Before and above all other things:
May 2018 bring you every imaginable good thing...especially a bit more warmth. Now let’s have some fun.
Sarah Hoyt is aware that the most reliable predictions are that ongoing trends will continue. Some choice snippets:
The thing is, I’ve grown so tired of seeing quite obviously fatuous predictions that I felt the need to write this, with both my own predictions and an explanation of the process of making predictions. Which is not only my business but honestly, the business of every sane human being. If you can’t correctly predict the results of events or actions, you have no clue of the link between cause and effect. That leads to a lot of problems. In general, we call it “the Obama Administration” for easy shorthand — not that they had a monopoly on this behavior, unfortunately....As the attempt to drown out the legitimate cases of harassment – mostly by leftists, in leftist-dominated institutions – by claiming #metoo and that all men were essentially harassers became more frantic, it has become obvious that any man can be accused of harassment at any time by anyone. So, here is a genuine prediction: I predict that instead of giving HR more power, this will give companies pause before hiring women, which will lead to a lot of decent and qualified women being left unemployed.... In the same way, the people who are all happy that Google and Facebook will now be able to “counter fake news with information” seem to fail to understand that just because there is a link underneath some article I’m interested in, from say, NBC news or HuffPo, I’m no more likely to click on it than I am to run naked down the street....My prediction here is that we’ll continue to point and laugh.
I also don’t believe that more and more people will join the #resistance — mostly because, seriously, what on Earth are they resisting? Weren’t we supposed to have camps by now? #worstHitlerever.
I fully expect, also, that not being forced to pay a fine for not having Obamacare will NOT result in the deaths of millions on the street....
The one thing I can predict for sure is that the left will continue to shriek with unhinged fury at everything that Trump does and fails to do.
So the one solid bet I have for you is “Buy popcorn futures. You can’t go wrong.”
Allow me to add a prediction of my own: President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accords will not cause the Earth to go into a rolling boil. Yeah, I know it’s daring, but I’m...just that way.
A nation 98% of whose citizens have internalized the universal precepts of right and wrong won’t need a lot of law enforcement. Andy Griffith’s Mayberry was a representation of such a community. However, the United States has an unfortunate number of regions where that’s not the case:
For the third year in a row, Baltimore, Md., has had more than 300 murders, reaching a new record of murders per number of residents in 2017.Some residents attribute the high murder rate to relaxed police patrols in the city following high-profile cases of police brutality. Officers have backed off in neighborhoods, like the one where Freddie Gray was arrested.
The Rev. Kinji Scott, a pastor in Baltimore who's held positions in local city government, says the opposite needs to happen.
"We wanted the police there," Scott says. "We wanted them engaged in the community. We didn't want them beating the hell out of us, we didn't want that."
He's among activists who are calling for police reform to reduce the violence in Baltimore and several other high-crime cities across the U.S. that he says haven't seen change. That change begins with a conversation between the communities directly involved, Scott says.
Every word of the above is either an evasion, a misdirection, or a more direct sort of lie:
- Baltimore’s demographics are 63% Negro.
- Baltimore’s Negro cops are least willing to patrol Negro neighborhoods, which leaves most of the city un-patrolled.
- The very persons screaming for the return of the police to Negro neighborhoods were among those most vociferous in blaming the police for the disorder and violence in those neighborhoods.
- Negro parents are extremely reluctant to discipline their children, especially their teenage sons. Some of their reasons are understandable, but the consequences are bad nevertheless.
- There can be no “conversation” between the police and disorderly, violent Negro neighborhoods that doesn’t begin with “Obey the law, you sons of bitches, or we’ll come down hard on you, and you’ll deserve it. Admit it!”
But in our oh-so-politically-correct-and-racially-sensitive age, the “authorities” are largely unwilling to say so...especially the “authorities” of Baltimore, nearly all of whom are Negroes, put in office and kept there by Negro votes. Therefore, I have a prediction: For 2018, Matters in Baltimore will go on as they have these past three years.
