House of Eratosthenes

Archive for the ‘Slow Poison’ Category

Proving My Point

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

Don’t look now, but The Hawaiian Cannabis Ministry is pointing at us trying to get a conversation going about our comments.

There certainly is a culture built up around the wacky weed. It’s kind of like belaboring the obvious to even mention it, and as a consequence anyone who takes himself seriously has reservations about so mentioning. Part of the culture is that all other classes of person may be stereotyped, but pot smokers cannot be. Another part of the culture is to displace reasoned exchange of observations and inferences with theatrical indignation, until theatrical indignation is all that is left in the discourse.

This is one of many reasons why I’ve become so jaded about liberalism over the last several years. It isn’t quite so much what the liberals want to do (although lately, that has become much more reprehensible now that they don’t feel they need to compete with anyone). It’s how they want to go about arguing these things should be done. Every reasoned critique is met with “ZOMG! I can’t believe you just said that!!” — and then that’s it. So far, in my experience, that is exactly what pot smokers, and other members of the pot culture, do.

Well I shouldn’t say that; one of our good blogger friends feels pretty strongly about this and he’s managed to offer some personal anecdotes about people he’s known. But that is decidedly an exception — not the rule.

This is, I maintain, a big part of the reason why pot is still illegal. It isn’t quite so much that it makes sense to keep it illegal…and it damn sure doesn’t make sense to put the federal government in charge of keeping it illegal. The knuckle-rapping method of arguing, for all its benefits, has one serious drawback. It requires vibration and movement to succeed. You say “This thing we do is just so WRONG!!!” and, let’s say, one-third of all those listening will agree with you. Whoever isn’t swayed by all your horror and anger and angst, is going to remain unswayed…no matter what. To make some inroads into those other two-thirds, you have to have some kind of an event take place. Without a meaningful event taking place, you’re still back at one-third agreeing with you and two-thirds disagreeing with you, and you lose.

Liberals run everything today because they used all that theatrical phony shock-and-rage…plus some gimmicks. John Kerry tried the “It’s so awful about Abu Ghraib” plus the I’m-so-much-smarter-than-that-guy thing, and because he’s prune-faced, white, and arrogant as all holy hell, he fell j-u-s-t short of the mark. Then they brought in Barack Obama, who’s just so charismatic or whatever, plus you can’t ever disagree with Him or else you’re a racist. That put it over the top. So you can win with the phony “That’s just so terrible, so so terrible” thing, but you need to have some gimmicks with it.

My preference? As long as we’re all pretending to be oh-so-well informed and such wonderful-independent-thinkers, I wish we as a society would stick to our knitting and deliver on what we’re promising. As individuals, most of us don’t even have the gonads to notice things anymore, or to put ink or voice to what we’ve been noticing so others may see it. And that’s pretty fucking cowardly, when you think about it. It’s lately gotten to the point where you can’t even admit that men and women are different…and how silly is that, really?

Nope, in 2009 most of our arguing falls into the category of the Oh-help-me-deplore-that-that-guy-over-there-said-that-thing. All of it, with negligible exceptions, I would say. You don’t have to be a pot-smoker to rely exclusively on that, to such an extent that it becomes intellectually unhealthy. But based on my observations, it certainly does appear to help.

Posted in Marijuana, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | 7 Comments »

Pay Czar

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

If you think Bush’s “warrantless wiretapping” was scarier than this, there is something wrong with you. Stop voting now.

The Obama administration plans to require banks and corporations that have received two rounds of federal bailouts to submit any major executive pay changes for approval by a new federal official who will monitor compensation, according to two government officials.

The proposal is part of a broad set of regulations on executive compensation expected to be announced by the administration as early as this week. Some of the rules are required by legislation enacted in the wake of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and they would apply only to companies that received taxpayer money.

…that is, they’d only apply to companies that received taxpayer money for now.

This is truly a “Poll I’d Like To See” moment. What percentage of us think it’s just a swell idea for our country to have a Pay Czar? What percentage of us think this is a road our government should even be going down, even with the taxpayer-funded bailouts? What percentage of us recognize the danger in that? I’ll bet this is one of those fifty-fifty situations; it’s a given that some of these government busybodies think they might gain additional support by putting these rules in place, but the hushed and muted tones suggest they know they need to be careful when they talk about it.

A similar situation existed when Clinton’s Department of Justice went after Microsoft. If that case made the headlines every single day for months at a time, rather than several weeks IIRC…if it sustained the coverage as well as, let us say, the Iranian Hostage Crisis or the O.J. Simpson case…more people would have seen it for what it was. Which was, “Hey, you’re getting big enough your size might one day become comparable to the Government’s and we can’t have that!”

Yes, some people make vastly more money in the private sector than anyone could ever hope to “make” by working at any level in the Government. In the strictest and most technical measurement of compensation, that is true. Anyone who thinks that is the end of the story, is a fool. Government seeks to minimize and marginalize businesses, as a competitive measure against those businesses and against business as a whole. It doesn’t have anything to do with looking out for consumers or taxpayers. This isn’t coming as news to anybody, is it?

Posted in Eat The Rich, Nanny State Crap, Poisoning Capitalism | No Comments »

Stocks

Friday, June 5th, 2009

The eighth amendment, which outlaws cruel and unusual punishment, is worded in such a way that its application is entirely subjective. Whether that is deliberate or not, it has been interpreted as a blank-check the courts can use to apply our “evolving mores of decency” and because of this, the traditional punishment of being locked in stocks in the public square, where your fellow villagers can pelt you with rotten vegetables — has been entirely abandoned.

This is a mistake; a deadly-serious, no-good, heap big mistake. The stocks were used to re-awaken, where re-awakening was necessary, a sense of personal shame. Now that we’ve gotten rid of the stocks, we have gotten rid of shame. Shame is now being defined for us by those who are incapable of feeling it. Our society has become a topsy-turvy sort of mudpuddle, in which you’re supposed to feel all this shame when you smoke cigarettes, because of what you’re doing to your lungs, but none at all for smoking pot. We’re supposed to think our “carbon emissions” are bringing about the end of life on the planet, because we haven’t been taxed enough…if we just pay a lot more money for the privilege of polluting, the planet will be saved.

In dozens and dozens of other ways, this vacuum of real shame has brought about a scarcity of quality thinking and everyday common sense. We need shame; we need to bring the public-square stocks and pillories back. Let no one oppose me on this argument, without first seriously evaluating the list of people I would have sentenced to them. Spare me your phony righteous indignation…and go get your rotten cabbages ready. These people should all feel a sense of shame that, obviously, they don’t feel. The rest of us are as guilty as they are, for as a community we have failed to hold them responsible.

Stocks 1. These assholes who keep calling my cell phone from (877) 888-8888.
2. People who voted for Obama because “There’s Just Something About Him!” and they “Really Want(ed) To Be Part Of This!”
3. Lawyers who play jury-lottery because the law is poorly written…along with the legislators who write laws poorly on purpose to make this possible.
4. Whoever coined that stupid phrase “Too Big To Fail,” and whoever, for whatever reason (aside from sarcasm) uses it.
5. Politicians that block drilling to make oil more expensive, and pretend it’s to preserve “pristine environments” they really don’t care about.
6. Politicians that raise the minimum wage to make labor more expensive, and pretend it’s about “working families” they really don’t care about.
7. Politicians that raise taxes to make business more expensive, and pretend it’s about “the deficit” they really don’t care about.
8. Anybody who blames the savings and loan mess on “corporate greed,” knowing full well about the Community and Reinvestment Act, and saying not one word about it.
9. Politicians who blame budget deficits on taxes not being high enough…knowing full well that the problem is a spending problem, not a taxing problem.
10. Anyone who calls himself an “American” but insists there is some kind of problem when a fellow American makes too much money.
11. Anyone who answers yes to the question “Would you allow your family to die so you can avoid waterboarding a terrorist?”
12. Feminists who reply, without a trace of reservation, that yes there is something sexist about a gentleman holding a door open for a lady.
13. Airline ticket agents who try to play word games with you to get you to give up your seat, when the flight is overbooked.
14. Rebate people. You know what I mean. You have to figure out which number is the product number, you have to send back proof of purchase, do it by such and such a date…and then oops we lost it.
15. Able-bodied people who ride those electric scooters just because they’re fat, and lazy, and want to push everyone else out of the way.
16. Women who go to shopping malls with baby carriages, so they can push everyone else out of the way.
17. Children who push those odious shopper-in-training grocery carts into your ankles.
18. Parents who allow their children to push those shopper-in-training grocery carts.
19. That asshat who invented the shopper-in-training grocery carts.
20. Anyone who is sociable, precocious, bubbly and outgoing enough to smile into a camera while holding a cell phone up to her (occasionally his, but much more often her) ear.
21. School administrators who are ready to hold a child back a grade when he lacks social skills but can do the work — and aren’t willing to make such an issue over another child who has the social skills but can’t do the work.
22. Single mothers who medicate their sons into the “proper” behavior, just because, as women, they have difficulty relating to their child’s budding masculinity.
23. Anyone who does a lane change without using a turn signal. Where in the world does anyone pick up the idea this is proper?
24. Litterbugs.
25. Anyone who supports gun control…in America.
26. People who text message on their cell phones — while standing in, and monopolizing, a high traffic area.
27. Phlacers.
28. SNUL-ers.
29. WAGTOCPAN.
30. People who open the second jug of milk, when the first jug of milk is already opened.
31. Anyone caught shouting “You go, girlfriend!” in any context.
32. Parents who think it’s more important to teach their kids it’s okay to cry, than how to do important everyday things like changing a bicycle innertube, et cetera.
33. Anyone who believes it’s somehow impossible to oppose Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court without being a racist.
34. People who propose taxes, vouchers, and other new expenses as a remedy for “global warming,” and the people who fall for it.
35. Anyone who seeks to be identified with the “global warming” movement, and at the same time drives a car that gets less than 15 miles a gallon.
36. Moviemakers who shake the camera.
37. People who want to make sure movies are rated “R” if they have people smoking.
38. People who want to make sure movies are rated “G” when they have nice-looking women running around naked.
39. Parents who don’t force their small children to say “please” and “thank you.”
40. People who refer to “Hooters” restaurants as strip clubs.
Pain in the Ass 41. Cowardly school officials who punish the “good” kids for defending themselves, and let the “bullies” throw as many punches as they want because, hey, it’s just the way they are.
42. Anyone inside the United Nations, or outside of it, who seriously proposes the next Strongly Worded Letter as a solution to anything.
43. Whoever takes Keith Olbermann seriously.
44. BFFs who talk their married girlfriends into a divorce. When the priest said “let no man tear asunder,” that meant YOU.
45. Parents who allow their children to interrupt, or teach them to expect to be interrupted. Words aren’t noise; they’re meant to convey ideas.
46. Parents who buy their children extra-special gifts, just for not being bad.
47. Able-bodied people who choose to be on welfare.
48. Union workers who are more concerned about doing what the union-rep says to do, than about doing what the boss says to do.
49. Politicians that define every single trifling everyday human complaint as some kind of human-rights social problem that demands government intervention.
50. People who take those politicians seriously.

