Rebane's Ruminations

Ruminations – 27sep17 (updated 1oct17)

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today. - Thomas Sowell

George Rebane

Canada, the beloved of anti-American liberals, “has an urgent message for immigrants in the US fearing deportation: Don’t count on us for refuge.”  The reality of unmitigated migration of illegal aliens impacts smaller countries sooner, but the eventual impact on larger countries is no different, only delayed.  (more here)

The (guess who) innumerates of the land are again enraged that those who pay the lion’s share of government revenues will get the biggest dollar reduction in their taxes under the proposed tax reforms.  Their solution?  Only those who pay little or no taxes should benefit.  The ones who hire those who can or will work should continue paying at least what they pay now, maybe more.

Keep an eye on how government(s) will keep their ever-watchful eye on big tech companies such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook.  Besides providing their well-known services, such companies are also leading technology innovators as they seek to expand their markets.  Their increasing regulatory burdens will definitely modify how they game tomorrow’s ‘system’, and don’t bet it will be to the benefit of the rest of us.  Recall ‘We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.’

Christian churches are becoming more frequent scenes of violence as the latest Tennessee church shootings underline.  In some religious communities, e.g. Islam, mass killings in their places of worship are now a common feature.  In the US, security consultants advise churches “organize security committees and make other suggestions they believe will lessen the risk of attack. That can include installing surveillance cameras, hiring armed guards or allowing members who are police officers or trained, licensed civilians to carry concealed handguns.”  Modern times. (more here)

[29sep17 update]  Nevada City, that hotbed of progressive sentiment and thought, has again determined that wireless is evil.  ‘We can’t let the first cell tower in, because other wireless service providers would soon follow.’  Oh my!  And then there’s their science argument – all EM frequencies are bad no matter their strength – substantiated in the same vein as their embrace of consensus global warming science.  Other rural communities in this 21^st century would welcome and do everything possible to increase their town’s connectivity as a mainstay of commercial activity, development, and general prosperity – but not the unfunded People’s Commune of Nevada City.

SCOTUS is about to pull the plug on mandated contributions to the Democratic Party when it rules on Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, who today are forced to contribute to party coffers and candidates through their government employee unions through mandatory payment of ‘dues’.  Those unions supply the major monies to support all manner of socialist causes in the country.  Justice Gorsuch’s advent on the court will continue the work that the late Justice Scalia started to let government workers decide their union memberships.

And speaking of Justice Gorsuch, he is now the latest raison d’hysterie for our great moral milepost Sen Chuckie.  It seems that the justice gave a speech to a conservative group in the Trump International Hotel down the street from the White House, which to the lefties is clear evidence of pernicious portent of SCOTUS going rogue – and who knows, it may even have a Russian connection.  I can’t find many ruffled feathers about the years-long and obvious corruption surrounding Dem luminaries like DiFi, Mad Max, and Principled Pelosi.  (I can already hear the cries from our leftwingers, ‘What corruption, where?!’)

[1oct17 update]  Notice all the rage on the lamestream to convince their audiences that the federal government 1) is responsible for holding every American harmless in the face of natural disasters, 2) must immediately provide succor and remedies for any and all damage and injuries, and 3) President Trump, since assuming office, is the first president to have degraded federal response agencies to a level that his belated and niggardly relief efforts are totally insufficient to provide Puerto Rico any benefit.  And, truth be told, he did all this because he is a racist, since Puerto Rico is primarily a Latino territory.

Review President Trump’s assessment of the one critical Puerto Rican mayor (out of over a thousand) the lamestream dug up to excoriate him and his administration in light of this Puerto Rican CEO who has been on the scene for years – The head of an international engineering firm in Puerto Rico said in an editorial Saturday that when the time came to send 50 of his engineers to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, he bypassed local officials and went straight to FEMA.  The reason, said Jorge Rodriguez, the CEO of PACIV, in an editorial in the New York Post, is that “for the last 30 years, the Puerto Rican government has been completely inept at handling regular societal needs, so I just don’t see it functioning in a crisis like this one.”…“Even before the hurricane hit, water and power systems were already broken. And our $118 billion debt crisis is a result of government corruption and mismanagement.” (more here)  Culture counts.

Deflected Dialogue Redux

George Rebane

Gentle reader, we again return to RR’s department of poetry.  For the new to these pages, this is part of our cultural outreach that emphasizes the ‘rhyme’ part of our overall Rhyme and Reason offerings.  Actually, today we sample a reprise of an earlier poem for an earlier time entitled Deflected Dialogue –Upon reflection, it turns out that the times have not changed all that much for certain factions of our political spectrum.  Hence we are able present for your edification, Deflected Dialogue Redux -

Dershowitz Defines Dangers

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 13 September 2017.]

