So Crazy It Just Might Work!

I was reading this article about housing density, and I had a sudden epiphany!

Why not insist that government-supported housing agencies locate their projects in towns that are decreasing in population, preferably in areas closer to rural towns?

In fact, if those individuals who are so moved manage to find work, have a program to re-purpose formerly leased cars that have been reconditioned as a temporary lease to the formerly poor? Those individuals already resident may also qualify for that program.

This could be a win-win, giving new workers a reliable car, enabling them to create a work history, and increasing the tax base of a dying town. Half of the lease payments can be kept for the worker to use for a down payment on another car, or to buy it outright/get a loan for the rest. They can't get the payments unless they continue to be employed/if laid off, continue to vigorously look for other work.

Put locals in charge of the program, preferably NOT the touchy-feely types who will certify EVERYONE qualified for the program. Couple the program with regular meetings with job counselors who will teach basic business etiquette, critique performance, and smooth the way to self-sustainability.

Marriage Matters - Imagine That!

This won't be news to many who are readers here, but, apparently, married families contribute to the stability of a neighborhood.

I know, I know - it's ridiculous to think that intact families are better than broken or single-parent families. But, that's what the data suggests.

The Nature Of Proof

     There are days I want to throw up my hands and write off Mankind in its entirety. Too many people think with their wishes – or their ambitions – rather than with their faculty of reason. Too many people substitute their tastes for rational argument. And far too many people are willing to ignore the plain meanings of words if those meanings obstruct their purposes.

     You can’t advance on any goal a man has some chance of reaching by doing such things. Moreover, it doesn’t take a lot of smarts to see that. So why?

     Motivation, according to Robert C. Townsend, is “a door locked from within.” Smith can’t motivate Jones to clean up his ratiocinative act. But it’s possible, on occasion, to jar a man out of his mental habits by asking an unpleasantly pointed question: “How’s that working out for you?”

     So your Curmudgeon is off on another hopeless quest. Blame it on my inner Jeremiah.

---

     Proof is a difficult concept for many persons, being mathematical in nature. Its definition admits of no compromises; to prove a proposition, one must follow the rules of proof strictly and unbendingly. Unless all the requirements of proof have been satisfied, no assertion can be regarded as proven.

     Every proof, regardless of the proposition at issue, has certain mandatory components:

1. The established, previously agreed-upon postulates of the formal system within which the proposition is to be proved.
2. One or more statements of initial conditions.
3. One or more statements of deduction or induction that couple the initial conditions to the postulates, leading toward the desired conclusion.

     A sound proof establishes that its conclusion is true beyond all possibility of dispute – that if it were untrue, one or more of the postulates of the system would perforce be false! That would contradict the requirements of a formal system.

     (A quick tangent: Induction is a chancy thing outside the realm of purely mathematical reasoning. For non-mathematical purposes, we can omit consideration of it. There have been too many black swans to make use of induction as a method of proof in ordinary, non-mathematical life.)

     But actual life in our spatiotemporal universe, in which time passes and things happen, is not a formal system. There are no postulates upon which everyone agrees. Even the statement that there is such a thing as objective reality, independent of anyone’s opinions about it, is disputed by some – and if that be so, then what prospect is there for proving anything else?

     Proof, therefore, does not apply to propositions about non-mathematical matters. What does apply is another, almost equally misunderstood concept: confidence.

---

     The investigative technique by which we acquire knowledge, or something akin to it, about the real world is called scientific method. It was first formalized by Francis Bacon some four centuries ago and has been shown to be a reliable – indeed, the only reliable – method for acquiring new knowledge about the spatiotemporal world.

     Scientific method is nicely, if casually, depicted by the graphic below:

     Note that there is no termination – no “escape from the loop” – to the method. Regardless of the proposition(s) at issue, nothing is ever regarded as “proven.” The gathering of relevant data and the comparison thereof to the predictions made by the proposition(s) continue without limit...because a single false prediction is enough to falsify any proposition.

     Predictions that come true increase our confidence in the proposition being investigated. The more such predictions we make, and the more varied our techniques for observation, testing, and measurement, the greater our confidence rises. But it never attains certainty.

     Isaac Newton’s “classical” law of gravity acquired more and more confidence over the three centuries that followed his original formulation. The arrival of unprecedentedly sensitive observational and measurement techniques in the early Twentieth Century called it into dispute. The dispute could not be resolved until a certain young physicist, at that time employed by the German postal service, proposed a new formulation that would:

1. Replicate the predictions of classical gravity with equal precision;
2. Outperform the predictions of classical gravity around objects of very large mass.

     General relativity equaled classical gravity in those realms of measurement where classical gravity held firm. However, it produced results classical gravity could not match in the newly explored realms of very large mass where measurement had previously been unable to go. Thus, general relativity superseded classical gravity as the dominant conception of gravitation. At this time it remains dominant, which is to say: scientists’ confidence in it has not been disturbed by contradictory results in any sphere.

     However, no scientist regards general relativity as having been proved. There remain realms to which Mankind’s investigative powers are unequal, at least for now. Perhaps some far-future experiment will reveal that at masses beyond what we can currently investigate, general relativity’s predictions don’t hold true. But for the moment that’s only a hazy possibility.

---

     There’s more to be said about the concept of proof and why it fails to apply to the spatiotemporal or “real” world. But this is enough for starters. The salient point here is that human ability is limited: far too limited for us to be certain about very much. Indeed, justifiable certainty is confined to personal things: personal observations, personal emotions, and personal experiences. All else is within the domain of the legitimately disputed.

     And so we come back to the virtue it’s currently most fashionable to slough: humility. Or as Josh Billings put it, “It’s better not to know so much than to know so many things that aren’t so.”

     More anon.