Update 6/6/09:
51. Anyone caught repeating anything on the list of stupid things famous people have said to get attention. This is a particularly egregious crime of no-shame, because these are things that make so little sense that if an ordinary person gave them voice, they’d be instantly recognized as silly and unworthy of recognition. It is the irony that preserves the luminous power of the celebrity’s name, and that’s why they say these dreadful things. They know they will be remembered a little while longer for saying things normal people can’t say. They also know some deranged people will take what they say seriously, even though it is nonsensical. This kind of arrogance is the whole point of bringing the stocks back. Double-time in the pillory for them.
52. Kids waiting for elevators who, when the elevator doors open, barge on in without giving the people in the elevator a chance to get off.
53. Kids who skateboard in places where skateboarding is specifically against the rules, and then ignore the poor teenager acne-faced assistant manager who’s tasked with coming out and nicely asking them to stop.
54. Parents of any of the above two (#52 and #53).
55. People who concoct needlessly complicated orders at the coffee bars, just so they can be observed by others using these four-and-five-syllable European names…and then monopolizing the barista’s time as they send the drink back again and again because it doesn’t have enough of this, or too much of that.
56. People who leave gum on the sidewalk.
57. People who put the top down and then crank up the bass. Boom…boomboom…boomboom…
58. Men and boys who walk around with their droopy pants showing off their underwear, or heaven forbid, their bare, hairy crack.
59. Whoever speeds up to close the gap, when you signal that you need to get in the right lane to exit a freeway. Studies show this practice is twenty times more dangerous than speeding…and if they don’t say that, they damn well should.
60. E-Girls.

The irony here is that most of these things would never be done at all, if people lived out their lives in solitude. They are, for the most part, social things. They are things people do to impress others.

What we have done, is embrace a new social covenant in which human fellowship offers only carrots for the correct acts…never sticks for incorrect ones. We have made a rather sloppy and half-assed effort to resolve never to ostracize each other, to avoid making each other feel bad. It hasn’t worked. Like I said up top — we have abdicated the responsibility of figuring out what’s shameful, and who should be ashamed, delegating that authority to those who feel no shame. The result is that we have encouraged a whole bunch of behaviors in which humans engage, intentionally or otherwise, to bring harm to each other. We have become quite nasty to each other as a direct result of this. Not so much malicious, or even deliberately mean; just inconsiderate more than anything else. We have become quite the festering pit of rancid buttholes. Shameless buttholes. This is precisely the antithesis of what was intended.

Update 6/6/09: There may be some, albeit few, who would require further substantiation of what I’m talking about. Or perhaps there are no people who require such stuff…nevertheless…this is such a perfect tie-in.

Like I said, watch me.

After what happened to Dr. Tiller, it’s time to misbehave.

Sometimes, in order to make things happen, you have to be an asshole.

Kiss my ass, if you don’t like it, suck it. I damned well am going to unilaterally decide to turn off other people’s FAUX Noise. This is an omelet for which I’m willing to break some eggs…

These are the words of Democratic Underground commenter backscatter712, who is bragging on the bulletin boards about a recent electronic purchase that is supposed to be able to power down 95% of all known television sets within some radius of the person who wields it. The plan is that whenever backscatter712 sees a television set in the doctor’s waiting room…or in the hotel lobby…or in the airport…turned to FOX News, the gizmo will be deployed to enforce the decision that the rest of us won’t be watching it on that teevee anymore. The teevee that does not, repeat not, belong to backscatter712. But the “NoFOX” button will be pushed anyway. Hat tip goes to DUmmie FUnnies, via fellow Right Wing News contributor Van Helsing of Moonbattery.

Precisely the sort of shit that bolsters my call to bring the stocks and pillories back: Inconsiderate behavior, engaged for entirely social purposes, to ingratiate the inconsiderate person within the ranks of equally inconsiderate strangers. If he were to politely approach the doctor’s receptionist and, minding his P’s and Q’s, inquire “I wonder if we could turn the channel to CNN?” it wouldn’t be worth bragging about. But backscatter712 has a gizmo. He has a button. So the post has to go up. Ooh, look at what I can do! He mirrors what’s happened to the rest of our society, this way. Inconsiderate, pushy behavior brings instant bragging rights. Decent behavior does not.

One Revolution Away And do take a moment to examine the historical context within which he pushes his de-FOX-ing pocket button. Does he mean to silence the opposition because his side just lost an election? NO! His side won everything. They run everything. But the push to silence the other side, is on; stronger than it ever has been before. And if a “please” and a “thank you” is used in the silencing, it wasn’t done right. He said it himself: In order to make things happen, you have to be an asshole. But the things that are supposed to happen have already happened! He just wants the fun of being an asshole. And even more important, for his DUmmy buddies to know all about it.

The experiment’s a complete and total failure. Let’s bring the stocks back.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Posted in Poisoning Western Civilization | 9 Comments »

More Jobs Whacked; NY Times Sees Hope

Friday, June 5th, 2009

Good old Gray Lady, engaging that objective, balanced journalism for which she has become known:

The American economy shed another 345,000 jobs in May as the unemployment rate spiked to 9.4 percent, but the losses were far smaller than economists expected, amplifying hopes of recovery.

“It supports the idea that before the end of the year and maybe even by late summer we could be at flat employment,” meaning no more net job losses, said Alan D. Levenson, chief economist at T. Rowe Price in Baltimore. “During the course of next year, we’ll probably start to feel better.”

Wow, we should keep democrats in charge all the time, if for no other reason than to keep a spirit of exuberant optimism around our failing newspapers. After all, we know from experience that when the other guys are in charge, a slowdown-in-job-losses isn’t nearly enough to keep ’em in such chipper spirits…since they’re so balanced, and objective, and all.

Well, I’m sure Obama’s patented two-step universal strategy of “wonderful speech, gobs of money” is going to work out just great. That is, if Microsoft Chairman Steve Ballmer’s response to The O’s tax plans is the exception, rather than the rule:

Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steven Ballmer said the world’s largest software company would move some employees offshore if Congress enacts President Barack Obama’s plans to impose higher taxes on U.S. companies’ foreign profits.

“It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Ballmer said in an interview. “We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S. as opposed to keeping them inside the U.S.”

Obama on May 4 proposed outlawing or restricting about $190 billion in tax breaks for offshore companies over the next decade. Such business groups as the National Foreign Trade Council, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable have denounced the proposed overhaul.
:
Barry Bosworth, an economist in Washington at the Brookings Institution research center, said many software companies such as Microsoft have exploited tax and trade rules in the U.S. and other countries to achieve a low overall tax rate.

Typically, he said, a company like Microsoft develops a product like Windows in the United States and deducts those costs against U.S. income. It then transfers the technology to a subsidiary in Ireland, where corporate tax rates are lower, without charging licensing fees. The company then assigns its foreign sales to the Irish subsidiary so it doesn’t have to claim the income in the United States.

“What Microsoft wants to do is deduct the cost at a high tax rate and report the profits at a low tax rate,” Bosworth said. “Relative to where they are now, the administration’s proposals are less favorable, so there will be some rebalancing on their part.”

So our new proposals — hope and change, remember — are going to recover some of these lost jobs…how?

Pelosi Car It’s a little peculiar, isn’t it, that software companies somehow aren’t “too big to fail.” I find it doubly odd, since I have some personal experience looking for work that puts Microsoft, in my eyes, in the position of the goose at the apex of the “V” that is responsible for breaking the turbulence for the rest of the flock. My experience showed that when Microsoft wasn’t terribly interested in creating new technology — their most recent operating system was a disaster that did next-to-nothing called “Vista” — nobody else was too interested in new technology either. Creating it or consuming it.

Now, auto companies don’t do too much innovation. Not when you compare the new features offered, against the number of years we need to wait for those offerings to come out. And what innovation they have been doing, for the most part just became the job of the federal government. Is that an exaggeration? I hope so. Time will tell.

But anyway…nobody is saying the technology companies are too big to fail. Savings and Loans that are artificially required to extend loans to people who would otherwise be found to be un-credit-worthy…newspapers that print up liberally-biased dreck we don’t want to read…car companies that sell oversized upside-down goldfish bowls for us to tootle around in, or are just about to…they are too big to fail.

What does the world need the United States for, anyway? Our lending power…with all this free cash we have lying around? Heh. Our cars? Double-heh. Our newspapers? Nope. Our ideas, that go into the software we write…well, after this revolution of “Technology Equals Portable Personal Tunes Plus Dogs-in-Purses,” we’ve lost our toehold there as well. But that one, we just might have a shot at getting back. Doing something to commercially justify our existence on the big blue marble. Wouldn’t that be a win-win? We design, other countries mass-produce.

But it would appear not to be in the cards. Our young people who would be going into software engineering, are far more interested in putting together music collections so they can stick those white earplugs in their ears, and be admired in awe by their friends, as they ignore everybody and listen to tunes. And carry artificially tiny dogs, with artificially tiny bladders, around in artificially expensive leather purses, every hour of every day just asking for a REAL mess when $600 designer handbags fill up with real dog shit.

Such fake children grow up into fake grown-ups. They see something they want and they don’t have yet…their impulse is not to go out and get it, or render valuable services to others to earn the material wealth needed to acquire whatever it is. Nope. Their impulse is to invent some new “human right” that has been violated because they don’t have it, and hold some micro-revolution to force someone to give it to them.

And Obama’s tax plan is motivating Microsoft, and God knows how many other companies, to relocate the last truly cerebral jobs to other countries, or at least seriously think about doing so. Creativity finds a welcoming home nowhere else. Our home design is done on assembly lines. Our accounting and lawyering is done on assembly lines. Our doctoring is done on assembly lines. Everything is proceduralized, except for that once-promising field of telling a computer exactly how it should be working on a problem. We’re getting rid of that now. Obama’s tax plan leaves us no other option.

Nation of veal calves.

Update 6/6/09: I was hoping someone would pipe up about this. The credit goes to the always-excellent Iowahawk for the graphic. Thanks to the loyal reader who tossed me an offline, for the information and for the kind remarks.

Posted in Poisoning Capitalism, Poisoning Individuality and Reason, Poisoning Science, Poisoning Western Civilization | No Comments »

On “Change”

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

The one constant in life is change itself.

People are enamored of change. They can’t get enough of the idea of change. Change brings out an excitement in people that cannot be explained.

People absolutely loathe change.

Isn’t this just about the time I should be asking — which, if any, of the above four are true? Isn’t it a little strange that all four of them work just fine? It seems there’s a contradiction in there somewhere.

I think, what it is, is that people can’t get enough of the idea of the other guy going through some change. They love change because they love to be associated with youth…vigor…freshness…rejuvenation. This does not, sadly, equate to a pledge to endure any sort of personal inconvenience for it. That’s a burden for someone else.

Posted in Poisoning Individuality and Reason | No Comments »

Reid Won’t Read

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

Our Senate Majority Leader belongs to the adorable party, so he can get away with this. Even though the chamber he leads, is constitutionally tasked with figuring out whether a nominee is worthy or not…and it is the only legislative body that can sign off on that. Harry Reid, CEO of Congress’ upper chamber, according to his own words, hasn’t cracked open a Sotomayor opinion. Hasn’t even peeked at so much as a word in any one of ’em. And doesn’t plan to.