Selectively celebrated and nationally prominent attorney and law professor Alan Dershowitz has become a familiar advocate of divers, sometimes conflicting, causes over the last few decades.  The country’s most prominent secular Jew has defended the likes of Patty Hearst, Mike Tyson, and O.J. Simpson.  On the political side Dershowitz is a dyed-in-the-wool progressive and a staunch Democrat, even acting as king-maker in the party.  His support for Hillary, then Barack, then again Hillary is understandable, but less so the whiplash induced by his current strong support for President Trump’s advocacy of various issues, especially those dovetailing with his longstanding pro-Israeli stance on mid-east politics.

Great Divide – Yes Virginia, we really are very different

George Rebane

Today’s headline again corroborates what those who have paid attention have known for some years now.  The latest WSJ/NBC poll out today reports the stark differences between the country’s Right and Left as represented by their respective Republican and Democrat party affiliations.  The important part here is that the “WSJ/NBC News survey indicates a wide (and widening) split on cultural, economic issues.”  The best I can tell is that the only ones who have been in denial for years, and refuse to acknowledge this divide are the lightly read local lefties, which even includes their leading lights.  Limiting your input to the offerings and interpretations of DailyKos, HuffPo, CNN, MSNBC, … leaves a pretty big hole in a person’s understanding of what’s happening now.

The data-filled 6sep17 WSJ report begins with –

Divisions in America reach far beyond Washington into the nation’s culture, economy and social fabric, and the polarization began long before the rise of President Donald Trump, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey of social trends has found. … The findings help explain why political divisions are now especially hard to bridge. People who identify with either party increasingly disagree not just on policy; they inhabit separate worlds of differing social and cultural values and even see their economic outlook through a partisan lens.  (emphasis mine)

Among the polls highlights are the drastic drop since Eisenhower of the opposite party’s support of the recently elected president.  That percentage has dropped from Eisenhower’s 60% to 8% for Trump.  The only reversals in the downtrend were for Bush1 and Bush2.

A really significant change of attitudes in how confident Americans are that their children will have better lives than they have.  From August 2010 to August 2017 the Dems’ confidence fell from about 42% to 25%, and the Repubs’ confidence rose sharply from 12% to 48%.  You need to read the article to get the significance of this latest survey on the national attitudes.

And today most of us see only the other party as doing all the bad things for/to the country.  Here’s part of local leftie Ms Nancy Eubanks’ outrage in her 6sep17 letter to The Union.

After Trump's outrageous news conference in the aftermath of Charlottesville, many of you "say" you are against racism and bigotry, that you disavow White Supremacy and Neo-Nazi groups and what they stand for. But actions speak loader than words. You could do several things to show you really can put country above party. Stop voter suppression laws that disenfranchise minority groups. Support a new Voter Rights Act. Stop gerrymandering districts to discriminate against minority voters. In addition, take actions to show you won't compromise principles of openness and fairness. Pass a law requiring all presidents to disclose their income taxes. Require all presidents to divest themselves of any business interest so that presidents can't have any conflicts of interest. Take away the lease on the Trump Hotel in Washington D.C. so Trump can't continue to profit from that enterprise.

You can’t make this stuff up; the schism is really real.

Scattershots – 3sep17 (updated)

George Rebane

Readers were recently introduced (here) to the sad story of the iGeners.  Professor Twenge of San Diego State expands on the travails of that sensitive, coddled, and brittle generation in her 2sep17 WSJ essay, ‘The Smartphone Generation vs Free Speech’.  Here we learn that the iGeners’ prime concern is “emotional safety”, something that makes them vulnerable to an open exchange of ideas and free speech.  At university, their overarching demand is that the administration continue to provide them a secure ‘home environment’ rather than an education that includes exposure to a diversity of thought.  Safety – physical, emotional, intellectual, … - is concern one.

[update]  The constant din from socialists fomenting the goal of national collectivism is that government needs to be the final arbiter of everything and the universal source of succor for all.  Prescriptions promoting this agenda flow abundantly during times of disaster and depression.  To overuse a metaphor, to a socialist every storm, natural or social, is a perfect storm.  An expression of this arising from Harvey is government subsidies – who should get what and when.  In the 31aug17 Sandbox and 'Socialists' Conundrum' comment streams ‘corporate subsidies’ have become casus belli for our leftwing readers; specifically, why should Exxon/Mobil (XOM) receive any government favors?

