any human being would mean, but what no robot could mean.”
     “Why don’t you ask him, Mr. Baley, to define the term?”
     Baley felt a certain loss of confidence. He turned to R. Daneel. “Well?”
     “Yes, Elijah?”
     “What is your definition of justice?”
     “Justice, Elijah, is that which exists when all the laws are enforced.”
     Fastolfe nodded. “A good definition, Mr. Baley, for a robot. The desire to see all laws enforced has been built into R. Daneel, now. Justice is a very concrete term to him since it is based on law enforcement, which is in turn based upon the existence of specific and definite laws. There is nothing abstract about it. A human being can recognize the fact that, on the basis of an abstract moral code, some laws may be bad ones and their enforcement unjust. What do you say, R. Daneel?”
     “An unjust law,” said R. Daneel evenly, “is a contradiction in terms.”
     “To a robot it is, Mr. Baley. So you see, you mustn’t confuse your justice and R. Daneel’s.”
     [Isaac Asimov. The Caves of Steel]

(Yes, my memory really is that good.)

And so we have the seeming contradiction between a human desire for “perfect justice” and a resolute human avoidance of getting any closer to the possibility...at least, if it would require us to “take some of the human element out of the game.” It’s not irrational but supra-rational. It allows that “justice” in R. Daneel Olivaw’s sense is not always what we seek, whether for ourselves as individuals or for our society.

Just something to think about over your Cheerios^®.

Same Old, Same Old

Instead of Russia, Russia, Russia during the upcoming election campaigns, we may start hearing China, China, China.

Eh. Probably not, as the Anti-Trump contingent wants to keep China's publicly stated, and probably illegal attempt to influence the 2020 election out of the headlines. Should be a piece of cake, given the slavish obedience of the Leftist Media.

Legislators who despise us. And love "the world."

Foreigners arrive in a never-ending torrent and law enforcement and the courts do nothing. Citizens are powerless to punish our officials for failing to protect us against criminal, parasitic foreigners.

Legislators berate us and bend over backwards to accommodate foreigners and "the larger immigration-industrial-complex." They are representing the entire world, not us.

Peak insanity and betrayal. Not really gutlessness (see previous) but you see that as well.

Read Ilana Mercer's excellent take on immigration, sovereignty, and government betrayal at "We Aren’t Americans; We ARE the World (Part II)." The Unz Review, 7/26/19.

Gutless Republicans.

Few representatives will fight to enforce these [immigration] laws, or retaliate when judges routinely nullify immigration law.
Rather, Republicans spend their term on their knees, obsequiously apologizing, beating on breast, for the rare instances where immigration law is enforced.

"We Aren’t Americans; We ARE the World (Part II)." By Ilana Mercer, The Unz Review, 7/26/19.

Wednesday, July 31, 2019

The Pension Melt-Down Could be Horrific!

Many teachers' and public employees pensions are heavily invested in foreign companies. Ironically, many of those same pensions refuse to invest in American companies that don't meet their exacting standards for 'PC' Socially Responsible Investing.

Which, if part of my income didn't depend on a teachers' pension plan (actually 2 different plans with 3 income streams - mine and my husband's), might be amusing.

China is, after our tariff imposition, hurting. Not sure if they are hurting bad enough to cause a crash of their markets/companies, but - definitely hurting.

While American investors may unwittingly have their money tied up in Chinese companies, American regulators aren’t allowed to look at their books; Beijing regards them as “state secrets.” U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has introduced legislation to delist companies from American exchanges that fail to meet our accounting and disclosure requirements.

For this action, and a few others, Rubio should be praised. He's made some good moves while Senator, and seems to have a real future with Conservatives.

Make of This What You Will

I found this on Sarah Hoyt's site, According to Hoyt. Scroll down to the part about Facebook.

If true, this is chilling, and even more reason for breaking up this monopoly before the next election.