Archive for April, 2019

Black P.R.

Wednesday, April 24th, 2019

Some people tell me I need an editor. I do have one, but he works for free and he sucks at the job.

Some people who need editors are still very good writers. It’s not for me to say whether that applies to me or not, but it applies to Kevin D. Williamson. I hope, when my “editor” falls down on the job, the end result looks like his stuff. You just bump into the awkward sentences that needed better editing, read them a few times and go “wha??” Then you figure out what the author’s intent was and move forward, so you can get to the good stuff. I hope my finished output is like that. I hope so, although I don’t think it too likely.

The Covington fiasco has proved to be a clarifying moment. And here is what has been made clear: Much of the American media is no longer engaged in journalism. It is engaged in opposition research and in what is sometimes known among political operatives as “black p.r.”—the sinister twin of ordinary public relations. As Joy Behar, as profoundly dim and tedious a person as American public life has to offer, forthrightly confessed: The hysteria and outright dishonesty surrounding the Covington students had nothing to do with them. It has to do with narrowly partisan, selfish, deeply stupid, entirely unpatriotic, childish, foot-stamping, fingers-in-the-ears, weeping, cooties-loathing, teary-eyed, tremulous, quavering, pansified, gormless, deceitful, dishonorable, and cynical politics of the lowest kind — the politics of Us and Them.

Preach it!! Call ’em out, go get ’em.

Chris Truax in USA Today: “Trump bears moral responsibility for pipe bombs. Denying it just makes things worse.” Jonathan Chait, New York: “Bomber Cesar Sayoc is a By-product of Trump’s Party.” Even Rick Wilson debased himself, writing in The Daily Beast: “Of Course Donald Trump Inspired Cesar Sayoc’s Alleged Terrorism.” That’s a particularly asinine headline: For Trump’s culpability, it’s “of course,” while Sayoc’s crimes are “alleged.” That isn’t the kind of stupidity that happens by accident. These claims are pure intellectual dishonesty. They are smears, and there is no good-faith case to be made for them. All of these writers should be ashamed.
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As some of you may recall, I wrote a little book called The Case against Trump. I didn’t think much of him in 2016. I don’t think much of him now. But we aren’t three tweets away from the Holocaust.

Hat tip to Instapundit, who adds:

The best argument in favor of Trump’s presidency is what Trump’s presidency has taught us about the character of the people who oppose him, and who would be wielding power if he weren’t.

Stop Enabling Liberals

Friday, April 19th, 2019

A fascinating comment about “sophisticated judgments,” as Carl Bernstein opines on the Mueller Report:

It’s here in substance, in nuance, in context and it is there for all people of good will in this country, if they are not so dug in politically or ideologically to process information and make some sophisticated judgments about the behavior of everybody I’ve mentioned here.

This is why journalism is dead. It’s been killed off, inch by inch, as its practitioners tell us what’s going on the world, and then it’s up to us to make decisions about what to do…then we decide the “wrong” way. So then the journalists start busying themselves with somehow giving us the right motivation to make better decisions. This fact over here gets more emphasis, that fact over there gets less, this thing over here isn’t a fact at all, it’s an opinion, but let’s present it as a fact…

And that’s brought us to where we are. We have this two year investigation that was supposed to be the be-all end-all. Now the report is out, it doesn’t say what the High Priests were telling us it would say, so what you have to do is read it in a “sophisticated” way and then you’ll get it.

No. Stop. Enough. This is not advice about the right way to read a report. This is a symptom of a mental disease. Liberals are suffering from it, non-liberals have been making it happen and we should stop hurting the liberals, stop exacerbating what’s already wrong with them, making it worse.

Non-liberals must accept blame for liberalism. We are enabling it. If you’re not a liberal, there has to be a reason because liberalism is easy. You want everyone to think you’re a nice person, then of course you go “Ban plastic bags to save the planet” or “Yes gosh darn it health care is a right.” To say no to these things, you must either be taking the time and effort to see the bigger picture, or you’re just a jerk who wants people to stay sick and you want to trash the planet.

The propaganda of liberals notwithstanding…it’s very likely the first of those two things, not the second. You probably don’t want people to stay sick or to trash the planet. You probably see the broader picture and, with some measure of regret, keep your decisions rooted in what you know to be true, and hell with what anyone thinks about it.

People like this actually have the best kind of decency, because it’s the decency they don’t need to advertise. They know they could make more friends if they played the virtue-signaling game, pledging money to noble causes that actually belongs to other people, but they’ve made a conscious decision that it’s better to have good friends than many (phony) friends. The dirty little secret is that such people *do* care about other people’s feelings.

So when a liberal says, “I have figured out two and two make five, because I’m uniquely sophisticated”…

What they see is someone who says “I think two and two make five because I’m a dumbass.” Or to be more precise: “I think two and two make five because I haven’t put enough thought into it.” Or, “I think two and two make five because I’m engaging my mouth when the subject matter hasn’t yet been routed through the best parts of my brain.”

And decent people who care about other people’s feelings, are going to respond the same way, every single time: Sure Carl. You’re right, Mr. Bernstein. Yes Barack Obama. You’ve figured this out and you’ve got your unique take on it, because you’re smart and you can see something no one else can see. How frustrating that must be for you.

Decent people presume this treatment is a palliative balm for the poor beleaguered liberal, who must be running into a bruising disagreement everywhere he goes. The decent-people’s momma taught them, after all, if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all. And they want to be the port in the storm, for a good friend. Here’s the problem: There’s no storm. The liberals are not running into dissent everywhere they go. They’re actually running into “You’re right, you’re so smart” everywhere they go. Because most people are decent, this way.