The Myths Of Yesteryear: A Sunday Rumination

     I was listening to an old Steely Dan album, Aja, when the subject for today’s piece occurred to me. The track titled “Home at Last” planted the seed. It crept upon me little by little, as if it needed time to mature. Here’s the lyric:

I know this super highway
This bright familiar sun
I guess that I'm the lucky one
Who wrote that tired sea song
Set on this peaceful shore
You think you've heard this one before

Well the danger on the rocks is surely past
Still I remain tied to the mast
Could it be that I have found my home at last
Home at last

She serves the smooth retsina
She keeps me safe and warm
It's just the calm before the storm
Call in my reservation
So long hey thanks my friend
I guess I'll try my luck again

Well the danger on the rocks is surely past
Still I remain tied to the mast
Could it be that I have found my home at last
Home at last

[Becker and Fagin, of course.]

     You need a wee bit of education to recognize the genes of this tale: It’s Odysseus’s homeward journey to Ithaca and Penelope after the destruction of Troy. His adventures on the way included an important temptation: his desire to hear – and survive hearing – the legendary song of the Sirens, of whom it had been said that no sailor who heard that song could survive. Odysseus, a clever sort, had his men tie him to the mast of his ship, and then stop their ears with wax. Thus he contrived to hear the unearthly melody that had caused uncounted sailors to sail toward the deadly rocks upon which the Sirens perched...and upon which those sailors met their doom.

     Even so, the great warrior almost broke free from his bonds before his ship had exited the danger zone. The Sirens, you see, were a torment created by the gods, by which they contrived to persuade mortal men of the folly of aspiring to divine things. The gods of Olympus were like that: vain, capricious, self-absorbed, and by no means benevolently disposed toward Mankind. Indeed, the Greek mythos did not posit that the Olympians had a creators’ relationship with mortal men. They assumed the two estates to have quite different geneses.

     Though Odysseus’s valor and cleverness eventually convert the Olympians who sought his destruction into admirers, even allies, nevertheless several start out as foes determined to work his downfall. Nothing could more succinctly express the strange relationship between the Olympian pantheon and the race of men. It bore no trace of parents’ love for their children. It was more a matter of the gods’ occasional exploitation and torment of men, counterbalanced by men’s heroism and cleverness as required.

     The Roman mythos is parallel to that of the Greeks, despite a few additions such as the lares and penates that are irrelevant to the larger scheme. The Norse mythos is far grimmer. Yet there are persons alive today who advocate a return to the worship of those mythical beings as preferable to the Christian faith.

     Forgive me for this, Gentle Reader, but: Jesus wept.

---

     It’s not possible to argue a resistant man into accepting a religious proposition. Religious propositions are both unverifiable and unfalsifiable. While there might exist evidence for them, there will always be a way to explain such evidence away. There’s copious evidence for the life of Jesus, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection, but all of it can be dismissed by one determined to do so.

     Yet some who dismiss Christianity and the evidence for it are willing to buy into one or another of those older myths. Why? What evidence is there for any of them, except for the historical records that establish that others long dead believed them? Most important of all, what’s the point?

     Not one of the ancient mythologies involves a Supreme Being benevolently disposed toward Mankind. Not one holds out the possibility of an afterlife reward, or of afterlife penalties for wrongdoing. The majority of them were both fatalistic and bloodily savage. Their “gods” embodied the worst character traits ever found among men. Why would anyone worship such beings?

     It’s not something my powers of reasoning can explain, unless it’s rooted in a simple desire to be contrary. But it’s out there, self-demonstrating.

     To me, it stands as a lesson in the infinite scope of human perversity. I can only hope that God is merciful toward those who practice such irrationality.

---

     “Those that believe in nothing will believe in anything.” – multiply attributed, but possibly G. K. Chesterton

     The human psyche is constructed to require faith. It appears to stem from the possession of volition, reason, and limited knowledge within a temporal framework that permits the pursuit of individually conceived goals. So even those who disdain the Christian faith will eventually repose their faith in something. It might be as absurd as a faith centered on Olympus or Asgard – or worse, on themselves – but underneath all the claims of supreme objectivity a faith will be buried.

     If such persons can’t see their own lunacies, there isn’t much that can be done for them. Psychology and psychiatry are no help when it comes to such things. (Neither is electroconvulsive therapy.) The sole escape is from the irrational and pointless faiths into the faith of Jesus Christ.

     The political powers of Rome were founded on the notion that the ruling elite had been anointed by the Roman gods. That’s what made Christianity threatening to them. Indeed, it’s what makes Christianity threatening to all overweening temporal powers. It’s why this quote from Herbert Spencer is one of my favorites:

     I asked one of the members of Parliament whether a majority of the House could legitimize murder. He said no. I asked him whether it could sanctify robbery. He thought not. But I could not make him see that if murder and robbery are intrinsically wrong, and not to be made right by the decisions of statesmen, then similarly all actions must be either right or wrong, apart from the authority of the law; and that if the right and wrong the law are not in harmony with this intrinsic right and wrong, the law itself is criminal.

     There is a moral order in the universe, written into its most fundamental laws. That order cannot be the product of vain, capricious, quarrelsome “gods” with no particular interest in Mankind. But it can be the product of a Benevolence that stands above all else, that wants for nothing, and that despite its triune nature suffers no conflict. Indeed, that’s exactly what it is.

     May God bless and keep you all.

Conversations

CSO: I had one of those moments yesterday.
FWP: What about?

CSO: I crossed the whole house to get to the kitchen, but forgot why I went there. When I sat down at my desk, I remembered.
FWP: Happens to everyone, sweetie. You don’t even have to be particularly old. There’s no cure, but there is...hope. So send your tax-deductible contributions to...!