He brags about it.

Uninformed is the new informed. Knowing-nothing is the new knowing-something. This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius…

I understand that during her career, she’s written hundreds and hundreds of opinions. I haven’t read a single one of them, and if I’m fortunate before we end this, I won’t have to read one of them. But — I’m not familiar with that opinion, but there will be plenty of time for people who are concerned about the Second Amendment — and there are lots of people on the Judiciary Committee who are concerned about it — they’ll have lots of time to offer her questions and she’ll proceed to answer them. But I don’t know anything about that.

Just another chapter in the ongoing civil war between those who, upon being presented with a package, inspect the contents — and those who inspect the packaging. The “steak” people versus the “sizzle” people. Senator Reid is typifying an elite crusty layer within the “sizzle” camp…those who not only fixate on appearance at the expense of diligently inspecting substance, but bristle with a secret antipathy toward anyone who would deign to take a look at contents. Toward anyone who would, even by accident, become aware of them.

Bragging about ignorance. Just imagine it. But in Camp Sizzle, it makes all the sense in the world.

Posted in Poisoning Individuality and Reason, Poisoning Justice | No Comments »

Political Wives

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

Melissa Clouthier’s latest Pajamas Media column is up, and it is about the bizarre and “unenviable” position of political wife. God bless Blogsister Melissa — she really makes you think.

Can you think of a worse job? Married to type A personalities with more than a little bit of a narcissistic streak, these women — often educated and accomplished in their own right — must present a subservient demeanor and a sunny picture of their spouses or risk their spouses’ success. In addition, they often play a big part in their husbands’ careers by campaigning or crafting strategy. It is a rare politician whose wife operates outside the inner political circle.
:
Many political wives aren’t just known for their contributions to the political sphere. Many endured having their private lives made public. Hillary Clinton isn’t only known for her politics and ambition. She is also known as the woman who stood by her husband’s side despite his infidelity and abuse of power. A staunch feminist, she demonized the women who were victims of her husband’s advances and infamously decried “the vast right-wing conspiracy.”

Those of us who aren’t women should sit up and take note of what’s going on here. It is ironic, surreal, topsy-turvy. This is about the men we elect to lead us — ostensibly, the best out of all of us men. Now listen up, fellas. What is it, exactly, that causes us to look down with such disdain and contempt, upon those among our brethren who are poorly endowed? I shall not dwell upon my meaning here, for I’m pressing the envelope of vulgarity already. But think on it awhile. What makes a man with half a package, half a man? What makes him unworthy of standing side-by-side with the rest of us…let alone leading us?

It seems a petty, juvenile question. But there is some grown-up tradition here, and once you think on that, you realize things are changing and not for the better.

We have, traditionally, thought of ourselves as fit to be led by men who are chosen from the best among us. And that means men who can please their women. As in, make women happy. Happy…as in…not looking like Ms. Spitzer during that horrible press conference.

How will America survive if good people don’t run for office? When decent people forgo politics because they see how public servants are personally destroyed, there seems little incentive to jump into the shark-infested waters. Conservatives, especially, must worry about this. Over the last decade the press has shed any objective pretense and made it its mission to destroy conservative politicians, especially those who are most outspoken and idealistic. It gives rational people pause.

And so the political world may end up being inhabited by guys like Arlen Specter and Bill Clinton, self-serving miscreants who abuse their calling. They are bought and paid for by interests and are far removed from those who vote them into office. And behind these men stand women who facilitate their journey.

Only three possibilities are in effect here.

One: Electing the very finest among us to the most potent occupations, has become passe. We have become burdened by a thirst for mediocrity. Mediocrity and oiliness.

Two: Excellence has somehow become disconnected from the time-honored art form of making a woman feel cherished, fulfilled, important and worthy.

Three, and I think this factor has had the greatest effect: We have become unmoored from the truth. We have fallen in love with electing the opposite of whatever it is we say-out-loud we are electing. Ted Kennedy was “The Conscience of the Senate,” Jimmy Carter was “a good man,” Bill Clinton was “honest,” Barack Obama is “thoughtful.” In all cases there is an irony present, which the dull, vague concept of “everyone” refuses to admit is there. We pretend everything is consistent with everything else. We pretend that the content is the same as the appearance. Deep down, though, nobody who studies the situation to an extent beyond the most casual, thinks of Present Obama as a thoughtful man.

Now look what’s going on here.

We all still like to chuckle at the fella with a tiny pecker.

But we elect to our very loftiest positions, the so-called “men” who’ve shown a proclivity for making their life-mates profoundly unhappy. I mean, miserable to such an extent that most of us will never truly understand it. The so-called “man” who can’t, won’t, or doesn’t know how, to make a woman happy…and doesn’t care to learn how. That’s today’s definition of manhood. It shows up in what kind of men we choose to lead us. Time and time and time again.

Trouble ahead? Gee, you tell me. When’s the last time we twisted the concept of manhood itself all around like this, and things worked out just swell for us. And how far are we twisting it? For how long has the idea of male potential…male goodness…male worthiness…been inextricably intertwined with the idea of men making women happy? Answer: It has been synonymous, for untold centuries. Since King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, female fulfillment has been the reason we are here at all, let alone leading anybody.

In a sane world, an unhappy wife would almost be grounds for impeachment. In ours, it has become a pre-qualification criteria for the candidacy in the first place.

Posted in Poisoning Masculinity | No Comments »

Why Are Those Conservatives So Mean?

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

Klavan opines and informs.

Hat tip to Boortz.

Posted in Poisoning Western Civilization | No Comments »

IT Guys and Marriage

Saturday, May 30th, 2009

Dr. Helen has found something that gets her thinking, and me too.

Eleven men and one woman were asked about what they wished their spouse knew about their job. This is what the men said:

Most of the 11 other respondents’ answers to my question expressed some frustration with their jobs or with their marriages, or both. (The one woman who responded to my question wrote about the guilt-trips her kids lay on her for having to work long hours.) Their responses boiled down to the following five themes:

1. I don’t want to discuss the details of my workday when I get home.

2. Don’t call me at work unless it’s an emergency.

3. If I don’t return your phone call, it’s not because I’m mad at you/don’t love you. It’s because I’m busy.

4. IT management is not a 9-to-5 job. It’s complicated, demanding and stressful.

5. I’m not a tech support person, and I can’t fix all of the family’s home technology problems, especially when I’m at work. I spend my time on strategic issues and networking with other C-level executives.

The men in the article are seen as the “bad guys,” that is, they are seen as uncommunicative and insensitive to their wives–and blamed for their shortcomings. The summary of the piece makes this clear: “your answers spoke more about your communication mistakes at home than they did about your spouse’s shortcomings. Read on for advice on how to fix this before a nasty crash.”

Perhaps these IT men are a bit uncommunicative or perhaps they do have stressful jobs. But can you imagine if the same author interviewed women who were raising five kids and having a stressful time of it? Say the husband was calling home for some spousal care on the phone in the middle of three of the kids having a temper tantrum. Do you think anyone would be sympathetic to his plight and blame the wife for her communication mistakes? I rather doubt it.

I’ve spent very little of my lifetime being a married IT guy…which is a little odd, since I’ve spent all of it being a married-or-not IT guy. Marriage wasn’t happy in my case. I can’t clue you in on very many of the details, because I don’t have memories of them. Going back to anytime before my marriage was officially dissolved, some seventeen or eighteen years ago, it’s mostly just a big blur. A nugget or two from childhood, maybe. But anything before November of 1991, even though it’s my life, recalling something from it is like reading from a blackboard with several thick sheets of dirty plastic stretched across it. Some form of PTSD, I guess.

One thing I do remember: I had some depressed feelings about the yawning chasm between my wife’s interest in my paychecks, and in what I had been doing to earn them. She had such insatiable curiosity about one of those things, and little-to-none about the other. It’s a sad, sad thing, when you pledge your life to somebody and wake up one day to realize they aren’t smart enough to feed the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Back to what Dr. Helen is talking about: It is, of course, an assault upon masculinity; but it’s a rather complex one. What’s happened is that masculinity has been re-defined. A man’s ability to chop wood is worthless, his ability to defend the home from an intruder is worthless, his ability to open pickle jars and kill spiders is worthless. Worthless, as in, a lady who genuinely appreciates these skills, is going to be stigmatized and ostracized by other “ladies.” And on Planet Female, social ostracism has a profound effect that men can’t quite fully appreciate. Instead, women are to value men for: Communication. That’s it, and that’s all. Spending time with the family, being expressive, listening, listening and more listening. Empathy. Chatter. Agreement-over-clarity. Observing, over such a sustained timeframe and to such an intense level, that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is actuated, and it becomes unclear who is doing the observing and who is being observed. What Robert Heinlein called “grokking.”

This is not to say that men are valued for their ability to grok. That would call for the fashion-set to show some positive feelings for men, here and there. That cannot be the case. No, the ability to grok, is simply dangled in front of the gentlemen, as a carrot before a donkey. As a prize not to be won yet. As in “I wish you would do X more.” You don’t notice a man who does it well, except in the capacity of someone/something you cannot have. Wives who desire to be accepted by other wives, audibly inform their husbands “I wish you could be more like him.”

The IT guy, by his chosen life-work, routinely commits what today is the great sin: He places his attention on something that is not his woman, and sweats the details — over there. There is no penance for this sin. Off the clock, he may worship the ground upon which his lady walks, but hours before he demonstrated his readiness, willingness and ability to pay attention to something that is not her. This is a stain that cannot be washed away.

And so, in our modern society, after all this “progress” we have been making…the male who actually comes up with something someone can use someday, has to go through life apologizing for the way he lives it. This does a disservice and measurable damage to a lot more people than just him.

Posted in Is It Really a Man's World?, Poisoning Family, Poisoning Individuality and Reason, Poisoning Masculinity, Poisoning Science, Poisoning Strength, Poisoning Western Civilization | 2 Comments »

Blogsister Cassy Speaks

Saturday, May 30th, 2009

She explains, and exemplifies, what is good about America. The camera loves her.

If you agree with those and wish to tell her so, you can do that over here.

Pretty scary stuff, huh Janeane?

Posted in Ayn Rand Spins, My Blogger Friends, Poisoning Capitalism, Poisoning Western Civilization | 2 Comments »

What Lies Ahead of Us, in Picture Form

Friday, May 29th, 2009

I guess the central question that arises to confront us from all these waves of turmoil ahead is: Is “I inherited all this stuff” a valid excuse for coming up with the wrong solution to a problem?

It took us just one meeting to discover that we had become beggars – rotten, whining, sniveling beggars, all of us, because no man could claim his pay as his rightful earning, he had no rights and no earnings, his work didn’t belong to him, it belonged to ‘the family,’ and they owed him nothing in return, and the only claim he had on them was his ‘need’ – so he had to beg in public for relief from his needs, like any lousy moocher, listing all his troubles and miseries, down to his patched drawers and his wife’s head colds, hoping that ‘the family’ would throw him the alms.