I won’t play that game. I couple days ago, obliged to have a certain opinion because a liberal was telling me about “all the studies say,” I correctly pointed out that grown-ups don’t think that way, don’t make decisions that way. This stung him, and I got back a lecture about not being condescending…*heh* from a liberal. The truth is, my words stung him because the antiseptic was working.

We’re living in a time where the point of “maturity” is simply a birthday. That’s not what maturity is. Maturity involves critical thinking. It involves looking under the surface packaging of an idea, inspecting its content, looking for the parts of it that don’t fit. It involves saying “He says he’ll pay me back on Tuesday…but he said that before and he already owes me $50 so I might make a different decision.” Or, “The study says white males have ‘privilege,’ but I’m looking at the college entrance stats and the graduation stats, AND the upward mobility of incomes, and I don’t see the privilege.” Or, “They ruled out arson ‘for the time being’ while Notre Dame was still burning…that actually doesn’t make a lick of sense.” Or, “Illegal aliens don’t ‘work hard and follow the law,’ they might work hard but if they followed the law they wouldn’t be here.”

So when people accept these bumper sticker slogans and run with them, and you want to keep the peace, my advice is to just change the subject. DO NOT pretend to agree, or make the lib feel smart. Don’t praise the liberal for bringing superior intellect or keen insight. Stop that stuff. Change the subject, maybe with a note of “I disagree.” Even better: “I disagree, and it could very well be I see something you don’t, now let’s talk about something else.”

Your momma would call that good.

But stop praising liberals. They might crave it, but your dog craves chocolate the same way, and this isn’t good for them. They are NOT — repeat, NOT — starved for it. Not even close. They’re ready to call you a bad person for thinking two and two make four, because they think being a good person is all about saying five. They haven’t been exposed to anything else, in all likelihood, or if they have then it hasn’t sunk in yet. They’ve already gotten their validation, just like the alcoholic who wants you to pour him a scotch, already got his libation. Things will get better, when we stop validating the self-image of liberals.

Are Plastic Bag Bans Garbage?

Sunday, April 14th, 2019

NPR, by way of Instapundit…who points out the obvious, that the answer is yes of course they are.

University of Sydney economist Rebecca Taylor started studying bag regulations because it seemed as though every time she moved for a new job — from Washington, D.C., to California to Australia — bag restrictions were implemented shortly after. “Yeah, these policies might be following me,” she jokes. Taylor recently published a study of bag regulations in California. It’s a classic tale of unintended consequences.
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Taylor found these bag bans did what they were supposed to: People in the cities with the bans used fewer plastic bags, which led to about 40 million fewer pounds of plastic trash per year. But people who used to reuse their shopping bags for other purposes, like picking up dog poop or lining trash bins, still needed bags. “What I found was that sales of garbage bags actually skyrocketed after plastic grocery bags were banned,” she says. This was particularly the case for small, 4-gallon bags, which saw a 120 percent increase in sales after bans went into effect.
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A 2011 study by the U.K. government found a person would have to reuse a cotton tote bag 131 times before it was better for climate change than using a plastic grocery bag once. The Danish government recently did a study that took into account environmental impacts beyond simply greenhouse gas emissions, including water use, damage to ecosystems and air pollution. These factors make cloth bags even worse. They estimate you would have to use an organic cotton bag 20,000 times more than a plastic grocery bag to make using it better for the environment.

Can we stop pretending now?

The activism, and the legislation that goes along with it, is about churning, and constant turmoil, and drama. It also makes money for some people. It hasn’t got anything to do with saving the environment, except as a sales pitch.

“You Create Nothing”

Saturday, April 13th, 2019

Exactly the kind of observation I would make. Must be a real smart guy saying this. Oh yes, it is…it’s Correia (by way of Gerard).

To The Book Community: Go Fuck Yourself. An Anti-Apology.
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You people aren’t a “community”. You are a fucking cancer.

People who like to read books? That’s a book community. Bullies who exist in a perpetual state of being offended, eager to silence artists, you’re scum.

If you had an ounce of self-awareness, you would be ashamed of yourself. But you don’t…Fuck you. Fuck your feelings. And fuck your ridiculous claims. Fuck your perpetual offense. Take your smug, entitled ignorance, and cram it up your ass sideways, you worthless sacks of crap…
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You create nothing. You can only destroy. You are miserable failures, and like the demons of CS Lewis, your misery makes you want to drag down everyone else too. You give one star reviews to books which haven’t come out yet, which tell us a lot more about your weird personal issues and neurosis than they do about the book you’re supposedly reviewing.

You get away with this abusive shit only because most artists are sensitive, caring types. They don’t want to offend people. They don’t want to hurt feelings. Only you lie to them…You don’t care about their art. You don’t care about entertaining people. You don’t care about kids reading or people enjoying themselves or even the group you’re supposedly championing today.

You only care about control.

Yeah, preach it. This goes way beyond book reviews. These days it’s everywhere you look. If it’s going to get worse before it gets better, then bring it on but one way or another, we have to get past this.

What got him all spun up, is this

Anti-apology. I love it. Would like to see more, a lot more.

Being perpetually offended, carries no price. That’s what is wrong. That is what has to change. And it hasn’t been lost on me, that if you happen to be offended by these “perpetually-offended” types, that’s the moment where all of a sudden offense loses meaning. Right at that moment in time when, if it were taken seriously and given its due weight, it might put us on the pathway toward regaining our sanity. We seem to be stuck in the mold of only giving offense weight when it is least sincere, most manipulative, radiating off the miserable carcasses of the lowliest jackasses.