Monday Maunderings

     I’m in a lot of pain at the moment – apparently a 67-year-old man isn’t supposed to chase a 200-pound mastiff a half mile down the street and carry him back to his weeping owner, no matter how attractive the owner (or the mastiff) might be – so rather than my usual extended essay replete with assorted archaisms and obscure idioms, have a few tidbits from the Fortress’s cellar.

---

1. That Incredibly Useful Whipping Boy, The “Alt-Right.”

     A few days ago The Federalist brought us this:

     This week, The Economist, one of the most respected outlets in the world (and arguably one that is fairly centrist), falsely labeled pundit Ben Shapiro as “the sage of the alt-right.” Shapiro, and then seemingly every conservative on social media, expressed outrage at the accusation. Before long, The Economist corrected itself, instead labeling Shapiro a “radical conservative,” whatever that means.

     In this case the misappellation was not just factually incorrect, it was unintentionally cruel. During the 2016 Republican primary when the alt-right came to the fore as shock troops supporting Donald Trump (seemingly without his consent) Shapiro was, perhaps more than any other public figure, a target for their hateful tweets and rhetoric.

     I continue to maintain that the “alt-right” is a fiction in the minds of a few would-be left-wing organizers and a whole lot of commentators hoping to create a sense of alarm about a dangerous sociopolitical movement. There is no visible organization that styles itself as the home of the “alt-right.” There are a few figures spoken of as “leaders” in this supposed movement, but they tend to disagree about just about everything. There’s no political party that promulgates an “alt-right” platform. Wherefore, then, does this constitute a "thing?"

     Those flogging this term do so to slander enemies they wish to assail (cf. Alinsky’s Rules). I’d imagine the NeverTrumpRump is a part of this. Presently the more outspoken nationalist and neonativist figures, Richard Spencer and a few others, will become the focus. Yet Spencer, the most visible person identified as a “leader” of the “alt-right,” has few followers and no perceptible influence on any politician. What would people think of this “movement” were those facts generally known?

     America has enough social and political problems. We don’t need chimeras to chase.

---

2. The Great Distractor.

     The esteemed Bookworm has a thesis about the sexualization of children, including the promotion of transgenderism among them:

     What’s terrifying about the child transgender movement is that it’s moved beyond the moral degenerates of the entertainment and media worlds. We’ve now reached the point at which governments are rapidly internalizing it and using it to sever the parent-child bond. Last year in Ohio, parents actually lost custody for not being sufficiently supportive of their daughter’s claimed transgenderism. Currently, in Texas, a father is being told that, if he doesn’t get with his ex-wife’s program of insisting that their six-year-old son wants to be a girl, he will lose any access to his son.

     Two years ago, Ontario, Canada, passed a law including gender identity in a panoply of protections the government extends to children. Ontario has been trying to assure parents who are not on board with giving their children hormones that cause cancer or sterility that the government really doesn’t intend to swoop in and take away their children. Instead, it will only take children away if that refusal to acknowledge the child’s new identity causes the child emotional distress — except we all know that the transgender shtick is that denying a child’s transgenderism is itself a form of emotional abuse. Can we say Orwellian language? Meanwhile, in the UK, parents are being told that if they do not let their autistic son have hormone treatments that could damage his body permanently, they will lose custody over him.

     That there is no medical / scientific authority whatsoever for transgenderism, which seems to be a tragic mental illness akin to anorexia or other body dysmorphia problems, only this mental illness is one that the media, education establishment and entertainment world actively encourage. With that in mind, it’s terrifying to watch speed with which the government is weaponizing the transgender world view.

     Bookworm has included the text of a brilliant article she wrote nine years ago on Sex and State Power. Please read it all. It’s a mind-expander. My upcoming novel The Wise and the Mad will also address some aspects of this.

---

3. Yes, They Want You To Die.

     Herschel at Captain’s Journal has the story:

     Philly.com:

     If you Google the name Jabir Kennedy, you will read about a fugitive wanted for gunning down four men, one fatally, during Christmas week 2017 in the Elmwood section of Southwest Philadelphia. You will read that the “armed and dangerous” fugitive turned himself in a week later and was charged with first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder.

     That’s all you’ll read about Kennedy, 23, because in a city that typically tallies more than 300 murders and more than 1,000 nonfatal shootings a year, his case quickly disappeared from the news cycle.

     Well, that’s partly because Google sucks, and partly because this is all the information the DA’s office and cops wanted you to know.

     You see, Mr. Kennedy was defending his life against a group of armed attackers, five in number. The D.A. indicted him because – girls, hold on to your boyfriends – he fired too many bullets too accurately!

