Archive for September, 2018

About Yesterday

Friday, September 28th, 2018

Why are the smarmy liberal jackasses so quiet? I remember when Cohen agreed to talk and Manafort got convicted, there was donkey-bleating everywhere and you couldn’t get away from it. I’ve got one at home and one at work. They’re actually letting me go about my business now, not saying a word. They act kind of like the guilty dog.

I’m still waiting for something to emerge from this Cohen-talking thing. Maybe that’s it. I was told at the time I wouldn’t have to wait long for something juicy, and I’m still waiting…

The other thing I notice is that it seems something is happening with the women-accusing-men thing. On the Internet, liberals aren’t afraid to share their feelings, and it doesn’t take much time at all to ascertain that feelings are all they have here. The facts are friendly to Kavanaugh and unfriendly to his so-called accuser. But — I believe her! Because! Her testimony! So brave! It’s like stepping into a time machine and emerging in 1991.

These people don’t seem to understand: You can take sexual assault on women seriously, and still take a pass on the flakier allegations of it, even call them out for being flaky. It’s not a package deal. As I often like to say, grown-ups form opinions based on facts, not based on expectations of other people. This is yet another problem with left-wing politics: Low, as in rattlesnakes-belly low, standards for their emblems. Time after time, they choose the wrong ones. Their selected highlighting icons representative of some supposed far-reaching social problem, stink on ice, stink worse than they’d stink if they were picked randomly, as if someone is making an effort to choose the ones that stink the most. Example: Innocent young men and boys of color being shot and killed by overly-aggressive, trigger-happy cops is something that really does happen and is a real problem — I think — but somehow they decided to pick Michael Freakin’ “Gentle Giant” Brown. Who made that call? And Trayvon Martin? Who picked him to represent anything, who decided we should all be watching him?

If I made it my business to go around arguing about this, I’d feel betrayed. “This is a real thing! Why didn’t you pick that guy, over there?”

The woman who testified yesterday made it look like maybe we’re entering into a whole new era here. It will take a lot of time to determine whether this perception is accurate, but it looks like accusations of this nature are nothing more than an expected price men should pay when they are on ascension. They/we have to grease the right palms to pass through the right checkpoints. Wasn’t that the original complaint in feminism, that men were enjoying the fruits of success without bringing women along, a sort of “take your little sister with you when you play outside” thing? But we already had a convention for that, it was called marriage. Not good enough, because a woman’s place is in the office. Oh and now you’re not promoting them as often or as quickly as some paper-pusher in the nation’s capitol, who knows nothing of your business or of what men & women are supposed to do in it, thinks you should. So we have the usual gimmicks that make paper-pushers happy, affirmative action, quotas, set-asides, and lots of showboating about ending institutionalized sexism “once and for all.”

Still not good enough! When a man’s contributions are being appreciated and he’s being promoted, all of the women who share his interests profit; but what about the women who don’t? So unfair! Something must be done for them!

I don’t know what’s a sadder sight: The people among us who think this is how it’s supposed to work, that the fruits of labor are distributed according to ever-evolving social rules & taboos and aren’t legitimately earned; or, the casual-observers who tune into these things like they’re Hallmark Christmas movies, and come away bumptiously boasting “I believe her!” based on her performance, not on the facts. The latter toiling away in complete ignorance about their bedfellow-tethering to the former, failing to catch on to what’s obvious to everyone else, that they’re supporting a movement and not a woman.

Memo For File CCX

Wednesday, September 26th, 2018

Conservatism as defined in the dictionary:

A political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change…the tendency to prefer an existing or traditional situation to change.

Liberalism:

A theory in economics emphasizing individual freedom from restraint and usually based on free competition, the self-regulating market, and the gold standard.

A political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties…a philosophy that considers government as a crucial instrument for amelioration of social inequities.

These don’t work, especially when one seeks to understand the current political situation in the United States, led as it is by a “conservative” who seeks to change things, and is resisted by “liberals” who want to keep things the way they are. These liberals do not believe in the self-regulating market, as America’s First Holy Emperor made all too clear.

My definitions are imbued with the unique desirable advantage of actually working, even across across time:

What exactly does conservatism seek to conserve? Civilization, the blessings that come from having it, and the definitions that make civilization possible. From what does liberalism seek to liberate us? Those things — starting with the definitions.

Civilization, the dictionary tells us, is:

A relatively high level of cultural and technological development…the culture characteristic of a particular time or place…refinement of thought, manners, or taste…a situation of urban comfort.