CSO: It’s really annoying to remember only after you sit down.
FWP: Some day, researchers will learn enough about the brain to be able to say why that happens.

CSO: They’ll probably forget it right away!
FWP: Not if they write it down. That’s why Post-It^® notes were invented.

CSO: Hah! Do you think those things write themselves?
FWP: Hm. Good point.

“I Can’t Hear You!”

     Have you ever tried to tell someone something – something grounded in facts that are easily observed and multiply verified – something he doesn’t want to hear? There’s no non-violent undertaking that frustrates worse. It’s the archetype of thanklessness. Persistence in such an effort can seem a kind of masochism. In the aftermath you’re likely to ask yourself “What was I thinking?”

     Yet there are times when it seems morally obligatory. Times when the unwilling hearer clearly needs the information and is almost guaranteed to come to grief unless he accepts it.

     Consider in this light the election to the presidency of Donald Trump. He was up against a heavily touted opponent whose victory had been proclaimed “inevitable” (including by herself). His predecessor had practically guaranteed that “Donald Trump is not going to be president.” The entirety of the news media mocked him, his proposals, his many rallies, and his chances.

     Then he won – and by a convincing margin.

     Did those who laughed at Trump’s campaign draw any lesson from his victory? Damned few, if any. Mostly they grew angry at having been refuted. Many sought excuses for their predictive failures. Many are still trying to explain it away by some mechanism that would allow them salve for their egos. The failure of the “Russian collusion” farce to hold a drop of water seems to have rendered some of them permanently incoherent.

     New York Times editor-in-chief Dean Baquet recently had a meeting with his staff. In case you’ve spent the last four years in a coma, I will mention here that the Times dislikes President Trump and has for some time pushed the “Russian collusion” nonsense as the explanation for his victory. Apparently Baquet’s staff meeting was for the purpose of resetting his subordinates’ focus: from “Russian collusion” to “racism.” Just a spot of preparation for the 2020 election, don’t y’know.

     Among those left of the political center, not one millisecond goes to consideration of the possibility that Trump defeated Hillary Clinton because the people of these United States preferred him to her in sufficient numbers. No, there simply must be some other explanation.

     Must? Yes, must! Because if there isn’t, we’re all fools! We’ve all been duped! We’re the ones who are out of touch. We’ll be compelled to apologize for being so cocksure – and that mustn’t happen to a true-blue left-liberal!

     There are some diseases of the mind for which professional help is not available. Unwillingness to face facts is one of them.

---

     The world of journalism is heavily slanted to the left, for reasons beyond the scope of this tirade. Yet there are a few openly conservative mavericks therein. Here’s a piercing statement from one of them:

     Sometimes people ask me how I, as a member of the very liberal newspaper industry, came to be a conservative.

     The answer is that I’ve been around liberals enough to know that we don’t want them running —— well, anything.

     Will Davis, the author of the article, speaks for quite a few Americans, including several of my acquaintance. Extended exposure to liberals’ endless sanctimony and self-justifications can do that to anyone. But more valuable still is Davis’s report of a reply he received after he’d dared to dispute the liberal piety of pervasive “white supremacism:”

     “I imagine it would be easy for you to agree that white supremacy isn’t a problem,” wrote Gottschalk. “You are a white male who included an image of the confederate flag on your senior page. Just last week, my husband, who is black, went to the farmer’s market and was asked by the vendor if he was looking for collard greens, because you know, black people only eat collard greens. Racism is everywhere. You do not see it because you are never the victim of it.”

     “False consciousness” rides again. But whose consciousness is false? That of Will Davis, who grounded his opinion in personal observations accumulated over many years? Or that of Candace Gottschalk, who argued from her interpretation of a single encounter she hadn’t even witnessed?

     Ironically, Davis slides around the most important point:

     Why am I a conservative? Because I know liberals. There is no grace there. No love there. Only hatred and judgment and pettiness.

     The hatred and judgment and pettiness Davis encountered are quite real, but they aren’t fundamental. What’s fundamental is liberals’ unwillingness to accept facts that contradict their already-formed opinions and convictions.

---

     The deterioration of the national discourse has practically nothing to do with the relative merits of the worldviews and policy positions of Left and Right. If those things really mattered, our arguments would involve evidence and causal reasoning, two things conspicuous by their absence from exchanges between us. Rather, what we in the Right face is a Church of the Left. Its members remain securely inside it lest they be corrupted by sober consideration of observations and convictions not sanctified by their priests.

     Two aspects of this opposition stand out above all others. First is that it renders conventional argument and the tactics thereof largely pointless. There’s no way to argue with someone whose principal motivation is to remain in good standing with his church – and doubt it not: that is what most concerns the great majority of those within the left-liberal “bubble.” The journey toward it might have been motivated by other considerations, but for those within it, what swiftly comes to matter most is the sense of approval and acceptance from one’s priests and fellow congregants. These are not assets the typical worshipper would willingly forsake.

     Second, and far more critical for the long term, consider this oft-repeated quotation from military SF writer Tom Kratman:

     [I]t has been said more than once that you should choose enemies wisely, because you are going to become just, or at least, much like them. The corollary to this is that your enemies are also going to become very like you....

     If I could speak now to our enemies, I would say: Do you kill innocent civilians for shock value? So will we learn to do, in time. Do you torture and murder prisoners? So will we. Are you composed of religious fanatics? Well, since humanistic secularism seems ill-suited to deal with you, don't be surprised if we turn to our churches and temples for the strength to defeat and destroy you. Do you randomly kill our loved ones to send us a message? Don't be surprised, then, when we begin to target your families, specifically, to send the message that our loved ones are not stationery.

     I cannot overemphasize the importance of Kratman’s observation. He has captured the pattern of adversaries locked in lethal combat, as two thousand years’ records can confirm. It applies equally well to political combat.