The mural is put together by our blogger friend Gerard, who’s making it day to day up in our old stomping grounds of Seattle. That’s right, Seattle. Like Sacramento, it is yet another “Can’t Blame Republicans, There Aren’t Any” megalopolis — in deep trouble, barely treading water.

So goes the country. Well, maybe now that hyper-postmodern-liberalism has engulfed us all, the entire nation’s fate will be different from Seattle’s…and Sacramento’s…and Los Angeles’…and San Francisco’s…and California’s…and Chicago’s…and Detroit’s…and Baltimore’s…and Washington DC’s…and Washington State’s…and…and…and…

…we try out these hyper-liberal ideas enough times, sooner or later they have to lead to total bliss. Or something like it. Eventually, right?

Posted in Ayn Rand Spins, Poisoning Western Civilization | No Comments »

Straw Man Argument From Talking Points Memo

Friday, May 29th, 2009

And the “straw man” is the conservative…

Earlier today, our diligent front page editor Justin Elliott picked up on a curious article in The Hill about conservative critics of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

As you may have noticed, those critics have repeatedly cited a speech she delivered in 2001 at U.C. Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, in which she said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

The right is, of course, outraged. In the same speech, though, she also got a bit more personal: “For me, a very special part of my being Latina is the mucho platos de arroz, gandoles y pernir – rice, beans and pork – that I have eaten at countless family holidays and special events,” she said.

My Latina identity also includes, because of my particularly adventurous taste buds, morcilla, — pig intestines, patitas de cerdo con garbanzo — pigs’ feet with beans, and la lengua y orejas de cuchifrito, pigs’ tongue and ears.

Good lighthearted fun, right? Wrong.

According to Hill reporter Alexander Bolton, “This has prompted some Republicans to muse privately about whether Sotomayor is suggesting that distinctive Puerto Rican cuisine such as patitas de cerdo con garbanzo — pigs’ tongue and ears — would somehow, in some small way influence her verdicts from the bench.”

Curt Levey, the executive director of the Committee for Justice, a conservative-leaning advocacy group, said he wasn’t certain whether Sotomayor had claimed her palate would color her view of legal facts but he said that President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee clearly touts her subjective approach to the law.

Slightly gobsmacked, I called Bolton earlier today and asked him whether this was for real–whether any conservatives were genuinely raising this issue. He confirmed, saying, “a source I spoke to said people were discussing that her [speech] had brought attention…she intimates that what she eats somehow helps her decide cases better.”

Bolton said the source was drawing, “a deductive link,” between Sotomayor’s thoughts on Puerto Rican food and her other statements. And I guess the chain goes something like this: 1). Sotomayor implied that her Latina identity informs her jurisprudence, 2). She also implied that Puerto Rican cuisine is a crucial part of her Latina identity, 3). Ergo, her gastronomical proclivities will be a non-negligible factor for her when she’s considering cases before the Supreme Court.

Got it? Good. This is the conservative opposition to Sotomayor.

I’m “slightly gobsmacked” myself. Wouldn’t it be just as reasonable, in fact far more so, to simply cite the Sotomayor quote about reaching better conclusions than white males…and then say “Got it? Good. This is the argument for confirming Sotomayor.”

Is it possible to make liberal ideas look good, without misrepresenting something?

Posted in Deranged Leftists, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | 3 Comments »

That Would Be Sufficient Reason

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

More wisdom posted by me, at your Sotomayor News Update Center…a place formerly known as FARK. It’s a generic comment that couldn’ve been placed under any one of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of links that have gone up over the last few days.

On her qualifications, I don’t have much of an opinion one way or the other. She seems decidedly average and ordinary, by design, like if there was something too truly remarkable about her judicial & logical reasoning ability she would’ve been eliminated.

But it’s a HUGE red flag to me that the very people who want her seated, like, NOW, this week, this afternoon would be better — are the same ones submitting a FARK link about Sotomayor twenty times an hour around the clock. Very few things in life scream Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain louder than that.

On the “Latina” thing: I can just see the man-and-God conversation:

Man: All these centuries rolling on by. When are you going to bless us with harmony and equality and banish the tension from our racial/gender differences to the ash heap of history once and for all?

God: When you stop bringing those differences up, stupid!

Anyone who thinks the Supreme Court should include a black seat, a woman-seat, a Hispanic-seat, a Jewish seat and/or a disabled-seat…should really just stay home and watch reruns on election day. They’re placing the responsibilities of special agendized advocacy groups, onto the arbiters in the middle. Judges and justices aren’t supposed to be advocates. As things sit now, I don’t see a reason to vote against Sotomayor, but if she’s coupled-up with an agenda of turning neutral arbiters into advocates, then that would be sufficient reason.

Article was already “red-lit” before I made my comment…which I’m positive will be subjected to respectful and thoughtful treatment by the intellectual giants there. “Red-lit” means it was un-approved for publication to the general public, so you need to have a TOTALFARK subscription just to see the thread. You can get one here.

I have no idea if that one idea of mine is going to sit out there by its lonesome, or if it will kick off a huge thread-post melee that will stretch on for miles and days. I really don’t know. I really don’t care.

No. I really don’t care. I’m pretty much just sounding off, on this one.

Posted in Poisoning Justice, Racial Tension | No Comments »

This Vaccine Against Scrutiny

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

The Daily Gut, issuing what I’m afraid is going to be the final word on the Sotomayor nomination for quite some time. Really. There’s really nothing more to be said.

So far, every single headline I’ve seen mentions the woman’s race – which, as you know, is by design. It’s a terrific strategy, this vaccine against scrutiny. Simply make sure you nominate anyone who is the “first” of anything and you create an impenetrable cone of immunity around the nominee (protecting mainly against the media, and of course, conservatives). You could say this strategy worked with great success during the last presidential election – that if Barack wasn’t black, he would have just been another white policy wonk – a less persuasive version of John Edwards, without the wayward weenie.
:
The bottom line is, when a person’s “story” is the story, it’s purely a diversionary tactic to take you off the ideological ball. It’s a clue to everyone – especially the media – that this time you should do more than order the commemorative plates.

Posted in Poisoning Justice, Racial Tension | 2 Comments »

Watch the Whole Thing

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

…especially before forming a hasty opinion, lest you become exactly what you call others. And, in there somewhere, is a lesson for us all.

Hat tip to Duffy.

Posted in Poisoning Individuality and Reason | 1 Comment »

Why Political Correctness Must Die

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

I really wish I could remember where I learned about this first. We at The Blog That Nobody Reads try to make sure fellow bloggers get their hat-tips. I remember going through this when it came out, and now that it’s been brought to my attention again, I think it should make it into the scroll.

1. It’s censorship: Point blank, that’s what it is. It’s used mainly by people on the left to attack people on the right, but not the other way around…it’s a thuggish weapon of intimidation.

2. It’s bigotry disguised as manners: You may think all those touchy-feely names they come up with for various special interest groups are more sensitive and empowering than the “mean” names of the past, but most of them are patronizing and they segregating…

3. It’s an attempt at mind control: The goal of PC always has been to segregate people into classes, destroy the family by marginalizing and polarizing people from traditional values and culture…

4. Evil: The textbook definition of evil is that which is willfully and maliciously harmful to others. What else do you call something that is used to commit so much harm against people and a society as a whole…

5. Why should we do what some faceless creeps tell us?: Most of the time we were told what the new term for something is. In the ’60s we were told Negro is not acceptable anymore. We should say black even though Negro is merely the Spanish word for black. Then in the ’70s we were told to use “Afro-American” then later “African-American” even though that term is not only a mouthful it makes no sense. A lot of black Americans are simply Americans, many others are from the Caribbean. Or they are mixed race like our president. Who makes up these lame terms and why should we start saying them?…

6. It has produced disastrous results: The morally and intellectually degenerate media elite used it to manipulate the public into electing president an unqualified left-wing extremist who does not mean this country well.

Posted in Poisoning Individuality and Reason | 3 Comments »

Two Dozen Coffee Mugs

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

It’s not about pissing off that one guy, actually; it’s about elaborating on that “Humans Matter” point on which I was ruminating two weekends ago. It occurred to me that, if this was undergo a metamorphosis into an effective campaign to revitalize the Republican party, or at least give new life to someone who would oppose the nihilists who are in charge right now…perhaps this could be most effectively communicated as a limited number of specs on that “Humans Matter” point. In other words, maybe it would be beneficial to make the next few campaigns about mattering.

It seems to me this is the catalyst of what all the shouting is about lately. Is it appropriate for humans, for Americans, to do things that actually make a difference? Without apologizing for it? By that I mean, as individual efforts…rather than these things we should “all come together” to do?

Perhaps it is easy to envision ourselves as not-doing-things, and tearing down anybody else who would think of really-doing-things, simply because we are only casually acquainted with the everyday, real-life benefits of doing things. Or the liabilities involved in not doing them.

So my vision is a set of coffee mugs — sold six or twelve at a time, with twenty-four unique designs. Their designs have it in common that the phrase —

Dare To…

…is right up there at the top.

And then the smaller lettering halfway down says one of the following…

1. Decide Where Your Money Goes
2. Drive Your Car
3. Discipline Your Child
4. Breathe
5. Be an American
6. Support the Troops
7. Clean Up Iraq
8. Support Israel
9. Be, or Appreciate, a Wise Strong Resourceful Manly Dude
10. Be, or Appreciate, a Smart Powerful Gorgeous Woman
11. Support Capital Punishment
12. Organize a Tea Party
13. Defend the Unborn
14. Speak Your Mind
15. Own a Gun
16. Eat Meat
17. Drink Beer
18. Want Terrorists Dead
19. Be What You Are
20. Hang on to What You Have
21. Build Things People Use
22. Watch FOX
23. Vote Against Obama
24. Raise a Boy into a Man

These are all things that have been stigmatized over the last forty years. Or twenty, or seven, or two-to-four.

Not a single one of them should be stigmatized, and deep down, I think everyone knows that.

Let’s un-stigmatize them. Nevermind whether it’s possible, in the years ahead, to get someone elected on that or not. Just forget all about that. Un-stigmatize regardless.

Posted in Poisoning Capitalism, Poisoning Family, Poisoning Justice, Poisoning Masculinity, Poisoning Strength, Poisoning Western Civilization | No Comments »

Does Wonder Woman’s Costume Undermine Her Portrayal as a Strong Female Character?

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

Submitted for discussion some nine or ten months ago.

Does Wonder Woman’s costume undermine her portrayal as one of the DCU’s strongest female characters?

Shouldn’t she be wearing something a bit more practical, after all they changed Catwoman’s costume to make it seem more practical & less glamour. WW has worn better costumes such as her armour, than her traditional look. So is it time fo[r] a permanent change?

Someone please point me to the last superhero who restored his or her “portrayal of a strong character” with a costume change.

I’ll tell you what undermines Wonder Woman’s portrayal as a strong character. It isn’t her female-ness. It’s the opinions of all these sycophants that are brought out of the woodwork by her female-ness. Everyone wants to play the game of “The Womens’ Movement Was About To Be Set Back By A Century Until I Spoke Out And Rescued Everything.” And her suit doesn’t cover much, so that just seems to set it all off.

