Archive for March, 2022

When Liberals Don’t Know

Thursday, March 24th, 2022

Obama said the question of when life begins, is above His pay grade.

Judge Jackson said she can’t define the word “woman” because she’s “not a biologist.”

Weird that liberals know so much that the rest of us don’t know, until a question emerges with some clear practical ramifications to it. Then suddenly, they can’t answer the basics.

When liberals refuse to define things or profess to be unable to define things, we all need to remember it’s not because they can see “nuances” or “shades of gray” that have eluded the rest of us. That’s the story they’d like to sell. But that’s not what’s happening. Not even close.

The acid test is: If being unable to define things keeps them from forming an opinion, will they still be unable to define it? In all test scenarios, the answer is no. They’ll go ahead and define the thing so they can form the opinion. Usually, to get pissed off and bent out of shape over something.

It’s an issue of maturity. The desire to win all the arguments comes way before the ability to do so.

This is why a lot of liberals cut discussion short by cracking some sort of lame-ass joke. It’s all about arousing that feeling of winning the argument, with or without actually saying something enlightening or persuasive.

Liberals can define things just as well as anybody else. They can answer these basic questions just fine. What they’re refusing to do is commit, because that would require some intellectual honesty.

Liberalism is a Cult

Monday, March 21st, 2022

I can find conservatives willing to concede the United States should not have invaded Iraq, but I can’t find any liberals willing to concede Saddam Hussein ever did anything threatening.

I can find conservatives willing to concede that the global climate changes from time to time, but I can’t find any liberals willing to concede Al Gore’s house consumes a lot more energy than necessary, or that this might constitute a messaging problem.

I can find conservatives willing to concede Truman should have fired MacArthur, but I can’t find any liberals willing to concede communists successfully infiltrated the government under Truman.

I can find conservatives willing to concede the Capitol Penetration on January 6, 2021 was a WrongBad thing, but I can’t find any liberals willing to say the same thing abut the George Floyd race-riots all throughout the previous summer.

I can find lots of conservatives willing to concede they’d been toyed with, with the prospects of Hillary Clinton, James Comey et al going to jail, but I can’t find any liberals willing to let go of the fantasy of “Walls are closing in on Donald J. Trump!!”

I can find conservatives willing to concede Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and not Kenya, but I can’t find any liberals willing to concede the “Trump hired hookers to pee on a bed” story had ever been debunked.

I can find conservatives ready to concede businesses don’t always do the right thing, but I can’t find any liberals ready to concede government agencies don’t always do the right thing…unless those agencies assist the military, or are operating under a Republican president.

I can find a lot of Republicans who thought Trump should have been impeached. Of course I can; they voted that way. I can’t find any liberals or democrats who will concede the stuff and nonsense about “Trump is a Russian asset” was exactly that and nothing more, just stuff and nonsense. It’s been debunked and they won’t go against it, won’t even mention it anymore except to repeat it a few more times.

Conservatives, all over the place, confess that Donald Trump might not be a good role model for boys. It isn’t even a concession. A lot of them are eager to agree to this, in fact will advance it, waiting for others to agree. I can’t find any liberals wiling to concede HIllary Clinton or Kamala Harris make poor role models for girls.

Being a liberal, I’ve concluded, must have a lot to do with never conceding anything, anywhere, at any time. Never admit to having been wrong. Never make a single U-turn. That’s for lesser people.

It isn’t that liberals have a frayed or worn-down tethering to truth, or that they have their own truth, the problem is that they don’t have any. Liberalism is its own “truth.”

A financial analyst or economist who is a liberal, is a liberal first.

A lawyer who is a liberal, is a liberal first.

A scientist who is a liberal, is a liberal first.

It’s a cult.

So yes…when you say 97 out of a 100 scientists agree to X, I want to know how many of them are liberals. I know too much not to ask, and I know too much to remain impressed if you can’t prove to me all the liberals were scrubbed.

I know that when the truth stares a liberal right in the face, and it goes against doctrinaire liberalism, the liberalism will go against what’s true, forsaking it for the doctrinaire liberalism. I mean, it’s not like I have to work at remembering this. We all get a front-row seat so we can watch it, multiple times per week, 52 weeks a year, for years and years at a time.

Where Are the Regretful Voters?

Wednesday, March 9th, 2022

It’s so strange. I have heard from people who voted for Reagan, and were sorry for having done so. Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama, Trump. Losers, too, have repentant voters who would like to have done it differently. Mondale, Dukakis, Perot, Dole, Gore, Kerry, McCain, Romney and yes, even her, the Smartest Woman on the Planet Hillary Clinton. They all had voters who wished they could take back their vote and do it differently.