     The Right must not become a church. We must remain reliant on evidence and reasoning, never on whether some point is about Us versus Them. Yet the pressure to do as the Left has done – to abandon our rational allegiance to our convictions for a pseudo-religious one – is mounting. If we have a chance to resist it successfully, it lies in remaining aware of the danger...and of what it would presage for the resolution of the destiny of these United States of America.

Assorted

     I have a heavy schedule for today, so one of the dreaded “Assorted” columns must suffice. Fortunately, I have a fair number of entries in the “Write something about this” folder, so sit back.

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1. Contempt.

     Beware the impulse to lash out at others. Sometimes the others lash back. However, even when they don’t, expressions of contempt leveled at persons who “aren’t around to defend themselves” says more and worse about the speaker than about any of his targets.

     The impulse can afflict anyone. When it gets into the soul of a writer who has some reason to believe himself intelligent and erudite, the results can be unfortunate:

     ‘Democracy,’ wrote H.L. Mencken, ‘is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.’ Kevin D. Williamson is a man cut very much from Mencken’s cloth. He has the same caustic humor. He has the same contempt for the mob. He has the same respect for the transcendent individual. In his new book The Smallest Minority, Williamson is at his most Menckenesque.

     This is not to say that Williamson is a mere imitator of the sage of Baltimore. For one thing, it is hard to imagine Mencken opening a book by advising the reader that ‘you can’t fuck with a monkey in Delhi.’ Sound advice. Williamson is not just offering a tip to tourists, though, but comparing India’s shit-flinging monkeys to the denizens of social media.

     This is a funny thing about Williamson’s book: he spends pages talking about the importance of culture and the lamentable philistinism of the masses but trades heavily in swear words and toilet humor.

     Quoth Ace of Spades:

     The reviewer notes the central problem with Kevin D. Williamson: He's a would-be elitist who mocks the non-elites for not being smart like the elites.

     But are the elites smart? Does the dumbtasstic shitweasel Kevin D. Williamson [have] anything beyond average intelligence, superior self-regard, and very superior contempt for everyone else?

     A good question that no one has yet deigned to answer.

     “When one man points a finger at another,” Louis Nizer once said, “It behooves him to remember that his other fingers are pointing back at himself.” Apparently Mr. Williamson has forgotten this...if he ever knew it.

---

2. NeverTrump as an indicator of impending suicide.

     Well, perhaps not literal suicide. But columnist Max Boot appears to have intellectual and professional suicide in mind:

     Max Boot, who’s notoriety extends to being so continually wrong about foreign policy that he must be actively trying to fail, was the target of a recent National Review article in which he was called out for fanning the flames of racial hatred. You see, Boot in the post Trump era has done what many other “conservatives” have done. Namely, they’ve decided TV appearances and that sweet, sweet cable news cash outweigh any concern for actual conservative policy wins. These are the people who fancy themselves moral betters in the age of Trump despite the fact that their private lives rarely measure up.

     There’s no fair-use way to excerpt this article without doing it violence. Please read it all, follow the embedded links, and contemplate the species of madness that causes a man, driven insane by his dislike of a more successful individual, to claim “A” while condemning “A” with every word he writes. I could almost feel sorry for Boot, but...naah, not really.

     Got to learn how to admit when you’ve been wrong, Boot baby.

---

3. The Hunt.

     The above-named movie got quite a lot of buzz for a while. If you haven’t read about it, it involved a “Most Dangerous Game” style hunt: specifically, armed liberals hunting Trump supporters kidnapped and turned loose on an island dedicated to such pastimes.

     There was a lot of Sturm und Drang over the movie from the instant news of it reached persons outside Hollywood. The furor caused the producers to withdraw their support from the movie and declare that it would not be released.

     The concept does strike me as obscene. A number of commentators have analogized it to “traditional” horror movies, in which all the victims but one give evidence that they deserved their deaths. Others have insisted that the concept guarantees that the hunted will come off as the good guys. Of course I haven’t seen the movie (and wouldn’t agree to see it if it were released), but the concept itself – one group hunting kidnapped members of another over political differences – is so vile that none of that would matter in the end. The depiction of a murderous hunt predicated on the notion that virtue flows from one’s political posture outweighs all other considerations.

     Whoever took it into his head (and his wallet) to make such a movie has a serious problem. It goes far beyond a mere defect of taste. I hope he finds help, and soon.

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4. Good Sense On Mass Shootings.

     I’ve lately come to admire the op-ed writing of fiction writer David L. Burkhead. Among other things, he doesn’t shy back from expressing the conclusions he’s reached. Indeed, he’ll hit you right between the eyes with them and leave you to cope with the implications. Time was, this was called being plainspoken. Today it’s almost vanishingly rare.

     Here’s a good example about a subject in our current discourse:

     “How do you propose to end mass shootings then?”

     I hate to tell you this, but you can’t end them. “Gun control” certainly cannot. France’s strict gun control did not prevent Charlie Hebdo nor the 2015 Paris attacks. India’s draconian gun laws did not prevent Mumbai. Norway’s gun laws did not stop the spree shooter there. And so on.

     “Ending” is an unachievable target. No matter what you do, somebody, somewhere, who intends to harm others–particularly if they’re looking at going out in a blaze of “glory” (with “infamy” serving for their purpose)–will find a way to do it. When you use it as a justification for restrictions on the law abiding there is no end to that. No restrictions will ever be enough. So it will always be an excuse for more restrictions. And if at any point anyone objects, you can do then as you do now and say “Don’t you care about the victims of gun crime?”

     Sorry if you don’t like that, but the truth hurts sometimes.

     Please read it all. It’s worth your time, believe me!