What very few people seem to understand, is that Wonder Woman’s costume actually makes a great deal of sense. A great deal of sense — more than the costume worn by any superhero who wears a cape. What’s the downside? Why would a superhero not wear a gymnast’s outfit and boots? Let’s see…too many people would notice — doesn’t apply. She’s an ambassador. As a super-heroine, she lacks a secret identity, because of this ambassadorial status. Not modest enough — also doesn’t apply. Wonder Woman comes from a place where women prance around naked all day & all year. The costume was selected in order to show us, in the US of A, respect; as a gesture of goodwill. She thinks she’s dressing up. Leaves her too vulnerable — doesn’t apply. Her bracelets deflect bullets. She might get cold? She’s made out of clay.

I always thought of her as fitting into the Big Three with perfection. Superman’s got godlike powers; Batman doesn’t have any at all; Wonder Woman’s just someplace in between. She gets into a fight in the middle of the city in midsummer, wearing her trademark bathing-suit-and-boots — it’s easy to think she’s human. The fight is taken into a frozen arctic tundra, now you have a subtle reminder that she’s a super being.

In fact, if you want to look at things that undermine her portrayal as a strong female, that would be a far better place to start. The inconsistency. Can she fly? If she can’t, then can she leap an eighth of a mile like the original Superman? Does she have that stupid invisible jet? I really think, if the movie goes forward, the invisible jet should be included only as a joke. What about invulnerability? What happens if she tries to deflect a bullet with her bracelets, and fails? Is it true that her magic lasso becomes as long as she wants it to be at any given time? (I always thought that was kinda silly.)

Super strength? How much? Can she go toe-to-toe with Superman? Could she win? Can she bear his children if she cares to? How’s that work, exactly?

It’s just a fact: If she’s made weaker than Superman, the rights & privileges of ordinary women will survive just fine.

You know what she really needs, is a makeover just like the one slapped down on Superman back in 1986 by John Byrne. That was awesome. The Man of Steel’s powers were limited; he was and is completely vulnerable to anything magic, including the lightning bolts that transformed Billy Batson into Captain Marvel. The silver-age “planet hurling” Superman, you could forget about. His costume was ordinary fabric, and remained intact in an onslaught of machine gun fire thanks to a narrow field of Kryptonian energy that surrounded Superman’s body, maybe a quarter inch or so. So that did away with the absurd notion of Ma Kent “unweaving” the blue, red and gold Kryptonian fabric in Baby Superman’s birth rocket, and re-weaving it into a costume. Plus, if Superman was in the presence of a bomb, the costume would come away intact but the cape would be shredded, maybe set on fire. Way cool.

That’s how you solidify Wonder Woman’s position as a icon that represents female strength. Confine the re-inventing energies to things that really need re-inventing. WW has more than her share of them.

Women are in sad shape right about now. They’re being defended by people who honestly think of themselves as tireless defenders of womens’ position in society, and of womens’ rights; but those defenders don’t believe women are strong or worthy of respect, if they’re wearing certain things. That pretty much sums it all up, I think.

Posted in Classy Women, Everyday Dimwits, Glad I Learned About This, Poisoning Strength | 1 Comment »

Terrace Five Remains

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

Blogger friend Buck, along with many other folks I don’t respect quite as much, says Terrace Five should’ve been eliminated from the taxonomy of progressive levels of liberal anti-intellectualism and nastiness:

Morgan: We’re pretty much on the same page, now that you’ve submitted your clarifications. I pretty well know where you’re coming from anyway, based on past “discussions.” You’re entirely correct that drugs are another manifestation of The Culture Wars, and we can agree to disagree on that point. That said… I’d delete Item Five in your taxonomy were I you. It is NOT true in all cases, but I suppose that’s life, eh? There are always exceptions that prove the rule… but in this case I think the exceptions cut the OTHER way.

I can tell this is a good idea, because I already seriously mulled over it. The legalize-drugs brigade, contrary to my crude summary, is anything but atomic. There are several sub-factions within it, and although subdividing within an ideology may or may not be productive, you just can’t have it going on without someone thinking about something.

Marijuana However, the “should we legalize drugs” argument never fails to arouse great passion on both sides. For reasons that, I’m convinced, are wholly lacking in merit. It seems on the pro-legalize side, the emotion spews forth from a wellspring of feeling that a number of our current problems would disappear overnight if only the magic legalization were to take place. These troubles are associated with the criminal element; or, rather, with the criminal element being associated with a transaction that would be taking place regularly anyway, be it legal or not.

There is some truth in this. But the notion that the problems would disappear, over a longer term or more instantaneous one, is entirely unsupported.

As I’ve said before, I see government-sanctioned, or government-sponsored, or government-permitted drug use as on the same level of government-managed lotteries. And the lotteries, in my world, rank high on the list of insidious evils. I blame the state-commissioned lotteries for the acceleration in Steve Allen’s Dumbth over the last quarter century.

The contradiction that weighs us down in these modern times, is that the prevailing mindset, lingering so long under the surface, and now bobbing up to the top in this Year of Obama, is that nothing is really worth anything. And yet, somehow, everything is worth yet another explosive expression of anger. Those greedy corporations. Those narrow-minded conservatives. Those irritating white males. Those dangerous gun nuts. Those, those, those, those, those. It is the anger of people who are passionate about freedom, without understanding what it really is.

This is why I would vote to keep marijuana illegal, if only someone would come asking for me to cast a vote. Marijuana makes people think like liberals. Suddenly, freedom is Orwellian. Freedom is freedom to smoke dope — and has little other meaning. If it’s legal to smoke dope, but you must do so in a shitty apartment surrounded with barbed wire, that you cannot leave, day or night, and surveillance cameras record your ever move even when you’re taking a dump…well then, you are “free” because you are allowed to get high.

Some other guy being allowed to raise his sons into real men, to fire a rifle in his backyard, to start a business and keep the profits, to use deadly force to defend his wife from being violated, to bellow at her to please get him a beer without being sent to sensitivity training — he isn’t “free” if the whacky terbacky isn’t lawful in his country, or in his part of it. Freedom, suddenly, is trashing your brain. Just as, in the case of the lotteries, “ambition” suddenly means a hope of matching up those six numbers. That and nothing more.

Those who care about nuthin’-but-legalization, I have confessed, are not that commonplace. Here and there, there are people who care passionately and wax lyrically about the soon-to-arrive magic legalization instant, and yet can form a number of well-thought-out positions on a variety of other issues. However, those who can run off the mouth about it, losing track of the importance of other, unrelated things — this is not quite so exclusive a club. And although I cannot prove it, it is my belief that this is errant thinking. My belief is that, if we were to legalize pot, or legalize drugs overall, things would not get better. I do not believe they would become catastrophic…but I do not believe things would stay the same, either. I think things would become slightly worse, the way things generally get worse nowadays. We’d lose something that is hard to notice, and just a few among us would notice the population is becoming overall dumbed-down yet some more. For this, we would be called kooks.

In other words, I think it would have exactly the same effect as the lotteries. The shift is a subtle one. In 1980, you said “I want to take my family on a nice vacation, so I’m going to work just a little bit harder.” By 2000, you said “I want to take my family on a nice vacation, so I hope those numbers line up.” See the little game? Work is regarded differently, and so life is regarded differently. That’s what would happen with drug legalization. We’d all start to look at life a little bit differently. That is the whole point actually using marijuana, is it not? To make you look at life a little bit differently? To make certain efforts look futile, that normally seem worthwhile when your mind is functioning the way it is supposed to?

The unholy triangle with which we are grappling, is between modern liberalism, drugs that take away the “Give-A-Fuck” instinct like marijuana…and…nihilism. New sidebar addition Self Evident Truths (hat tip, Gerard) expounds on the nihilist/liberal connection:

Here is the key to understanding modern liberals and their connection with nihilism. Modern liberalism bases ideals and programs on “a chaos of the instincts or passions.” Such ideals can only drift from one extreme to another as instincts and passions change over time. Hence, modern liberal politics is a politics of feeling, of self, of instinct, of passions with no understanding of the underlying roots of its own behavior, let alone of the nihilism which drives it.

The lack of understanding stems from liberal nihilism infiltrating into the university system. Once adopted, the university system rejected old values in favor of the new valueless system. In an amplifying feedback loop, the next generation of students came out of the universities not realizing that they lacked anything at all in their education. They didn’t even know enough to ask questions about what they might have missed.

There is a consequence to the adoption or acceptance of nihilism with no regard to US founding principles, morals, or religious constraints. Human nature always has a desire to some kind of foundation, some anchor from which to interpret life. By rejecting the foundational principles of the United States – Christianity, moral living, self-evident truths – the nihilist finds other ideologies to take their place – ideologies based on “a chaos of instincts and passions.”

One of the best known historians of religions, Mircea Eliade, had this to say in his seminal book, The Sacred and the Profane:

Nonreligious man has been formed by opposing his predecessor, by attempting to “empty” himself of all religion and all trans-human meaning. He recognizes himself in proportion as he “frees” and “purifies” himself from the “superstitions” of his ancestors….He cannot utterly abolish his past, since he is himself the product of his past (p. 204).

Those who give up religion, morals and foundational principles cannot free themselves from past principles because they are the products of the past and past experiences. Those who consider themselves “liberated” from the past can only respond to it, since without the past, they have absolutely no frame of reference.

Eliade gives this example of the attempt Marxists made to reject past values. Nihilists who buy into Marxism, Socialism, or Communism should note their dependance on Marx’s substitute religion:

We need only to refer to the mythological structure of communism and its eschatological content. Marx takes over and continues one of the great eschatological myths of the Asiatico-Mediterranean world – the redeeming role of the Just (the “chosen,” the “anointed,” the “innocent,” the “messenger”; in our day, the proletariat), whose sufferings are destined to change the ontological status of the world….Marx enriched this venerable myth by a whole Judaeo-Christian messianic ideology (p. 206).

What does this mean in real world terms? If we take, for example, a look at President Obama and his socially and fiscally liberal policies, we can see that most of his policies lack any definable reference to the foundational principles of the US. Instead, they adopt a Marxist version of a messianic ideology – the desire to create a pipe-dream world absolutely free from human problems. The government itself, just as Marxist doctrine taught, becomes the savior figure of the modern world. Obama becomes its chief prophet.

Those who have not adopted nihilism can immediately see the problems inherent in this system. The ideology leads from a false premise to a false conclusion. Government cannot be salvation, since, by its very nature, is composed of people who do not transcend the problems of the modern day.

Nihilists presume to a knowledge of reality, yet it is knowledge based on a faulty system and a false premise. As Bloom states:

However profound that knowledge may be, theirs is only one interpretation; and that we have only been told as much as [the nihilist founders] thought we needed to know. It is an urgent business for one who seeks self-awareness to think through the meaning of the intellectual dependency that has led us to such an impasse (p. 156).

Without understanding the nihilistic impulse, without understanding the philosophical roots of nihilism, without self-awareness of the lack of knowledge of other systems, the modern liberal has no chance of breaking free from the boundaries set for them by ideologues of the past.

And modern liberals will be at the mercy of today’s ideologues.