I take issue with these as well. Not because I disagree with what they say, but because they’re weak definitions. They depend on themselves.

Civilization is the banishment of something else; it is an absence of something. That something is brutality.

Savage cruelty, inhuman behavior, insensibility to pity or shame.

Brutality is when we act like animals, civilization is when we act like something better. Brutality is when, I am bigger and stronger than you and you have something I want, it’s mine already. You just don’t know it yet. When I want it I’ll take it. Civilization is a bulwark, of some kind, against that. Civilization has laws, usually criminal and civil. It has hierarchies of authority. It provides for redress of grievances.

I wasn’t there, but civilization must have started with motherhood. That’s because it must have started with someone who was weak, and yet valued by someone who was strong; this must be how physical strength, as the coin of the realm, was displaced by something else — the only way it could happen. The brute is at the top of the local hierarchy of brutes, the strongest one who can take all that he pleases. But the brute has a mother. If he wants to go and do his brutalizing, he has to leave the cave and roam around, and cannot be there all the time. And so there must have been pacts made: You leave mine alone, and I’ll leave yours alone.

Civilization depends on definitions of things. For a definition to work, it must a) impose an objectively-evaluated reproducible result upon complex situations that arise from everyday life, and b) not depend on itself. Reviewing human history, even casually, it is easy to see civilization is not the default state. The human race has managed to erect various civilizations, and after a time these crumble into nothing and become archeological relics. So it takes something to get a civilization going, and once it’s started you can’t just walk away and expect it to keep on truckin’.

Anything that is not the default state, that involves other people and may or may not work — to get it working and keep it working, you have to have three things. You must have these definitions, along with the willingness to make and abide by the definitions once they’re made; you have to have the resources, including time, work and the willingness to do the work; and you have to have the vision.

A thought, concept, or object formed by the imagination.

Many people can participate in a common effort, each contributing their visions, if they agree on a common set of values.

Something intrinsically valuable or desirable: …sought material values instead of human values.

Once you form a vision, you can make a plan. The plan requires the vision; you have to incorporate a workable understanding of what it is you’re trying to do.

A method for achieving an end…a detailed formulation of a program of action.

If the plan involves some threshold of complexity, it can be broken down into objectives.

Something toward which effort is directed…an aim, goal, or end of action.

Plans and objectives may require strategies.

The art of devising or employing plans or stratagems toward a goal.

And of course strategies rely on tactics.

A device for accomplishing an end.

Values → Vision → Plan → Objective → Strategy → Tactics.

We argue among ourselves about politics, because we have disagreements about one of those six. The six are in sequence. Disagreements about strategy and tactics are easy to resolve. Disagreements about values and vision are much harder to resolve.

All of these depend on defining things. An organizational hierarchy can work as an effective substitute against definitions of things, with someone at the very pinnacle laboring under, or enjoying, the final word on how to resolve whatever pressing questions arise. But these civilizations are not stable and they don’t last. One may protest that ancient civilizations, such as the Egyptians, persevered exactly this way and for thousands of years. But it only appears that way to the very casual reader. Such “civilizations” were broken up into dynasties, with schisms, internecine squabbles and other conflicts. We tend to think of these as enduring civilizations because new factions were too respectful, or perhaps too lazy, to knock down the monuments and other artifacts of the previous ones. But in the meantime, they obliterated some of the definitions made or observed by those previous ones.

It is fashionable, in this day and age, to observe that conservatives and liberals are all trying to achieve the things outlined above. It isn’t so. “Liberals,” as we use that word today, are definitions-averse. Definitions get in the way of their fun, so they oppose the creation of new definitions where they’re needed, and in fact are in favor of obliterating the definitions we have already. They seek to “liberate” us from the definitions that make civilization work. They want their pyramid-shaped power structure. Each liberal fancies himself either as the despot at the pinnacle of the power-pyramid, or sharing a kinship with that despot.

The old saying is that a conservative is a liberal who got mugged. That’s close to the truth, which is: A conservative is a liberal who was on the wrong side of bureaucratic power, on the wrong side of capriciously made “final” decisions. And the liberal may think himself a conservative who was on the wrong side of law, and/or police brutality. Even in cases where that’s true, the eradication of civilization, in whole or in part, is an overly heavy-handed solution to the problem. It appeals only to those who “think” with their emotions, and are definitions-averse.