---

5. Property Acquisition?

     What would the United States federal government do with Greenland?

     Donald Trump has discussed trying to buy Greenland from Denmark as a way to expand US territory, according to US reports that have drawn scorn in Copenhagen and on the Arctic island.

     The US president's proposal, which was first reported in the Wall Street Journal, has come with “varying degrees of seriousness”, though he has apparently gone as far as seeking the view of the White House counsel.

     Mr. Trump discussed the idea at a dinner last year at which he said he had heard Denmark found the financial support to the territory burdensome, the Journal reported.

     Reuters reported two sources familiar with the situation as saying he had privately discussed the idea with aides and advisers, with the notion laughed off by some as a joke but taken more seriously by others.

     Well, we did get a good deal on Alaska, back when, but real estate prices have gone up since then and anyway, what would we do with an enormous, glacier-covered island that’s almost entirely within the Arctic Circle and is mostly too cold even for tourism?

     If you’re going to make a huge purchase of northern land, I say buy Canada. It’s got lots of good stuff, including the Hockey Hall of Fame, the western oil fields and tar sands, and the people are really nice. Well, yeah, except for the Muslims.

---

     That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. My current novel-project deserves more attention than I’ve been giving it. Also, I have a lawn mower to reassemble...and then to use. See you tomorrow, I hope.

Let's End Lucy Republicans

"Lucy" Republicans can be identified by this:

No matter what they say about Leftists, when Push comes to Shove, they willingly support them against their own party.

Every time. 

Reminds me of this:

And, the Republican Party, of course, is Charlie Brown - eternally optimistic about the motivation of their colleagues.

Don't be like Charlie.

Even Lindsey Graham, the quintessential Charlie Brown for too many years, Hit the Wall.

He has largely stayed in his post-Bruce Banner, Hulk persona.

Don't be like Charlie. Be like Lindsey.

To Avert Responsibility, Collectivize!

     To him who hopes to deceive others for profit, the most attractive of all occupations is rhetorical tactician. Perhaps it always was that way. Demosthenes would probably say so; he was, after all, the man who framed rhetoric as the art of making “the worse appear the better cause.” Whatever the case, if your principal skill is lying, there’s no better job for you than rhetorical tactician for a political organization.

     That’s not to say that all politicians and political organizations are equally deceitful. Some tactics aren’t infinitely adaptable. That includes the one I have in mind this morning.

     Let’s start with an example: more exactly, a schematic of one. Imagine that you’ve signed on with some political group as a rhetorical tactician. Such a group will naturally prioritize protecting its members, its agenda, and its funding. At least, if it doesn’t have those things at the top of its priority list, it won’t last very long. But a political group’s focus will be on political action: i.e., on influencing the State, its agencies, and its agents toward support for the group’s agenda. That implies an orientation toward political incentives and governmental responses, usually as instantiated in law and executive policies.

     Now something unfortunate happens for your group: One of its more prominent members is caught doing something naughty. Moreover, the specifics of the naughtiness appear contrary to your group’s overt agenda. You’ve been assigned the task of detoxifying the event rhetorically: i.e., it’s your job to craft rhetoric that will frame what he did as something harmless or irrelevant to the group’s interests. What methods, in categorical terms, are available to you?

     There aren’t many choices. If there were a plausible alternate suspect to whom the deed could be ascribed, that would serve the purpose...but let’s postulate that your guy was caught red-handed. That excludes any possibility of attributing the offense to another individual. What’s left?

     Now now, let’s not always see the same hands!

---

     Just yesterday there was another mass shooting, this time in Philadelphia. The targets were Philadelphia police officers, six of whom were hit. The shooter eventually surrendered and is now in police custody. Media commentators immediately launched into rants about “white supremacy” having created “a climate of fear.”

     But the shooter is black. It takes some work to find a picture of him being apprehended, but they exist:

     Moreover, the shooter isn’t exactly unknown to the police. So how does this connect to “white supremacy” or “a climate of fear?”

     Yet this is what the Left’s mouthpieces do. They strain to redirect the responsibility for the crime from the individual onto some group, preferably a group hostile to the Left’s interests. They put a special effort into it when the individual is from one of the Left’s “mascot groups” (Thomas Sowell).

     It’s been going on for a long time. Ordinary people have begun to tune it out. Yet it will persist, because categorically speaking there’s no other way for the Left to deal with offenses committed by members of groups allied with them, or which they find politically useful.

     There are several such groups. American blacks. Illegal aliens. Muslims within America’s borders. (I refuse to call them “American Muslims” or “Muslim Americans,” as their creed commands them to deny their allegiance to anything but Islam and its ummah.) The media’s coverage of such persons’ misdeeds is invariably gentle; the political rhetoric wrapped around them is invariably deflective and collective.

     The consequences are coming home to roost.

---

     Collectivization begets collectivization. When the flacksters’ tactics become consistent enough and uniform enough to be widely recognized as what they are, those who recognize them are moved toward a “counter-collectivization” inimical to the flacksters’ agenda. We’ve already seen that identity groups will evoke counter-groups of other – usually opposed – identities. Groups that attempt to redirect responsibility for their miscreants onto “the police” or “society” have become noxious in the public mind. The reactions are unpleasant; they’re definitely the opposite of what a good person would wish.

     Ironically, the best counteraction to the presence of serious, disproportionate misbehavior within an identifiable demographic, regardless of whether it’s united by race, ethnicity, creed, occupation, or any other characteristic, is the institution of internal discipline. That is, the good people within the group would do best to deal with the criminals, disrupters, antisocials, et cetera internally, such that they can represent to those outside that “we know we have a problem, but we’re dealing with it, so please be patient with us.” For people cannot be prevented from seeing things in groups united by categorizing characteristics. We’re hard-wired to do so, and no amount of “re-education” will prevent it.