This, I fear, is what is to become more popular if legalization takes place. This is what concerns me when I call it a cultural issue. I still say it is immoral and contrary to the philosophies of the American experiment, for people in my location to dictate that people somewhere else should keep it illegal. On that subject, I’m more libertarian — let ’em get stoned outta their gourd, if that’s what they want to do. But on my own patch of ground, I’m voting no.

The departure from reality people undertake, with marijuana, liberalism and nihilism, is quite profound. Two central themes seem to pop up from out of nowhere. The notion that nothing’s-worth-anything is a central pillar of the nihilism, of course. But then there are all these human rights. A human right to a job, to a house, to food, to a car, to the gas to put in it. Suddenly we’re all Han Solo; hokey religions are no substitute for a blaster at your side, kid. Nobody put us here. Nobody’s determining the outcome of cosmic events. But our skin becomes thinner, and all kinds of different forms of neglect, become violations of our human rights. Human rights. Nobody put us here, but humans have all these rights that other animals don’t have.

That isn’t true of all people who smoke marijuana…bit it is true of most. And this shit stays in your system for a long time. Alcohol, on the other hand, is gone by the next morning. If it isn’t, then there will be a painful reminder to you to show some restraint next time. I keep hearing that marijuana and alcohol are on the same level, or should be. Sorry, I’m just not seeing it. Both can be abused. But with alcohol the abuse comes from excessive use. With marijuana the abuse comes from entering an entire thought culture that surrounds the drug. And the potential is there from the very first puff.

We have far too much dumbth already. We have far too much nihilism, with things the way they are. We don’t need more. And, the idea that there are lots of people who can’t talk about anything besides legalization once the subject comes up…not only remains a sensible recognition on my part, but a proven one. Proven by the very people who want to argue with me about it. I’ve written very few things that have attracted that much comment. And I’ve written nothing, I daresay, that’s attracted that much comment upon such a tiny, tiny subsection within it.

Update: Thanks to blogger friend Gerard, and his superior Google Image Search skills, for the image.

Posted in Poisoning Individuality and Reason, Poisoning Strength, Poisoning Western Civilization | 4 Comments »

Americans Work Too Much

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

We’re celebrating a not-so-new journalistic trend, and oh is it ever a hot one. Lazy journalist hunts down lazy egghead researcher willing to fasten his good name to the idea that…drum roll please…Americans work too much.

Americans work too much (from 1902!).

Americans work too much.

Here, Google it yourself. Fun for the whole family. Just don’t work too hard at it.

Oh and by the way, now that we’ve started our second century of oh-so-fashionably carping away about what know-nothing spiteful chubby workaholics the damn yankees are, and we’ve elected a new Hope-and-Change iPresident Replacement Jesus who’s gonna be fixing all that and making us a lot more like Europe — this just might be a good time, doncha think, to examine how Europe’s economy is doing?

Europe’s Economy Worse Than Expected
Europe’s souring economy will soon affect its social systems.

New economic data released on Friday shows that Europe’s economy is actually doing far worse then many economists originally thought. Germany is now in the deepest recession of any major economy. Italy, Austria, Spain and the Netherlands are suffering the worst slump since World War ii.

During the first three months of this year, Germany’s economy shrank by 3.8 percent, the largest drop since Germany began keeping gdp data in 1970. Austria and the Netherlands shrank by 2.8 percent, Italy by 2.4 percent, Spain by 1.8 percent and France by 1.2 percent.

Across both the eurozone and the whole European Union, gdp fell by 2.5 percent in the first quarter. Comparing year-on-year data, the eurozone’s gdp fell by 4.6 percent, and the EU’s by 4.4 percent.

These numbers caught many economists by surprise. A Reuters poll of 45 economists predicted that Germany’s economy would contract by only 3 percent. Dominic Bryant of bnp Paribas said that the actual fall of 3.8 percent was a “truly terrible number.” Both the German government and economists are predicting that the economy will shrink around 6 to 7 percent in 2009—the biggest fall since World War ii. Year-on-year data shows that Germany’s economy shrank by 6.7 percent in the first quarter.

Italy, Germany, France and the Netherlands have experienced four consecutive quarters of economic decline. And these numbers are causing analysts to rethink their predictions on the economy. The recession in Europe began earlier and has become deeper than many originally expected.

One last thought. There is an undertone permeating some of these linked articles, I mean the snotty ones about Americans working way too much, that — not only do we work too much but we’re cranky and mean toward those who do not.

Anyone seen any of that? My observations have been mostly the reverse, actually…people who don’t believe in a solid work ethic, aren’t even willing to say they don’t believe, they just heap all this constant criticism on Americans who “work too much.” Anyone see, lately, a sanctimonious preachy doofus-dad movie in which the small-dee dad figures out at the end, “I’ve been such a dumbass, I need to work more“? I’ve seen much of the reverse, wherein small-dee dad figures out working is what makes him a dumbass. Small-dee dad needs to goof off more. Anyone see some egghead articles heaping derision on the Europeans for not working hard enough? Anywhere? Anything like that?

For the most part, when I see people telling other people what to do with regard to a work ethic, it’s to tone it down. Folks who work harder, don’t spend too much time yakking at other people who don’t work hard, to work harder. They’re generally too busy…working.

All for now. I gotta get ready to go to work.

Posted in Poisoning Capitalism | 2 Comments »

The Story of Stuff: The Critique

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

No, no, no, no, no! You don’t come here yet. You go back and watch the original here…then you watch the critique.

I’ll wait.

Back yet?

Okay…

Posted in Glad I Learned About This, Poisoning Capitalism | 4 Comments »

The Story of Stuff

Monday, May 18th, 2009

Embedded without comment.

Posted in Poisoning Capitalism | 6 Comments »

Michelle Obama’s Graduation Advice

Monday, May 18th, 2009

She talks about giving back:

“Many of you may be considering leaving town with your diploma in hand, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable,” Mrs. Obama said before a crowd of 12,000 wilting in the afternoon sun. “By using what you’ve learned here you can shorten the path perhaps for kids who may not see a path at all. I was once one of those kids.”

Clothed in a long black robe and academic regalia, Mrs. Obama spoke of her own drive to get ahead despite tough odds, recounting the challenges her working-class family faced on Chicago’s South Side.

“You will face tough times. You will certainly have doubts, and let me tell you because I know I did when I was your age,” she said. “Remember that you are blessed. Remember that in exchange for those blessings, you must give something back. You must reach back and pull someone up. You must bend down and let someone else stand on your shoulders so that they can see a brighter future.”

The First Lady then went on to say something about using reason, intellect, logic, tenacity and a strong work ethic to make it a sound business decision for people to hire you. With just the right combination of energizing optimism and scrutinizing skepticism, you can make it.

Nope, actually that last part I made up.

Ah, my mind wanders into fantasy…what if, just once, this nation is blessed with a First Lady who is such a slobbering disciple of Ayn Rand that she finds it impossible to give a speech without quoting from her. That First Lady would, like all First Ladies, stand as a shining beacon of what a smart, resourceful woman can achieve in our society. But then she would go on to say, “Remember: The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.” Again and again, she would lapse into a cocktail-napkin biographical sketch of the young Alyssa Rosenbaum, how she fooled the communist officials into thinking she was visiting a relative in Chicago and would be right back. How she fell in love with the United States and its (at the time) fearless and unabashed embrace of capitalism. She would recite, from memory, these tiny missteps in the twentieth century in which our country strayed from its roots and began to slouch toward yet another faux-European, individual-rights-denying, achievement-envying, collectivist-minded socialist mudpuddle.

She would be outspoken about this, using her female-ness to give some provocative speeches her husband, the President, would not be able to. Questioned about this, the President would say something like “yes, she’s very opinionated” and then change the subject to the wonderful things he’s seen his wife do over the years. But not leave her out there just twisting in the wind. Support her…just a little. “Actually, she’s completely right, you know. In the name of helping the poor, we’ve tried all kinds of ways to belittle the accomplishments of the individual, to nurse some simmering resentment toward him, to tax him to death…throughout it all, our poor people have never been remarkably helped by these efforts, and the record is rather consistent in that. I’m so proud of my wife for coming out and saying so.”

In real life, every First Lady has had some kind of pet project which is, in turn, connected to making our society a better place to live. It’s become kind of a momma-and-poppa thing: The President is responsible for the overall health of the economy and the First Lady is responsible, for those who are into seeing things this way, for refining our sensibilities and our values, making sure we put some thought into how we treat each other. With the Bush wives the big passion was literacy. Common theme? Whatever it is the First Lady likes, it’s got to do with making the President’s improvements to the overall national condition into something cyclical. She introduces a set of personal values for the rest of us to follow, that draw upon the successes that were realized in getting the economy going again, and offer a prize of making that economy even more robust. The illustration is one of a resourceful, determined woman making it her personal project to inspire our society to become truly advanced.

Wouldn’t a First Lady who respects and treasures the accomplishments of the individual, fit right into that? That’s exactly what a good momma does, isn’t it? Chastises her “children” to stop looking in their siblings’ cereal bowls, stop bitching about how unfair life has been to them — and use their energies to mind their own business and become better people. Which would mean doing right by whoever signs their timesheets…not necessarily the officials of their local union.

Hey now that I think on it. What’s Michelle Obama done to “give back,” since, unlike most of the rest of us, she’s enjoyed the luxury of a job that never was a real job? In fact, that seems to be an enduring trend, too. Whether they’re First Ladies or not, these “alright now you have to give back to society” people, more often than not, seem to have resumes filled with jobs that aren’t really jobs. And the giving back they seem to be doing, more often than not, seems to be thick on symbolism and thin on substance. Like, for example, just telling the next generation they need to “give back.” Is sowing the seeds of socialism in next season’s crop, Michelle Obama’s idea of giving back?

You think I’m being mean? Get a load of what Neal Boortz had to say about this. Whew.

We’re seeing a civil war, of sorts, take place here. A culture conflict between people who see individual personal experiences to be riveted to what those individuals have chosen to do…which talents they chose to develop…which friends they chose to make…how much goofing off they chose to do — and other folks who see life as nothing more than a rolling tapestry of random stuff. Good stuff. Bad stuff. But always random stuff. From their point of view, it actually makes good sense that when you’re “lucky” enough to come into some good things, you have a “duty” of sorts to spread it around.

Trouble is, their way is just plain wrong. It doesn’t matter if the “rolling tapestry” people happen to be in charge right now. It doesn’t matter if the rest of us have never managed to install a vocal and forceful member from our own side, into the Office of the First Lady. The fact remains that if you always do whatcha always done, you’ll always get whatcha always got. And if the stuff you got happens to be good stuff, not only is it extremely likely that you had to do good stuff to make it happen, but there is an overwhelming likelihood that you’re going to have to do a whole lot more good stuff because it happened even if you’re not that concerned about “giving back.” Like, for example, when your business is successful — hiring lots of people. There. That’s giving back. You gave at the office. Boortz is right to be nauseated by this kind of talk. It is preachy, ignorant, sanctimonious, uninformed, far more self-interested than it pretends to be…and as useless as it is toxic.