Chapters 8 and 9

Friday, September 21st, 2018

Eight…

The conservative says: I am good, and/but I am irreparably flawed. I can never be perfect but I am on the right path. I am a force for good. The liberal says: We are building a “perfect society” that would put us on the right path, but as individuals we must be on the wrong path. As far as being a force for good, it’s all about having the right opinions. STOP WATCHING FOX NEWS!!

Liberals, therefore, don’t have it within ‘em to grasp the grown-up thoughts that have to be considered, and managed, after one takes into account what’s “true.” They seem to think, after they’ve proven something is true – or much more often, presented an emotionally-compelling argument that it’s likely true, or it might as well be true since our social status will suffer if we’re caught doubting it – the job’s done. This is the child-thinking mistake we should expect people to make when they proceed from the premise that everything in the universe is disconnected from every other thing.

Nine…

How do people learn to discuss contentious issues in a civilized way, when they grow up without ever having been allowed to do so? They don’t!

We have many generations, now, of people who haven’t learned. In our modern age politics are much more contentious, information travels faster, and you can’t get away from the weighty issues. They’re being talked about everywhere. People need to know how to argue a point, substantiate it, prove it, cast doubt on others, refute them, challenge them. They need to know the difference…between a reasoned inference and gut-feel. Too many people need to know these things…and yet they don’t know them. Auntie Petunia didn’t allow them to talk about such things at the dinner table.

…We are more contentious today, I submit, at least in part because of this widespread lack of knowledge about how to argue…this ignorance makes it worse because people feel pressured to refute things they have been taught, or feel, must be obviously untrue…and they don’t know how to do it so they lunge for these hayseed dismissals. “Oh well, opinions are like assholes everyone’s got one and they all stink, ha ha.” “Whatever makes you happy.” “Denial’s not just a river in Egypt.”

The point about things in the universe being connected to other things, resurfaces here and there throughout the manuscript. Many a conservative, or other normal-person, has observed that on the intellectual funny-planet of liberalism “history always began this morning.” Also, that effects do not have causes: He’s rich, I’m poor, that’s just the way it is. To suggest things happen because other related things happened previously, and offer any belief in antecedent action, is regarded as heresy in their little cloister.

Around chapter 2 somewhere I liken it to building a sandcastle on a sun-baked beach where all the sand is bone-dry. It doesn’t work, of course. That’s what the world of liberalism is. Thoughts aren’t consistent or coherent, because they cannot be. Every little thing is completely disconnected from every other little thing.

Kavanaugh and Climate Change

Tuesday, September 18th, 2018

I see a connection here between the Kavanaugh matter and the climate change scam.

It’s actually a simple, sturdy and solid connection believe it or not…

In both cases, the democrats are not only demanding we accept an unknown & unknowable interpretation of events, eschewing all residual doubt; they are brazenly sitting in judgment of our character based solely on whether or not we so accept.

And in both cases, it is their behavior that has created the problem for our acceptance. Kavanaugh’s accuser has sat for decades on these memories, whatever they are, of what happened, whatever that is. And then Feinstein’s office apparently sat on this report.

Just like the environmental zealots are spewing all sorts of carbon emissions, which we’re not supposed to notice, “raising awareness” on this issue on which awareness has been raised already.

So bottom-lining it: Their sole criterion for our being decent people, in both cases, is our acceptance of their sales pitch, our willingness to behave as if we take it seriously. We’re not good people unless we take it more seriously than they did.

What’s that say about them…

Related: Someone else noticed something…

He’s referring to a remark made by the lady Justice last year…

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not hold back from talking about gender politics and partisanship Monday night at Roosevelt University in Chicago, but avoided discussing current events after a controversy last year.

“There will be enough women on the Supreme Court when there are nine,” Ginsburg said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

She added, “I think there has not been a better time to be a woman in the legal profession because no doors are closed.”

She also decried the partisanship that she believes was evident at recent Supreme Court justice nomination hearings.

“I can only hope that in my lifetime they will stop that nonsense,” Ginsburg said, according to the Sun-Times. “Partisanship in selections of justices is a dangerous thing.”

How else to interpret that? She doesn’t want any ol’ division, rancor and resentment; just the kind she likes. Cross the aisle, bring the parties together, so they can act as one…confirming women to the Supreme Court and not men.

Liberals in Tech

Saturday, September 15th, 2018

Yes that Google video was an amazing thing to watch. A company-wide group hug, WTF?

I once worked for a company like this, following the sage advice of keeping my political leanings under wraps. It didn’t work out well. That’s probably a good thing. The problem remains that this thing we call “social media” is the 21st century’s version of the telephone and the radio, and it’s dominated by libs.