     The behavior of early Twentieth Century bootlegging gangs is instructive. Those gangs were often at war with one another. Blood often flowed freely during those contests...but only the blood of gang members. The bosses were scrupulous about not allowing gang-on-gang violence to involve outsiders. Outsiders were their customers; their good will had to be preserved. As for law enforcement, the bosses preferred bribery to the murder of policemen, wherever and whenever possible.

     The paramount need is to prevent government and its agents from taking a collectivist attitude toward the citizenry: regarding us not as individuals responsible solely for our own actions, but as members of groups that bear collective responsibility for whatever any of its members might do. That attitude, when inculcated in the State and its agents, invites preferential enforcement of the law at the very least. It can result in pogroms and “ethnic cleansings.” However, the prevailing political-rhetorical dynamic is in the direction of collectivization, and has been for some time.

     That dynamic must be countered and reversed. It might be inimical to the strategists of the Left – it certainly wouldn’t be good for the career prospects of their mouthpieces – but it’s one of the chief necessities of our time.

     More anon.

Out With the Religion-Lite, In With the Old

A church that had drifted far from Catholicism is brought back. AND, met with parishioner protests - right in the middle of Mass!

I commented on this, adding in some perspective from a recent trip to a Latin Mass - Solemn-High, at that!

Unacceptable By Association

     We tend to judge a man, at least in part, by the company he keeps. The practice goes all the way back to Eden. The Pharisees tried to use it against Jesus, for His willingness to associate with publicans and sinners. It’s not entirely unfair or nonsensical. But it has consequences, and not all of them are good ones.

     Granted, proximity is sometimes illusory. The “six degrees of separation” effect can be used to link persons who know nothing about one another. But an individual’s voluntary associations are and have always been considered an indication of what that individual considers acceptable in others. In the past, this has been exploited by both the Left and the Right. Today it’s a major tactic of the Left in its war on the rights of American citizens.

     The contemporary (i.e., totalitarian) Left uses the practice to its advantage by polluting groups of Right-inclined persons with fakers who openly espouse unacceptable views. Fora hospitable to the Right are their principal targets. Once such a forum opens for business, the Left details trolls to join it and to spout vileness: politicized racial, ethnic, and sexual bigotry, calls for mass murder, “entertainment” of the lowest kinds of porn and violence. Leftist activists then immediately denounce that forum as a place where only the unacceptable would go.

     I’ve witnessed this tactic at several recently-opened "social media" sites dedicated to free expression:

• Gab,
• Mumblit,
• Minds,
• LibertyRush.

     The pattern has been consistent. The responses to it have not.

     The tactic has an in-the-flesh equivalent that’s becoming more worrisome. Historically, the technique involved inserting “supporters” into a political rally that others would deem unacceptable for their other connections: e.g., “Satanists for Trump.” However, AntiFa, the Democrat Party’s Brownshirts, has been “overheard” talking about infiltrating free-speech demonstrations so that when violence erupts, they can make it look as if the free-speech advocates started it.

     As usual, the tactic is oriented toward persuading unaligned Americans that “you don’t want to be part of that crowd.” And unfortunately, it works.

---

     Every era – every moment — is “a time of transition.” The “from” and the “to” are often discernible only long afterward. Moreover, whether the change was for good or for ill can remain questionable for decades.

     The November 2016 election indicated that a great many Americans had finally become sufficiently disenchanted with the political elite to rebel against it, at least at the ballot box. Yet we cannot know with certainty whether that disenchantment will endure. The Left is putting forth all its forces in the attempt to make the Trump Administration and its agenda look unacceptable to the unaligned. Indeed, the “Russian collusion” hoax was aimed at no other result. The recent attempt to tie President Trump to the late Jeffrey Epstein was a follow-up, albeit a weak and easily refuted one.

     The hot-button issues of the moment are illegal immigration to the United States and the right to keep and bear arms. (Yes, there are other important issues; these are the ones that currently command the greater part of the national discourse.) Look for the Left to use its unacceptable-by-association tactic on both. In the case of the influx of illegal aliens over our southern border, the approach will be to color it as racial and / or ethnic hatred. In the case of the right to keep and bear arms, gun-rights advocates will be juxtaposed with mass murderers and advocates thereof. Ordinary decent Americans who lack firm opinions on those matters will be asked, subtly and sotto voce, whether they’d be happy about enabling the aspirations of such persons.

     We need a counter-tactic that can nullify the effect of those thrusts. At the moment we don’t have one. Thoughts?

Short history of the last 100+ years.

Geez, total fail. CHS dude get a clue man. PROGRESSIVES own this suck and there is nothing conservative [can do] about it. "Neocons" is a misdirection word soft minded people use.

There are ZERO true founding father type constitutional conservatives anywhere in the US FEDGOV. Progressives took over everywhere about 1900 give or take and it's been downhill ever since. They have illegally grown the state in violation of the Constitution into the monster of tyranny we have now.

Founding Fathers America=no standing army on foreign soil, no intervention in other nations affairs, no income tax on citizens. NO alphabet agencies, no pencil neck poindexter government parasites looking over [anyone's] shoulders or telling anyone what they can or can't do.

Progressives broke the law to grow the state in America in violation of the [Constitution].^[1]

The Bible speaks of tithing 1/10 of your income. Now some people pay more than 50% of what they earn in taxes and get to watch griters, morons, and their enemies decide on how their taxes should be spent.

Our country today operates on mere vestiges of our old freedoms. Progressives/ultra leftists are just getting warmed up to strip us of the remainder of our essential rights.

Notes
^[1] Comment by Grimaldus on "Epstein Is The Deep State Civil War's First High-Profile Casualty." By Charles Hugh Smith, ZeroHedge, 8/12/19.