Even JFK, back in the day. Here and there, now and then, you could read about them. Should-a voted for Nixon, gosh darn it.

But, the 81 million have no regrets.

The guy who hid in his basement…can’t put together two words…is not popular…time comes for him to brag, he’s got nothing…far-and-away record number of votes received, ever, since the nation’s founding, and no one regrets anything?

Oh okay. So they wanted World War III and gas at $7 a gallon?

Things Happen Because of Other Things

Tuesday, March 8th, 2022

People who follow politics only casually and haven’t seen a reason to commit to either side, get to be loud in our country. It’s the price we pay for our affluence; our populace, or certain portions of it, get to enjoy bizarre, unfitting luxuries and that is one of them. Some of these neutrals figure they’re neutral because they know something the idealogs don’t know, although they typically can’t say what that is. But while they’re running around being loud, one of the ideas they tend to purvey is that the committed conservatives and committed liberals argue more-or-less the same way, just in different directions. And this is attractive to people who haven’t been paying attention at all.

It’s a case of the blind leading the blind.

It’s quite wrong. Or at least, if one dedicates oneself to paying attention to figure out what’s really happening, rather than just to pick up casual, surface-level observations to drop into the next coffee table conversation with friends, co-workers or relatives, this is the first domino to fall.

Liberals, I notice, generally don’t believe in cause and effect. They certainly act like they do, but they don’t. Conservatives say “Increasing the minimum wage costs jobs” and liberals say “No, it actually creates jobs” — seems like here we have an earnest point of discussion. But…we don’t. Conservatives can offer a cogent rationale: Raising the price of any product or service, will generally reduce demand. This is not only strong reasoning, it is the basis of economic theory. Supply, demand and price are interrelated, and this is how markets work. The liberal rebuttal seems to consist of little more than “Paul Krugman says, and who are you to question him,” infused with some “If you get to do that, our side gets to do this” verbal nerd-slap-fighting.

I’m noticing this lately because conservatives have noticed Putin had left things alone while Trump was in charge, a notion that the dedicated liberal overlooks, or rejects, just because it doesn’t gel well with his feelings. As I wrote earlier, we as a country would do well to seriously discuss this idea that bad guys are intimidated into inaction when our leadership is, shall we say, hawkish. Such a discussion might be short, but we wouldn’t know for sure because our liberals don’t want us discussing it. But history seems to support the idea. And again, there is a cogent rationale: Bad guys who run around doing bad things, make decisions about whether or not to do them before they act, and they decide these things in their own self-interest.

Liberals say “inequality” — whether they’re talking about wealth, or income, they typically don’t say — leads to social instability and upheaval. How this works, I don’t know, and you can’t tell me because you don’t know either. They won’t say that part either. It seems to have something to do with the emotions of the people who are causing the social instability and upheaval. Left to guess, I would have to surmise this is a threat that if we don’t redistribute income so that unproductive people get some of it, the unproductive people will march through the streets BLM-protest-style, smashing things. On the other hand, that’s not fair because I’m going beyond what the liberals are actually saying. On the other other hand, that’s the best I can do because they’re not being clear about it.

They establish some link between capitalism and “climate change” that is trashing the planet, but it looks like communism is harder on the planet than capitalism ever has been.

They link some good things to their purported causes, too, like electing Barack Obama President led to the termination of Osama bin Laden. Gotta give ’em that one. Except for one thing: How? What specifically did Obama do to make this happen?

Conservatives say if we let entrepreneurs and other business types keep more of their profits, we’ll see economic benefits for all. Liberals smear that as “Trickle-Down,” but history supports it, and so does common sense: You want more of something to happen, you make it easier and more rewarding for the people who are doing it, you get more of it. Liberals say if we have more infrastructure and education, we’ll reap the same benefits. But when we don’t, they move the goalposts and begin indulging in bizarre arguments that we never should have wanted what we thought we wanted in the first place. Education, so goes the goalpost-move argument, should not be all about making more money, it should be more about making the student into a well rounded individual. On this issue, we could see some agreement between conservatives and liberals, if the liberals would just hold still: Educate the kids, so they grow up with practical skills, learn to provide for themselves, and there’s a benefit for all while we make some serious inroads on that inequality problem. Seems doable. But the liberals tailor their arguments for people who can’t pay attention or remember anything.

It seems a lot of the time like liberals appreciate inequality just fine. Replacing the ABC’s and three R‘s with gender studies, would be a great way to perpetuate inequality.

It is a solid, cogent argument to speculate that Putin invaded Crimea when Obama was President, because Obama was President, and he invaded Ukraine when Biden was President because Biden was President. When Trump was President Putin invaded nothing, because Trump was President.