Posted in Poisoning Capitalism, Poisoning Individuality and Reason, Poisoning Strength, Poisoning Western Civilization | 3 Comments »

Memo For File LXXXVI

Sunday, May 17th, 2009

The untoughening of our society — typically accomplished by lowering the pain threshold of our children, through an ever-expanding glut of useless, redundant, pain-in-the-ass regulations — is gratifying to some, reprehensible to others. Whoever comes by to read The Blog That Nobody Reads, and has been for awhile, likely knows full well what my feelings are about it. I do not wish to carp about it any further here, but I do intend to carp about how rare it is for it to be decided by those who ought to be in charge of it: The people who live in the state and therefore contribute to its culture, or lack thereof. Not serve in its legislature. Just live inside the borders, work, pay taxes, vote. The “Big We” do not get to decide what bloated, easily bruised pussies our kids become. We delegate that authority to our betters.

You know — maybe it’s time that one had a serious re-think. Maybe we’re past the point of no return, and I’d just get outvoted again. But let’s find out.

I Had yet another “I’ve Lived Too Long” moment when it was called to my attention that my son may very well be forced to take the bus when he attends middle school next year. Over a certain distance, bike-riding is not an option. Google Maps reports the one-way trip to my own middle school, all those years ago, to be 3.35 mi. I’m sure others my age rode further and over more challenging terrain. Never once, up to now, have I heard of some nanny-state law bursting forward intoning “Aw, da poor li’l boo boo” forcing kids onto the bus so that their greatest challenges in life can be putting up with bullies and getting off at the right stop. So that they can confront second-grade problems right up to their first year of high school. No, I still have vivid memories of that afternoon when I figured out my headgear was inadequate. The temperature was thirty-something, the winds rolling in off Bellingham Bay were turning my ears into ice and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it but pedal faster.

I wouldn’t want to subject a child to the same thing. But I wouldn’t want to deprive him of the experience either, because there is something else that concerns me about this. Someone, somewhere, is making decisions about this — I know not who — and they are not similarly concerned.

I’ve realized something about the Golden State, and I think it means something in other states too. California has more than its fair share of laws on the books that confuse “Kids Shall Not Be Forced” with “Kids Shall Not Be Allowed To.” Our children have to wear helmets, elbow pads and knee pads on their rollerblades. On their bicycles. Skateboards. Razor scooters. Swing sets. When walking up stairs. On a windy day. All right, some of this I’m exaggerating, but it is a tenderizing elixir from which we have been imbibing deeply. It seems to me…and I doubt I’m the only one…to be a good idea carried way too far, constrained by absolutely no mechanism whatsoever to ensure it won’t be carried still further.

Meanwhile, I’ve lived here for over sixteen years now. I vote whenever I can. Seven o’clock in the morning on election day, in the springtime and in the fall, I’m always there. I do believe I have seen every single ballot.

On which questions am I allowed to exercise my sacred right and obligation to participate in a democratic republic? A whole fistful o’ crap. Things that ought properly be decided by an executive who’s in charge of, or involved in, the process. Is two billion dollars over ten years too much to spend on a levee project? Should we issue this water bond? Medicinal marijuana. Gay marriage. Every now and then they’ll toss us a bone involving mandatory sentencing. It has the taste and feel of some real meat; but I’ve got a feeling it’s just bone.

In sixteen years I have never been presented with an opportunity to decide whether it should be legal for a fourteen-year-old to work four hours a day, or anything like that. A couple years ago we just did it again, to the grown-ups: Between your fourth and fifth hour at work, you’re required to clock out for lunch. Or your employer is required to force you to. Or something. We’ve got some bizarre overtime law that says overtime-exempt employees aren’t really overtime-exempt, and their employers can be sued for thousands of dollars retroactively — clearly functioning as, and I think intended as, a “gotcha” to punish those who had the audacity to risk their life-savings providing employment for others. And we wonder why we’re in financial trouble. Laws against making work too hard…legislated by those who’ve never known “hard work” a day in their lives. By the way, if you work in a high tech field, nobody really knows how this law impacts the agreements between you and your employer. It’s very much like the nation’s tax code: Vague by design.

Containing Baby So while we keep our kids carefully encased in sterilized and disinfected styrofoam mummy suits for their tee ball games, and clock out for our state-mandated lunch breaks, I’m given cause to wonder. How come my referendum-crazy state never seems to bring the untoughening laws to the referendum process? How come nobody knows what “The People” of California, whose word is supposed to be sanctimoniously final on so many other issues on which they/we don’t really know what they/we are doing…would say about this suffocating, hydroponic bubble in which our little ones are spending their childhoods? That seems strange, to me. I’m told I was born too late. I’m told I’d be outvoted. But I don’t really know that and neither does anyone else.

Instead I’m left to constantly ask the question every time I’m told about yet another thing California kids can’t do: Who decides this stuff? Where is this star chamber of pussies making rules for everyone else? Is it our legislature? I would think, if these rules are thought to make such a positive difference in who lives to see adulthood and who doesn’t, then someone would be popping up somewhere, more prominently than they are, to claim credit. “Yeah, I wrote that.”

Perhaps they are. But if so, it’s only within a select audience somehow screened to make sure all those in attendance have some appreciation for this systematic removal of toughness. They don’t want to shout it from too high of a mountaintop.

The untoughening laws have to realize universal effect. They have to impact all of us. This is by design. And yet, to make sure they are actually passed, only some of us are allowed to know about them when they are in the process of being ratified. After the laws are in effect, only a few of us are allowed to know who thought it was a great idea to get ’em written. Only those among us who would approve.

I think, on any other topic, it would be generally understood that this is not a way to pass good laws. On the ongoing pussification of our society, somehow, we tend to be blind to this. We tend to continue allowing this star-chamber of soccer moms, whoever they are, keep on keepin’-on — the commoners decide what bond issues might result in a lowered credit rating for the state, and then the nameless faceless busybody elites decide what our evolving mores of decency have to say about kids losing their training wheels at too young an age. We’ve got it all a hundred and eighty degrees backwards.

Posted in Poisoning Masculinity | 8 Comments »

I Made a New Word XXVIII

Saturday, May 16th, 2009

Goodperson Fever (n.) is an obsessive-compulsive disorder involving the demonstration of certain positive attributes to strangers, for purposes of self-validation. It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle if these positive attributes don’t really exist, or if there is a great need to achieve this validation for purposes of acquiring social status, contrasted with a much lower level of confidence that these attributes really exist.

The fever has one distinguishing symptom, the recognition of which provides a conclusive, undeniable diagnosis that the fever is in its advanced stages: The more that has been achieved as far as getting the word out that the patient is a Good Person, the greater the impulse to do it again.

Eco Cup Lesser symptoms include: Expressing one’s political beliefs about something when the topic of conversation is different or unrelated, and when nobody inquired; isolating classes of people as targeted beneficiaries of one’s helpful efforts, for purely obsequious purposes, such as “women” and “minorities”; excessive concern about the environment, but purely as a social issue and without any regard to cause and effect — such as drinking coffee out of a “green” eco-cup, but then commuting to work in a Ford Explorer or Toyota Tundra. The litmus test is that the incentive to do these good things that good-persons do, suddenly dissipates when it is perceived that nobody is paying attention.

In government and in other positions of authority, Goodperson Fever is the cause of nearly every bad law in human history. Someone, somewhere, wanted to demonstrate to strangers what a good person he or she was.

There is very little that can be done to treat Goodperson Fever, since ignoring it doesn’t make it go away, and providing the validation that is so desperately craved by the patient, just makes things worse. Experts say there are lots of things we can do to prevent it though. Some significant responsibilities for potential victims in the childhood years, will give them an opportunity to measure their self-worth from within and therefore mitigate the need to go seeking such validation from total or near-total strangers later on. Also, Goodperson Fever epidemics take hold most often in social circles and in geographic regions where there is little work to do, or what little work there is, is done by “everybody” with little or no opportunity for individuals to distinguish themselves. It seems to be a natural consequence of propagating the “Together We Can Do This” meme with a little too much zeal. People start to hunger for ways to establish an identity and ultimately fall into the trap of proving themselves to be the “Most Extraordinary Ordinary Person” around.

Some say our susceptibility to this may be a holdover from thousands of years of evolution, from when man lived in villages that operated as a commune. The theory is that after a bleak harvest season, when food and other resources became scarce, people began to look for ways to prove themselves worthy in case the sustenance on hand was insufficient to accommodate everyone, and some villagers would have to be cast out for the survival of the rest. According to this, those who were less inclined to engage this vicious cycle of proving themselves, were the ones who were ostracized. They died off, and were thus removed from the gene pool. Those who are alive today, therefore, are descended from the sycophants who managed to straddle that illogical line: Everything that is worth doing, is worth doing by everyone, and nobody should go off and do anything by his lonesome — that would imply a specialty, and we can’t have specialties because everyone is worthy and everyone is equal. But oh, by the way, just in case the hunting is bad and the crops are withered, here are the reasons why I’m more worthy than most.

Whatever the cause, it is responsible for a great deal of damage, although, it must be said, no hard scientific correlation has yet been found between Goodperson Fever and global warming.

But — for the good of society — we’re sure as hell going to try to come up with one.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Posted in Everyday Dimwits, GroupThink Nonsense, Nanny State Crap, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | 33 Comments »

First in Family to Coast Through College

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

The Onion (that means it’s satire, for those who are unacquainted):

“My grandpa wasn’t able to afford school until he came back from the war and got help with his tuition through the G.I. Bill,” says [University of Minnesota senior Daniel] Peterson, reclining on a futon. “He studied hard and took a job at night so he could support my grandma and dad while he finished his degree.”

“Listening to his stories, I promised myself that, no matter what, I would do everything in my power to take it real easy through college,” Peterson adds.

His father a successful engineer, his mother a dedicated social worker, this Rochester, MN native grew up dreaming of an education more painless than the one his parents had known. At 17, he received a letter of acceptance from UMN, and at that moment committed himself to five years of sleeping late, drinking often, and sneaking by with a 2.7 GPA. After scuttling plans to major in video game design, Peterson enrolled in the school’s American studies program, vowing never to sign up for any class that met before 11 a.m. or required him to write a term paper over five pages.
:
“My father, my father’s father, and all those before them—they struggled and gave it their all so I wouldn’t have to,” Peterson says. “Sure, I could do what everyone else my age does, studying really hard because my parents spent 20 years carefully setting aside money for my education. But I won’t do that to my mom and dad. Not when I can blow off class and do just enough cramming at the end of the semester to pull a B-minus.”

When he’s finished with school, the 23-year-old plans to continue honoring the Peterson name by living off his graduation money for a few months and then maybe temping for a while until he figures out what he wants to do next.

His attitude hasn’t gone unnoticed by his parents.

“I don’t think Daniel is taking his studies seriously,” Peterson’s father says. “When he comes home, I never see him crack a book. He’s always out with his friends or on the Xbox. And now he’s talking about maybe going to grad school.”

“This is everything a father could want for his son,” he adds. “I am so proud.”

Good satire has to have an element of truth to it. The more, the better.

The Onion is known for providing good satire.

I really do wish I could say this was an exception to the rule…but I can’t. I’m afraid it is excellent satire.