Topical And Terribly UnFunny

     Presented without comment:

     How certain are you that this isn’t going on in your kids’ schools?

Mis-Remembering the Days of Rage

I lived through these years in the link - I THOUGHT I remembered what happened.

Part of the bargain of civilization is ceding the authority to commit violence to the State. (Has its own problems. Beats the alternative.) Lord knows there are people I’d love to beat the shit out of in the street, but if I don’t get to then neither do you. No, I don’t give a flying fuck who they are; you don’t get to do that.

Lefties say, “Well, that’s Nazis, they only do that to Nazis; Nazis are different, you have to shut that shit down, etc.” Great. Except that Lefties pull the same “shut this shit down!” stuff on mainstream Righties on college campuses, all the while calling them Nazis.

Hell, Lefties said Ted Cruz was a Nazi, Mitt Romney was a Nazi, George W. Bush was a Nazi. I’ve done human rights work that had me working in proximity to the U.S. military, so at a professional meeting a Lefty called me a Nazi.

So if you tell me that I’m a Nazi, and tell me people I respect are Nazis, and tell me you’re in favor of going out and beating up Nazis, guess what? I am suddenly very interested in the physical safety of Nazis.

And I’m Jewish.

I was wrong. I minimized the violence of those days in my mind. And, as the excerpt above shows, the Left isn't particular about labeling average people as The Enemy - then, acting on that label.

Towards the end of that post, comes some very specific cautions that we need to be aware of: the Left is organized - QUITE organized.

The big thing the hard Right is trying to do right now is create organization and infrastructure. They have, historically, sucked at it. The hard Left has great infrastructure. Look at DisruptJ20: they know enough lawyers to have 2 teams dedicated to getting them out of jail! Think any Righty group has gotten around to organizing lawyers on tap like that? Nope.

I originally read the post, and was just going to pass on the link and move on. Then, I realized that too many people would just discount this Remembrance of Leftists Past as partisan raving, and ignore it.

So, I decided to put links to these incidents, linking to the least biased (either way) sources I could find. What I found is below.

Angela Davis, and her role in the Jackson trial and death of the judge, among others. This is from Wikipedia, which sanitized her actions.

From iSteve Blog, a fuller, and more truthful report.

From Days of Rage (review) in The Nation.

According to FBI statistics, the United States experienced more than 2,500 domestic bombings in just 18 months in 1971 and 1972, with virtually no solved crimes and barely any significant prosecutions.

Unbelievable. I knew there were some 'incidents' as many of my friends called them. But, few of them seemed to touch me, living in Cleveland, OH.

Which, when I think about it, is crazy. Cleveland was right in the heart of the Leftist action. There was a thriving chapter of the Black Panthers. The "Days of Rage" that roiled Chicago were planned in Cleveland.

Cleveland's major urban riot - in the Hough neighborhood - was attributed to a combination of resentment of the police, juvenile aimlessness, legitimate grievances, and the skillful nudging of Leftists. The Professional Leftist Excusers scoffed at the very idea of Leftist influences; more cynical observers point out that this downplays their role in the violence.

Were "outside agitators" involved? Almost definitely - the resentment of the college students/dropouts/radicals who'd descended upon Cleveland, eager to stir up trouble, stemmed from class resentment. Unlike many other cities - New York, Boston, etc. - that had experienced actions, Cleveland was, at that time, a largely blue-collar, working-class city. For that reason, the Left was salivating at the idea of locating the epicenter in that location.

Alas, the drive to radicalize the proles was largely a failure. Most young people just wanted to get a decent job - which, at that time, meant the auto industry, steel industry, or other factory work. The few locals attending colleges - Cuyahoga Community College or Cleveland State University, primarily - had little time or inclination for revolution. I experienced the organizing efforts of the Workers' Socialist party and other Leftists, and noted the indifference with which they were received.

Only at Case Western Reserve University were the students affluent enough to find the Leftist message appealing. CWRU became a focal point of the Left activity in Cleveland.

My experience was colored by my personal circumstances - in 1974, I was newly married and enjoying the excitement of living downtown, near the exciting night life. By the end of the year, I would have moved to Pittsburgh, PA. Within 2 years, my husband and I had started our family, and we were coping with the chaos such a change naturally produces. We literally had no time for quixotic quests.

Alert To The Contradictions

     There are several components to any industry, however conceived. It’s normal for outsiders to see that industry as a unitary entity, while insiders are aware of its several, cooperating parts. If we view the advancement of a totalitarian state from that perspective, and work to separate its various subassemblies, we quickly see all the following:

• The strategic / tactical apparatus: This component designs the totalitarians’ campaign, both in terms of its ultimate objectives and the tactics best suited to advancing toward them.
• The promotional apparatus: This component uses propaganda to persuade as many people as possible that what the totalitarians seek is “what the people really want.”
• The counteractive apparatus: This component focuses on identifiable elements among the totalitarians’ opponents and works to impede or defeat their initiatives.

     Those are the pieces easily identified in a fledgling totalitarianism industry. Should such an industry gain some degree of traction, others will become visible:

• The subornation apparatus: This component works on elected officials to turn them toward the totalitarians’ goals, whether intermediate or ultimate.
• The anesthetic apparatus: This component operates to ensure the compliance of government functionaries responsible for enforcing compliance with totalitarian enactments, and to reassure elements in the population that might be moved to resist.
• The suppressive apparatus: This component uses marginally illegal methods to defame and / or suppress political adversaries’ operations.

     Should the totalitarians achieve political dominance, the whole force of the State is turned toward their aims, and the components named above are subsumed into the structure of the government as “official organs.”