Commentator Susan Gingrich has a New Year’s wish:
I’m starting this commentary with a confession. I’ve always liked men, and I still like them a lot. My husband is the best man I know. I like compliments from men, doors opened for me, harmless hugs, and other things some women don’t. Throughout my professional career, it was my male bosses who encouraged and promoted me, appreciating my independence, intelligence and abilities. The only problem bosses I ever had were women who felt threatened by those same qualities. I feel no sisterhood with women because we share a common body part, preferring to select those women I feel friendship with akin to sisterhood. My wish for 2018 is that all women participating in it, End the War on Men!
A beautiful wish...but it won’t happen. Just as with the black racialist hucksters, gender-war feminist hate-mongers know there’s money and prestige to be had from keeping the War on Men going. Therefore, they’ll continue. They might get a smidgen less respect and attention, but they won’t stop. Jesse Jackson didn’t. Al Sharpton didn’t. Louis Farrakhan didn’t. Those men all lost large fractions of their supporters after the various incidents that disgraced them came to light. Why expect the lunatics of the gender-war feminist fringe to act differently?
It seems that one of Sarah Hoyt’s predictions above has already acquired an exemplar:
WASHINGTON – Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) urged Congress before the holiday break to protect federal workers in the event of a government shutdown, adding that a “united” federal government under Republican leadership is “dangerous to all living creatures.”...“I get so discouraged when Republicans get on the floor and talk about federal employees as nameless, faceless bureaucrats – when, in fact, the only reason we have the wonderful country we do, the great country we have, is because we have federal employees who are keeping us safe and well-organized and progressing in so many places from the environment to our defense,” [Rep. Don] Beyer (D, VA) responded.
Gentle Reader, words fail me – and when you hear a writer say that, you should mark your calendar. The above is so vivid albeit unconscious a self-parody that no words of mine could heighten its absurdity. Enjoy it with a glass of (spiked) egg nog and a hollow laugh.
I find the following statements to be uniquely insightful and accurate:
As soon as the decepticons realized Donald Trump was actually intent on destroying their 30-year-built Potemkin village, the UniParty dropped all pretense and came screaming out of the shadows right behind us…. man, that was weird at first. It was like living amid the vampire pod-people as our neighbors and not knowing who was actually infected at the checkout line in the grocery store. Fortunately MAGA hats, or MAGA discussion, is like garlic to ’em.In 2017 their uncontrollable autonomic responses became known as “triggering”.
Funny stuff.
The funniest of all funny things is when you ‘trigger’ someone infected with TDS, their expressed world-view can change instantaneously. Their belief is whatever is opposite of Trump. The most recent example highlights Islamic Terrorists and Iranian Mullahs as the great defenders of institutions cherished by those with anti-Trump sensibilities. Weird people.
He’s one guy, and he has them entirely surrounded.
Perpetually triggered, consistently paranoid and surrounded.
Damned funny, if you ask me.
I concur, and I applaud.
One closing thought, which you’re unlikely to get today from any but a dedicated Catholic website...or this one.
Today, once known as the Feast of the Circumcision, has been renamed the Solemnity of Mary, the Virgin Mother of God. It’s an exceedingly special day for two reasons above all others:
- It explicitly venerates Mary for her acceptance of the hardest, most hazardous, and cruelest duty any woman ever undertook;
- It makes plain that Mary’s importance in Catholic teaching derives from the duty she accepted and not from “divinity,” which she has not.
“Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son.” Think for a moment about the prospects of an unmarried Jewish girl in classical Judea who becomes pregnant and claims that she “knows not a man.” In that time and place the penalty for conceiving out of wedlock was to be stoned to death. Mary, who had received the Judaic equivalent of a “convent upbringing,” knew that full well. Yet she accepted God’s will as Gabriel had announced it.
It took an angelic intervention to keep Joseph, her betrothed, from casting Mary aside. There is no record of what public opprobrium she might have endured. The record we do have is of her maternal devotion to her Son...even unto His death on a cross.
Catholics call Mary of Nazareth the Queen of Heaven, queen over angels and men. I’d say she earned it – and a special commemoration, once a year.
That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. Enjoy your hangover New Year’s Day, and try to stay warm. At 6 degrees Fahrenheit – the temperature here when I tumbled out of bed and ambled out to Mass; I haven’t checked it since then – it took some doing. Think warm thoughts.
No comments:
Post a Comment