Posted in Certifikayshuns, Skewels and Kawledges, Everyday Dimwits, Glad I Learned About This, Poisoning Strength, Poisoning Western Civilization | No Comments »

Moral Outrage With No Source for the Morality

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

Mike Adams is delivering his thoughts about some of the protesters he encountered during a speech he gave at UMass.

Socialists are morally outraged without any source of morality. Finally, there is the brunette girl in the black shirt seen throughout the video. She got up and gave her own speech after mine was over. She was angry and I asked her why. She replied by admitting she was angry because she found my opposition to abortion to be morally “reprehensible” – and she actually did use the word “reprehensible.” It is interesting that socialists believe that God needs to be done away with. Yet they still claim to have a basis for moral condemnation.

I’ve been noticing for awhile that this is a particularly weak spot in whatever argument the leftist types choose to present at any given time. Such-and-such…is…WRONG! And there’s nearly always some other thing conventional thinking would say is wrong, that the leftist insists is not-so-wrong. There seems to be a spectrum of magnitudes of wrong-ness, that is sufficiently complex that the lefty himself doesn’t understand it.

Waterboarding is WRONG! When the bad guys catch our guys they do much worse things than waterboarding…blowtorches to the testicles…amputating limbs…et cetera. And that’s wrong “too,” but not so wrong as to arouse an equivalent quantity or quality of outrage. More like wrong in a tiresome, obligatory, boring sort of way.

They rankle at the idea that a deity might be needed or desired, by anyone, for whatever reason, as a sort of an anchor to such a moral code. As the “N” on the compass. They insist — always angrily — that they don’t need such a thing. And yet they’re left sputtering away that if your family is kidnapped, buried in an airtight bunker, running out of air, and you’ve caught the guy who knows where they are…the morally superior decision is to keep the bad guy comfortable, and let your family suffocate. They’re certain of this. Just like anyone would be, with a mighty moral compass of sorts that doesn’t have the letter “N” on it anywhere.

All we like sheep have gone astray… — Isaiah 53:6

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Posted in Poisoning Capitalism, Poisoning Western Civilization | 7 Comments »

The Bailout Saved the Economy!

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

Melissa Clouthier is complaining about that mindless repetitive dirge from the left, “The Mess That Obama Inherited” and gives concrete, detailed reasons, for those who require them and are somehow not yet aware of them, why exactly it is the minstrels can go stick it. Along the way she says “this piece is really, really good” and drops into our laps a rock of pure gold. Or, rather, a litany of reasons to think we probably won’t see gold for awhile. It’s a response from Brad Warbiany at The Liberty Papers to Richard Posner’s apologia and insistence that Hey, wouldja lookit that, capitalism failed, and the bailout worked!! Well, not so fast —

[President Hoover] was rewriting the rules of the game surprisingly similar to the way that Obama is today, showing all investors that their gains or losses were due to their ability to play the political markets. He was disincentivizing investment by constantly changing the rules, and thereby the odds of success in any given market play.

So Barack Obama’s policies are antithetical to investment, antithetical to sound business planning, and ensured to kneecap any attempt at recovery that our economy hopes for. If you’re looking for reasons to worry about the future of this economy — looking for justification that this is not a recovery and a bear market rally — you simply have to combine a few facts:

1. Fundamentally, the bull market of the late 90’s and early 00’s was partly due to an extraordinary increase in financial system leverage.
2. This bull market was pumped up by fractional reserve banking and a completely unsustainable rise in asset prices that fueled the above leverage.
3. We are now at a point where leverage is unwinding and asset prices are still declining.
4. Government props have supported a rise in financial sector stocks, but fundamentally the stress tests prove that banks need to raise capital based on even mild financial shocks.
5. Any continued weakness in the economy will skewer this current rally.
6. Asset prices, foreclosures, and jobs data show no signs of getting better, only (at best) signs of slowing their decline.
7. Obama’s financial system meddling (auto bailout, TARP shenanigans, etc) is sure to provide more weakness than expected.

Posted in Poisoning Capitalism | 1 Comment »

An Ass Whose Approval is Gold to a Smaller Ass

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

The prophecy:

A political emergency brings out the corn-pone opinion in fine force in its two chief varieties–the pocketbook variety, which has its origin in self-interest, and the bigger variety, the sentimental variety–the one which can’t bear to be outside the pale; can’t bear to be in disfavor; can’t endure the averted face and the cold shoulder; wants to stand well with his friends, wants to be smiled upon, wants to be welcome, wants to hear the precious words, “He’s on the right track!” Uttered, perhaps by an ass, but still an ass of high degree, an ass whose approval is gold and diamonds to a smaller ass, and confers glory and honor and happiness, and membership in the herd. For these gauds many a man will dump his lifelong principles into the street, and his conscience along with them. We have seen it happen. In some millions of instances….

Rap Wannabe Mr. Clemens was really hardly going out on a limb when he wrote “Corn-Pone Opinions,” an essay not published until well after his demise. But it is a ballsy prophecy nevertheless. You can extend your gratitude to our blogger friend Gerard for the history lesson (he has ours).

Back to the subject at hand: fulfillment of the prophecy. Say hello to the smaller ass.

Meet Steven Gilmore. The wannabe rapper tried to rob a Florida convenience store Friday night and shot an employee in the head with a BB gun in a bid to establish “street cred” for his nascent hip-hop career. The 21-year-old Gilmore…admitted his harebrained scheme after he was arrested Saturday night, according to Gainesville police. Gilmore, who also copped to a stickup of the Hungry Howie’s restaurant, told police that he thought the robberies would provide him the kind of reputation he apparently believes is required in the rap world. According to a Gainesville Police Department report, Gilmore, wearing a bandanna over his face and carrying a BB gun, fled empty-handed from the Super Store convenience outlet after struggling with a store clerk over the weapon. During the encounter, the clerk, Dharmedra Patel, was shot in the temple and suffered a laceration and bleeding. The Hungry Howie’s heist netted Gilmore about $900, records show, and he departed the crime scene on a moped driven by a 16-year-old accomplice. The aspiring rap performer’s career is now on hold as he faces attempted armed robbery and aggravated assault charges.

Prophecy and reality enjoy an overlap that is so perfect, that on reflecting on the two of them, I realize not a single pertinent word has been left unsaid. OUT.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Posted in Poisoning Individuality and Reason, Poisoning Masculinity | No Comments »

Empathy

Sunday, May 10th, 2009

Thomas Sowell writes with some interesting thoughts about the replacement for retiring justice David Souter. Said thoughts inspired by a snippet from the Holy Lips of our Divinely Inspired President Himself…in keeping with what we have come to expect from Him, polished to a mirror finish, but reckless and poorly-thought-out nevertheless.

“I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives,” [President Obama] said. “I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.”

Wow, what a great deal! Who can argue against justice?

Not so fast. Out here in the world of grown-ups, there’s a little bit more to a “just outcome” than this Alan Shore tactic of figuring out who the “good guy” is and then giving him everything. Professor Sowell reminds us what maturity is by going back over a piece of American history.

Part I:

That we are discussing the next Supreme Court justice in terms of group “representation” is a sign of how far we have already strayed from the purpose of law and the weighty responsibility of appointing someone to sit for life on the highest court in the land.

That President Obama has made “empathy” with certain groups one of his criteria for choosing a Supreme Court nominee is a dangerous sign of how much further the Supreme Court may be pushed away from the rule of law and toward even more arbitrary judicial edicts to advance the agenda of the left and set it in legal concrete, immune from the democratic process.

Would you want to go into court to appear before a judge with “empathy” for groups A, B and C, if you were a member of groups X, Y or Z? Nothing could be further from the rule of law. That would be bad news, even in a traffic court, much less in a court that has the last word on your rights under the Constitution of the United States.

Part II:

Like most people, Justice [Oliver Wendell] Holmes had empathy for some and antipathy for others, but his votes on the Supreme Court often went against those for whom he had empathy and for those for whom he had antipathy. As Holmes himself put it: “I loathed most of the things in favor of which I decided.”

Justice Holmes thought like a grown-up. It is a type of diligent thinking that often escapes those who enjoy the luxury of bringing about a revolution, and thus to think about justice in purely black-and-white terms.

Part III:

Barack Obama’s vision of America is one in which a President of the United States can fire the head of General Motors, tell banks how to bank, control the medical system and take charge of all sorts of other activities for which neither he nor other politicians have any expertise or experience.

The Constitution of the United States gives no president, nor the entire federal government, the authority to do such things. But spending trillions of dollars to bail out all sorts of companies buys the power to tell them how to operate.

Appointing judges to the federal courts– including the Supreme Court– who believe in expanding the powers of the federal government to make arbitrary decisions, choosing who will be winners and losers in the economy and in the society, is perfectly consistent with a vision of the world where self-confident and self-righteous elites rule according to their own notions, instead of merely governing under the restraints of the Constitution.

Part IV:

This process of “interpreting” the Constitution (or legislation) to mean pretty much whatever you want it to mean, no matter how plainly the words say something else, has been called judicial activism. But, as a result of widespread objections to this, that problem has been solved by redefining “judicial activism” to mean something different.

By the new definition, a judge who declares legislation that exceeds the authority of the legislature unconstitutional is called a “judicial activist.” The verbal virtuosity is breathtaking. With just a new meaning to an old phrase, reality is turned upside down. Those who oppose letting government actions exceed the bounds of the Constitution– justices like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas– are now called “judicial activists.” It is a verbal coup.

Our vocabulary is being assaulted. With that, our tethering to reality is likewise under assault; and with that, our sense of justice as well.

As I reflect on the wisdom of Dr. Sowell’s words, I realize something: Of all the privileged victim-groups that now enjoy the benefits of stylish empathy, very few of them do so in any modern or revolutionary way. It comes down really to just black people. Nobody can say no to a woman, of course — but that’s been true for an exceptionally long time. Back in the Middle English years, in the days of Chivalry, it was thought to be ungentlemanly for a dude to even somehow become intertwined in a battle of wills with a female, let alone to try to prevail in one. Five, six, eight or ten centuries later, men still wait, without Obama’s “empathy,” to enjoy one day in court on an equal footing with the mothers of their children. In many cases, with the mentally-imbalanced, drug-addicted, larcenous or gold-digging mothers of their children. Justice needs to show more empathy there? Justice has already shown an excess of it.

What about the poor? It’s very fashionable now to root for the underdog. But this has always been the case. How many centuries have people said Oh, look at me, I’m the good guy because I’m doing something for poor people. And that includes judicial officers. Obama wishes to start something new here? Something new would be empathy toward corporations that are targeted with obviously baseless lawsuits, and are compelled to settle out of court because of the anticipated costs involved with fighting.

What other group needs some empathy, that hasn’t already gotten it?

It’s a very sad thing to realize, this late in the game, that a blind Lady Justice is a novelty. That it should be so far out of “mainstream” thinking to expect two parties should appear in court, with the expectation that they’re taking their conflict to something resembling a level field.

But hey. This is the era of hope and change. So get ready.

Posted in Poisoning Individuality and Reason, Poisoning Justice | 5 Comments »

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Empathy