     During a totalitarian campaign, logical clashes between the representations of the various components will occasionally appear. Here are a couple of illustrative ones, from our favorite Bookworm:

     And of course, when observers note those contradictions for others’ consideration, the totalitarian response is predictable:

     ...because ultimately, freedom of expression is the totalitarians’ greatest enemy.

     The totalitarians’ tacticians know they cannot conquer the U.S without inducing Americans to fear one another. Their promotional machine has done its level best to inculcate that fear in us. It makes heavy use of atrocities such as the recent ones in Dayton and San Antonio, of course without reference to the individuals who committed them or the influences that drove them. When opposed organizations point out the flaws in their “logic,” their counteractive apparatus springs into action with slanderous defamations and the promotion of falsehoods.

     When the totalitarians achieve some inroads, we begin to see the subornation component exercise its sway over elected officials desirous of remaining in power or increasing it. Government functionaries, as David L. Burkhead observes, rationalize their compliance with “the law” by saying “it’s just my job,” with the implications left unspoken. The suppressors work to disrupt any organization that fights for the maintenance of individuals’ rights, whether by “deplatforming” them or by outright violence and intimidation.

     I don’t have much more to say just now, Gentle Reader. I’m still in a highly frazzled, somewhat fragile state. But it struck me as important to elucidate, schematically, the way in which an anti-freedom movement plans its moves and strives to enact them.

     Remain alert to the contradictions. Make sure others are aware of them, too. It’s part of the “eternal vigilance” thing: your job, as a citizen of these United States.

Moscow International House of Music.

Obvious fact.

I could go on, but I conclude this portion simply by stating an obvious and lamentable fact: every single institution in the United States is either actively malicious toward the American people, or a complete scam—and often both.

"The Tyranny of Myopia." By Darren J. Beattie, American Greatness, 8/11/19.

Day Off

     Dig this: The office of the New York City Medical Examiner announced that it has completed its autopsy on the late Jeffrey Epstein, but that it cannot determine the cause of Epstein’s death without additional information.

     Brain overheating. Fingers and toes spasming. Steam pouring out ears. Back tomorrow, I hope.

Point Of No Return

     Brace yourself, Gentle Reader. After this, you might decide you’d rather have had another “assorted” column.

---

     In the aftermath of the discovery of financier Jeffrey Epstein’s dead body in his one-man cell, all of the following have been reported by sources to which at least some attention should be paid:

• Epstein had told guards some weeks ago – before his previous “suicide attempt” – that he believed someone was trying to kill him.
• The guards assigned to monitor Epstein were pulled off watch three hours before his body was discovered.
• Epstein had been taken off suicide watch some time before his body was discovered.
• Photos of the body taken from the cell reveal discrepancies with Epstein’s body.
• Cameras that would have observed Epstein’s death “malfunctioned.”
• There were no prior indications that Epstein would attempt suicide.

     I don’t think all of those assertions can be true, though it’s possible that all of them are false. However, they emanate from inside the very system that was charged with keeping Jeffrey Epstein alive and healthy. So this man, who could testify about the heinous crimes of other rich and prominent men, is dead under circumstances that the most phlegmatic of observers would be compelled to call suspicious.

     And what’s this? The system that’s responsible for investigating this debacle is the very system that allowed (or committed) it. What an incredible surprise! We don’t normally expect the suspect to investigate himself, do we? I mean, unless “the suspect” is the DoJ, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, or some such, right? Right?

     It is to laugh...hollowly, and with many a tear.

---

     It is simply not possible for a decent American to retain even a shred of confidence in the institutions of government. All have betrayed their charters. All have scamped the responsibilities We the People delegated to them. All have proved corrupt, their souls for sale to anyone with the ready cash.

     Matters are no better in the private sector. The Fortune 3000 corporations that employ half the working population of this country are all in bed with the government. They control the regulatory sector. They purchase the allegiance of politicians with financial support. It’s the dynamic of giantism, as unstoppable as the rotation of the Earth.

     What’s that you say? We can still toss the rascals out come election time? Please! The Left’s strongest initiative has been to suborn town and county Boards of Election and the Secretary of State offices of the fifty states. There’s hardly an electoral district in the United States that hasn’t been infiltrated and colonized by persons determined to see “their” candidates prevail regardless of the actual balloting. It’s so pervasive – and so widely known – that the majority of registered voters don’t bother to show up for any but Presidential elections.

     What remains is to watch how swiftly “our” news media shift the conversation away from this horror to some “safe” topic. Perhaps “racism” or “gun control.”

---

     Am I angry? Why yes, I am. However did you guess?

     In any sociopolitical project aimed toward a preconceived end, there’s a “point of no return,” after which the result must be either complete success or devastating failure. There’s no going back to try for some other end. Once past the point of no return, it’s win or die.

     The Left has taken us past that point. We are now in a state in which the only possible outcomes are absolute and unopposable power by an immune, self-selected elite over the rest of us, with provisions to ensure that any subsequent rebellion would be hopeless, or the convulsive overthrow of that elite, including appropriate incarcerations and executions, and a return to the strict observance of individual rights and Constitutional constraints.

     I am not kidding. President Trump can’t do it all himself. It’s time for something more: an upsurge of citizen activism of the genuinely active sort:

• Removal of corrupt officials from their offices;
• Defiance and overthrow of unConstitutional laws and regulations;
• Dismantling of agencies and bureaucracies for which there is no Constitutional authority;
• Continuous monitoring of every element of the election system to ensure its legitimate operation.

     Don’t say it can’t be done. It’s been done before:

When do we start?
Where and how do we start?
Who are the heirs of Patrick Henry?

Sex Abuse in NC

Link here. Other states should have these stats easily accessible, as part of Open Records. Kudos to NCFIRE.

Rather surprisingly, Geoffrey Van WASP IV was NOT on the list.