What to do about it? It’s not just conservatives and Republicans who have an interest in changing the status quo, assuming it can be changed. It’s the whole country. We know this because we’ve put forth a good-faith effort to implement their ideas and it turned out the same way it always does; some people benefited and some people were fleeced, and liberals are right there to stick a microphone into the face of whoever benefited. And, like always, and this is one of the most reprehensible things they do out of everything else, ignore the plight of the ones who were fleeced. Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Now their sign-carrying Facebook-typing enablers say there are underlying reasons for the pattern and this is the moment for me, and other conservatives, especially those of us who work in tech, to show some requisite humility. They do have a point. I’ve yet to build a billion-dollar empire or launch a car into space. If Sergei or Larry or Jeff or Mark say it would’ve been good if Hillary won, who am I to argue?

But then there is this: If there’s one thing on earth more loathsome than a failure to show the requisite humility when someone else does something better than you, it has to be a lack of gratitude. Watching these liberal tech-giants act out their chosen roles as liberals-first tech-giants-second, I’m put in the position of knowing — for sure, having seen proof first-hand — a lie is being told, which others hearing it have no idea is a lie, and being unable to comment. It’s not a comfortable position by any means. And I’m not a nothing. I do work in tech. My victories don’t stop with MyStuffWorks, I’ve actually made a living out of it. I do pay a mortgage with my brain, and if it all comes to a stop bright and early Monday morning never to be revived again, it’s still three decades. That’s something. I’ve seen many a swaggering cockswain make a good pretend-show of comprehending the implementation details while knowing nothing, and directing resources, ordering others about, and manufacturing a series of disasters before calling a stop to the charade and going back to selling Amway or something. And in the case of the most braggadocious, such implosions follow a lot less time than that. So maybe we’re not looking, here, at a problem with me speaking above my station. Maybe we’re looking at the opposite. Maybe I’ve been quiet too long.

Having opined on many other things in these pages over the last fourteen years, allow me a few paragraphs to indulge that and let’s see where it goes.

Starting with the conclusion. Based on what I’ve seen thus far, it is that reality is reality and it has certain characteristics to it; one must behave certain ways around it. One must swear allegiance to it, forsaking all others, and call out betrayal against it. Think the Bible says something about that, does it not? And people who have built things that actually work, know this to be the case. God agrees, technology agrees.

If you can’t build anything that works thinking like a lib, how come so many of these tech conglomerates are run by and staffed by such emotionally-immature liberals?

Could it be, as the liberals insist, that this is not merely an indicator that you can build working things thinking like a lib…but, maybe it’s necessary? Can it be that this is where I show my willingness to perceive truth? And so I am obliged to do an abrupt but expected about-face, racketball style. Maybe I have to be a liberal to get the plum jobs anyway. And I don’t really know tech if I’m not one. They’re right what they say about conservative cavemen…how ’bout it?

And the answer is — not only no, but I don’t seriously consider it for a fraction of a second. And I’m not looking back at the wreckage in my rear-view mirror, not even sparing it a glance. I can’t; I know better. Watch liberals “work” for just a bit. Watch the libs in the Google video. It’s all about creating the correct emotional climate. It’s true of everything they do. Generate the excitement in this, generate the disappointment in that, give off the correct vibe, make the wave. Real technology does surprising things. Whether the crowd does or does not expect the thing to work, has so little to do with whether or not it really will. To merely grasp the essentials, you have to learn the very first thing about reality which is: There is one. Objects exist, they have certain states to them, and human emotion is entirely disconnected with all of this. The masses are asses. Majority-opinion can maintain that the freezing temperature of water is 50 degrees, or 68, or 12; this has nothing at all to do with what it really is. Public sentiment is right the way a busted clock is right.

Run the tests. That’s how you know.

I can’t claim to know more than these moguls about how to make tech work in business. But my mortgage is paid so I must know something; and I don’t need to know much to comment. I know enough. You have to do two things after you get the darn thing to work right, you must layer and you must market. I’m maintaining the proper respect for all these men and women — interesting, I think, nearly all the heavy hitters are men, but that’s a side-point. They must be experts at the layering and the marketing. And you can read about marketing anywhere, which isn’t my field anyway. Let’s talk about the layering.

It is, to explain it crudely, a vertical arrangement of interfaces. You might think of it as “Now that I used threading to get the nut to attach properly to the bolt, how do I fasten the alternator to the frame of the car?” You get the simple stuff working first, then you work your way upward to build complex stuff out of the simple stuff. This is how you build a powerful application that can do complicated, amazing things, without losing the necessary attribute of maintainability. You do it with layers.