     Assistant District Attorney Sheida Ghadiri argued during the trial that the gun Kennedy fired belonged to him, that he knew how to use it given that he shot four of the five men he fought with, and the number of bullets he fired — eight to 10 — was too many to be self-defense.

     But a key moment in the trial, Kennedy and Nenner said, came when Ghadiri was cross-examining Kennedy about why he fired repeatedly at the men.

     “Ms. Ghadiri, what did you want me to do?” both recalled him saying. “I don’t understand. You want me to die? You want my mom to come see me with a hole in my head in the middle of the street? That’s not reasonable.”

     The DA’s Office stands by its decision to prosecute Kennedy, said Ben Waxman, the office’s spokesperson.

     If that isn’t enough to pin your outrage meter, I can’t imagine what it would take to do the trick.

---

4. Another Schlichter Gem.

     Kurt Schlichter strikes the jugular yet again:

     For us actual conservatives, one of the most tiresome aspects of our struggle to retake our country is our never-ending struggle to get the Fredocons who still populate our movement to take our own side in this fight. Exhibit A is the “Conservative Case For XXXX” phenomenon, in which XXXX inevitably equals some liberal goal, objective or obsession. We’re supposed to nod our heads and give in to the progs because, you know, it’s actually conservative somehow.

     Hard pass.

     The latest example is the article “A Conservative Case for Puerto Rican Statehood” that recently ran in National Review for reasons that remain elusive even after reading it. Now, let’s be clear – this is not a column telling National Review or author Kyle Sammin what they can and cannot publish. National Review and author Kyle Sammin should say whatever they want all the time, just as you and I should say whatever we want all the time. This column is about critiquing ideas, bad ideas, like the bad ideas in this particular article, as well as the bad ideas that permeate the whole “Let’s push the conservative envelope” genre. How about we work on taping the conservative envelope back together before we rip it to shreds?

     It’s a must-read, for a single reason: Schlichter asks the question so many ersatz conservatives are afraid will be asked:

What’s in it for Americans?

     This is a disconcerting query for the pseudo-moralists to face. They can’t answer it. Instead they pretend offense and proclaim that “It’s the right thing to do.” Right by what enduring principle of human intercourse? Blank-out.

     Beware anyone who evades discussion with such a maneuver, no matter how pretentiously he’s named his website.

---

5. The Backlash Is Righteous And The Press Is In Terror Of It.

     Hearken to Don Surber:

     In 2017, the Pulitzer committee gave the national reporting Pulitzer and $15,000 to David A. Fahrenthold of the Washington Post for such stories as, "Trump: ‘I regret’ lewd chat in 2005."

     I thought to myself, they cannot go any lower. They did the next year by awarding the New York Times and the Washington Post a joint national reporting Pulitzer for their Russiagate hysteria with such stories as, "Undisclosed On Forms, Kushner Met 2 Russians."

     Even Joe McCarthy was not that fearful of Russians. He went after communists.

     Now that we know after 500 witnesses and 2,800 subpoenas that there is no evidence of illegal collusion, the president has asked the newspapers to return their Pulitzers. Not a single one of the 20 stories awarded held up after the exhaustive Mueller investigation ended.

     In 2016, the press was complicit in Hillary's inept attempt to keep the people from electing Donald John Trump president.

     They failed.

     For the next two years, the press was complicit in the unconstitutional effort to oust President Trump by any means possible.

     Again, they failed.

     Now the press wants him to drop this.

     Mirabile dictu! The Fourth Estate wants to be allowed to slink quietly away from its major role – some would call it a starring role – in the attempted coup against a duly elected president. That president has compiled a record of astonishing achievements in only two years. Perhaps the “gentlemen of the press” anticipated President Trump’s run of successes; perhaps they only feared it; and perhaps they were, as has been the case for some time now, so deeply in bed with the Democrat Party that they were merely “following orders.” It doesn’t matter. The press co-conspired with some of the least trustworthy, most despicable persons ever to sit in federal offices. They partook in an attempt to reverse an election by fraudulent means – and they did so on the representation that Trump won the election by fraudulent means!

     The ironies are simply too great to be captured. However, the perpetrators and their cat’s-paws are not. Some belong behind bars; others deserve to be bankrupted in slander and libel suits. Will any of that come about? We shall see. But we may be certain of one thing, at least: President Trump, a battler par excellence whose considerable and well-earned pride in his accomplishments has been deeply scored, will not “drop it,” nor should he.

     Trump 2020!

---

     That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. It’s time to sit on my heating pad and pray for deliverance from the severest back pain I’ve known in decades. See you tomorrow, I hope.