“COVID happened under Trump’s watch,” on the other hand, while true, is not solid or cogent. Again, it’s just “I get to do this if you get to do that” verbal nerd-slap-fighting. The question remains outstanding: Why? What is it about Trump being President that caused the pathogen to escape the Chinese lab? Or motivated the Chinese to release it on purpose? The most obvious answer would be “They wanted Trump to lose the election so the whole thing was a setup.” We don’t have supporting evidence for all that just yet, but if it emerges, it would hardly be a reflection on Trump himself. Rather, it would indicate that someone had something to hide, and were willing to go to extraordinary lengths to keep it hidden, which would suggest that replacing our President was the wrong thing for us to do.

What we have here is truly a remarkable thing: We have an ideology dedicated to the proposition that events are spontaneous, that nothing happens because of anything else. An ideology that is unaware of the simple concept of cause-and-effect. And that’s something that, on an individual level, its adherents must realize is a real thing. I mean, to go about their day-to-day lives, they must get this, right? What do liberals do every day? Maybe…go to Starbucks to get a seven-dollar daily drink before bitching about how hard it is to make ends meet? So they must know, to get the drink, you have to reload the card…? My point is, the politics apparently are making them stupid. They understand, when they just do their daily-routine things, the events cause other events to happen, and then when they immerse themselves in politics and start spamming conservative blogs with nonsense, suddenly they don’t understand this anymore.

They think “the January 6th insurrection” was such an awful, terrible thing. Conservatives come back and say “Well yeah, BLM had been rampaging through our cities all the previous summer, law enforcement did little to nothing about it, and that sent the message that political violence was okay.” Pretty simple summation, and you get here before you’re obliged to condemn this act or uphold that act. It’s an old, respected custom, that if we don’t prosecute crimes, they become okay and we shouldn’t be surprised when the crimes happen with greater frequency and with more damage done. But somehow, when you get to that point in the discussion, liberals activate their amnesia-shield of “I don’t comprehend cause and effect because it’s too complicated,” and start topic-drifting, goalpost-moving, or filling the sound space with nonsense and noise in some other way.

The longer I watch them, the harder it is for me to chalk it up to true amnesia, lack of focus, or any other kind of incompetence.

To harp on the point that COVID happened under Trump, and then waste time on bogus “fact checks” that say high gas prices aren’t Biden’s fault, is worse than hypocritical. It’s flagrantly dishonest. It says something about our discourse, and the environment in which it takes place, that liberals not only engage in the duplicity on a routine basis, but feel comfortable doing it.

Shiny and Sweet Under the Hood

Monday, March 7th, 2022

Cheeky hot-pants girl from Eat My Dust says…

You know the thing I’ve always hated about cars, is they’re so gorgeous on the outside but so ugly and dirty under the hood, ya know?

It’s supposed to be a stupid one-liner that helps build on the character’s superficiality…and it is.

But in light of current events, it’s quite profound. Consider what would happen if Darlene got her wish. Start with draining the five quarts of motor oil and replacing it with potpourri, after scrubbing every last remnant of that awful icky slippery black stuff from every machine part. Turtle-wax the engine right down to the core of the crankshaft.

What you are then left with, is a beautiful thing indeed — inside and out — but it will also be immobile. The engine won’t run. If it runs, it will overheat. If it doesn’t overheat, the valves won’t work right and if they do work right, the brakes will fry. The car will self-immolate because you made it into a grease-free, bright, shiny, waxed, non-functional, self-destructive thing. The crankcase smells like cinnamon, the gas tank smells like lemon, all the guts are smooth, colorful and appealing to your delicate sensibilities, And the damn thing is inoperable, melting into a puddle when anyone turns the key.

That’s why there’s a war on now. You assholes got rid of Trump because he was coarse, salty, abrasive and he didn’t tickle your fancy.

The analogy breaks down a bit because without some actual gasoline somewhere, the motor doesn’t run long enough to fry itself. And a “Biden-mobile” doesn’t smell that sweet. Rumors of Grandpa Joe being more congenial and friendly, showing the proper behavior in the selected setting, discretion superior to his predecessor, etc….they’re greatly exaggerated. Not that any of this matters though. A mistake is a mistake.

By all means, extend your compassion. Hopes and prayers. Donate money and blood for the humanitarian crisis coming. But we’re living in your world. You wanted things your way and you got ’em. Never forget that, because I won’t. Not letting you off the hook.

The dumb throwaway line from the 45-year-old movie is there to show that some people, even if you could get them close to the innards of a machine, shouldn’t be allowed there. Well, in 2020 we allowed them there. Yes it’s that simple.