I do have the requisite humility. I think these guys are geniuses at marketing; and, layering. I respect their leviathan thought-controlling goose-stepping conglomerations. I acknowledge the many layers within them. I’ve seen them, up close. They are numerous and strong, as we should expect them to be, like rivets holding together a passenger jet that really flies.

But you can’t build tech thinking like a lib.

I said “thinking like.” There certainly are successful people in technology who are liberals. Some of them — far, far more slender a proportion of the overall workforce, compared to what the layman might think — have achieved, or started with, a respectable command of the implementation concepts. But there is some falsehood going on here, some two-facedness. If they’re still contributing to the growing technology, there has to be a switch being flipped whether they consciously realize it or not. You can’t get that code working thinking like a lib. You can’t figure out why it’s not doing what it should do, thinking like a lib. Can’t figure out which component is faulty, can’t figure out how to validate the inputs so that the gizmo will yield the correct behavior in practice.

There’s another rule about this:

Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.

These people, being good at layering, necessarily became agile about it. And they found themselves responsible for building, not just a gizmo that worked, but a proper working environment for their employees. A rapidly expanding, exploding work environment. They could delegate the responsibility, of course, but it’s still a lot of responsibility, arriving after having not been sought, guesting without being invited. Gushing in within an exceptionally narrow piece of time.

The truth is that, while you can’t think like a liberal and do tech, tech allows you to get away with thinking like one. Mmmm, that’s quite good innit? As long as I’m taking a breather from requisite humility, let me go back and admire that. It’s good enough for a tee shirt, bumper sticker or coffee mug.

It’s also true. We’re dealing with a Butterfield fallacy here.

“Don’t Be Fooled, There Was Nothing ‘Financial’ About the 2008 Crisis”

Wednesday, September 12th, 2018

John Tamny writes in Real Clear Markets, H/T Maggie’s Farm.

It’s said that banks lacked oversight in the 2000s such that they took risks without adult supervision. The problem with such a view is that financial institutions like Citigroup had over sixty full-time regulators working at their headquarters, and who had no clue about the troubles brewing. Not only were U.S. banks still heavily regulated in the 2000s, it was frequently the regulators themselves who were encouraging more exposure to mortgages. Others like journalist Charlie Gasparino still claim that repeal of Glass-Steagall (a Depression era law that separated banks from investment banks) sparked banking’s troubles in 2008, but the inconvenient truth for Gasparino is that the financial institutions that had the most difficulty in 2008 (Lehman Brothers, AIG, Fannie, Freddie, Merrill Lynch, and Bear Stearns) were decidedly not the financial hybrids that Glass-Steagall’s repeal allowed. Better yet, the banking activities that got them into trouble to begin with would have in no way been restricted under Glass-Steagall.
:
Economies and markets gain strength from periods of weakness whereby lousy companies are starved of precious resources so that they can be replaced by good ones. Implicit in the view that a failure to bail out Lehman caused a crisis is that economies gain when the businesses rejected by investors are kept afloat. Sorry, but such a belief is completely backwards. It’s the Silicon Valley equivalent of government officials propping up Friendster, eToys and Webvan…
:
That the economy and markets convulsed in response to what was done wasn’t a surprise, nor was it mysterious. Government intervention in the marketplace is always and everywhere harmful. Period.

Stop Making Me Defend Donald Trump!

Sunday, September 9th, 2018

Symbolism & Propaganda in Popular Culture

Sunday, September 9th, 2018

He’s picking on Wonder Woman, which I happen to like. Darn you!

But he’s right…

I hadn’t noticed this thing about raising-daises. But there is a persistent pattern with a gloomy present giving way to a new rosy future made possible by the victory in the epic battle. It used to be an occasional happenstance that someone would have to make the ultimate sacrifice for that victory to be possible. After Spock in the Mutara Nebula, it began to happen much more often, and after Harry in Armageddon it seemingly has to happen all the time.

Vice Admiral Holdo’s weird sacrifice that defies common sense and reason notwithstanding, there’s a persistent trend in which this sacrifice is to be made by the male. The woman is to go on living. And this goes way back, to the slasher-film era. The Final Girl is a real thing, in fact it isn’t hard to pick her out near the beginning of the film if you put in one of the newer slasher flicks. You can spot her if you try. It’s kind of a fun game. “Okay she’s a slut, she’s not the F.G.” “She’s got a brain, I think she might be the F.G.” “Oh wow, I really thought it would be her…oh well, let’s see who bites it next.”

It’s got something to do with being remembered in that new rosy future. The female lives on ward after the epic battle, to be a part of this future, and likely even central to it. The Bride in Kill Bill lives, with her child — those two against the world. The father, Bill, is like a flame extinguished, to be not only deceased but forgotten. Which is weird, since the girl had a relationship with her father prior to the final events, not with the mother.

The male descends, makes the ultimate sacrifice, backs off, fades into the shadows. The woman triumphs, ascendant, raised on the dais, lives on and is remembered.

Which just goes to show, those who make the most noise about gender being a social construct and men & women being the same, are the ones who believe in it the least. Our movies are marketed to men and women differently. Males and females in the audience are looking for different things, relating to their respective same-gender heroes in different ways. One of my favorite bits of evidence is the “falling asleep” thing. Haven’t you noticed, both Wonder Woman and Moana fall asleep while they’re supposed to be sharing equal responsibility piloting a water vessel, and in both cases the second-stringer male helpmate completes the voyage while they snooze. This suggests female moviegoers are looking for things in female action heroes, that male moviegoers are not looking for in male action heroes…James Bond, after all, likely wouldn’t have snored & drooled while Honey Rider was piloting the boat. Or, if not, there is a bit of marketing research somewhere that says that’s the case.

Not sure what this means. Maybe the chicks are smarter than we are and they know you have to get a decent night’s sleep to save the world properly. Or, maybe they’re down with someone of the opposite sex doing the steering, and we’re not. Or society as a whole has figured out you can be an intrepid, courageous, desirable female when you’re rubbing crusties out of your sleepy eyes asking “where are we?” but intrepid courageous desirable males are not supposed to do the exact same thing.

Three Questions

Saturday, September 8th, 2018

The three questions liberals can’t ask, and don’t want anyone else asking, are:

1. Is there any room for doubt?

Oh so you decided God doesn’t exist because you don’t like the idea, well that’s cute. And you can “prove” it because God lets bad things happen…but that’s actually just a rationale, supporting nothing beyond a mere suggestion. What’s the foundation for the 100% certainty? Liberals would agree responsible thinkers have doubts, but somehow when it comes to them and their beliefs, it doesn’t work that way anymore and doubts are for slackers.

This mystifies and baffles me. Someone here has something short of a commanding lock on the subject being discussed, his balding tires of intellect spinning and slipping further into the mud of the argument…and I don’t think I’m the guy with the problem. They must understand the concept of excluding a possibility. Wife says I slept with a hooker in Los Angeles last Friday, here’s a receipt for a soda from a 7-11 that night in Denver, with my signature, this would be powerful exculpatory evidence, likely enough to exclude the possibility. If such a receipt is stamped twelve hours earlier, then that’s merely suggestive. The earlier receipt, paired up with a plane ticket to L.A., would be suggestive the other way…these are all different things. You can suggest, you can prove. Two different things. Not the same.

2. What makes it so?

If we are to uncritically accept all these protestations that an anti-capitalist democrat executive’s policies are good for the economy, and a pro-business Republican’s policies are bad for it…how’s that work? They won’t answer this because they can’t. The closest they get is when they express their angst about wealth inequality, which is supposed to be bad for everyone, even the guys who have most of the loot. It doesn’t seem to be within their capacity for self-assessment to realize this is all they’ve done, just express dislike.

Reminds me of computer software salesmen and company executives I used to know who’d drone on and on about how their company makes the very best stuff…but, couldn’t say what makes it so. It’s a simple question. What are your engineers doing that works so well? If it’s a trade secret, then just say that…but that wasn’t it. They just couldn’t say, just wanted to drive the narrative. That’s thinking like a lib.

3. What are we to do about this?

Since, in something approaching honesty, even they wouldn’t able able to assert that football twit is actually doing something to prevent police brutality when he kneels for the flag, or that California is doing something to help the environment by banning straws. They keep flocking back to that comforting cocoon of “but it’s symbolic!” and “it raises awareness!”

Liberals must understand something about cause and effect. They make it look like they get this, sometimes. They say things like “When the government taxes money away it uses that to create jobs”…so they must grasp the concept of a thing happening and thereby making another thing happen. But for the situations they pronounce to be most dire and presenting the most urgent demand for resources to be redirected from somewhere else — they got nothing. Squat. “Raise awareness” and that’s about it.

Truth is, they haven’t got the first clue about how to actually solve a problem. If they did they wouldn’t be liberals.