Such discussions always erupt and bloom enthusiastically without any of the participants agreeing on or even understanding the definition of ‘subsidy’.  And these proceed from the Left with the tacit premise that government creates the wealth that it selectively dispenses.  Few on the port side of our ship of state acknowledge that government has nothing save what it takes from its citizens and their wealth creating enterprises.  Some such takings are surrendered willingly; today most are not.  The Left counters this inconvenient truth by citing numbers indicating that most people are in favor of ever higher taxes and expanding leviathan.  What they seek to hide is that those seeking government redistributions are not the ones who create the wealth or pay sufficient/any taxes – they are simply voting on what should be done with other people’s money.

In pillorying XOM, leftwingers bring in factors such as a privately held company’s executive salaries in the attempt to rile the proletariat against capitalism (an overarching goal).  The underlying theme is that the company really belongs to ‘the peehpul’, and it has gone rogue in its operations as a private enterprise.  The unstated companion thesis is that government bureaucrats would do a much better job managing such an asset for the benefit of its citizens if it were to nationalize and operate the company.  History provides no supporting evidence for this.

North Korea cools US heads.  The 3sep17 WSJ reports “U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis warned North Korea in stark terms on Sunday that any attack on the U.S. or its allies would trigger a massive military response, in comments that came after a national-security briefing with President Donald Trump called in response to Pyongyang’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test.”  This should warm the cockles of progressive and libertarian hearts.  It used to be that we promised “fire and fury” in response to NK threats to homeland or allies.  Now the Fat Kid shoved that response up our collective bunghole, and told the world flat out that after his last ‘People’s 6.3 Earthquake’ he’s prepared to detonate a thermonuclear device over continental US that would effectively put us back into the 19^th century within one millisecond.  That has scared and cooled our heads sufficiently to condition our response from ‘threat’ to ‘attack’.  Maybe our next step toward greater cool would be for Trump or Mattis or … to announce, ‘I want to make it perfectly clear, if NK kills one more than 20M Americans, and I do mean just one more single red-blooded American than 20M, then we will rain down a deluge of UN sanctions on that country like the world has never seen.’  If anything, that should stop them in their tracks.

iGeners – when you thought it couldn’t get worse (updated 26aug17)

George Rebane

Time for a short update on our generational tailspin.  A new body of research has just been published on iGen, the latest generation of Americans.  iGeners are the young people born in the 1995-2012 interval.  They are the ones following our infamous millennials born 1977-1995 whose aggregate predilection toward dumbth we have been following for the last several years (here, here, here, here).  Well, it turns out that the latest bunch out of the womb are giving the millennials a run for their money.

Dr Jean Twenge (psychology professor at San Diego State) has been doing the research and published her most recent findings in iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy – and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood.  Actually, “the generation after the millennials loves smartphones, avoids books, craves safety and doesn’t tolerate intolerance” reports Christine Rosen in the 23aug17 WSJ (here).

These young people, in the aggregate, have an interesting departure in their values and worldviews than those who came before, including an “aversion to adulting”.  In their tolerance of almost everything else, what they are more likely to do than their predecessors is “to support restricting speech”.  Here they seem to have a pretty draconian bent, opining that professors who even utter one incorrect (intolerant, insensitive, …) word should be summarily fired, and students who also trip up in a similar vein should be expelled.  According to Dr Twenge, “This is the dark side of tolerance; it begins with the good intentions of including everyone and not offending anyone but ends (at best) with a reluctance to explore deep issues and (at worst) with careers destroyed by a comment someone found offensive and the silencing of all alternative viewpoints.”

iGeners are now the generation of snowflakes that totally embrace ‘safe spaces’, ‘trigger warnings’, and such.  For them these are “not fringe ideas but those embraced by the majority of iGeners.”  In their daily round they prefer virtual relationships to real ones, they read less than even their predecessors, and most certainly less than the so-called GenXers and Boomers.  And here’s the kicker – their academic skills lag behind those of millennials “by significant margins” and they are “less informed” about current events.  By any comparison they make the “dumbest generation” look smart.

So here is what the one-two punch of union public schools and social media have produced in a progressive politically correct world.  According to Dr Twenge’s research, the iGeners are not a happy bunch.  “On the contrary, the more time they spend online, the worse they feel.”  The iGeners are “at the forefront of the worst mental health crisis in decades, with rates of teen depression  and suicide skyrocketing since 2011.”  And this cohort of new voters will determine your civil rights, disposition of private property, generation and distribution of wealth, and how America will deport itself among nations.  All of this complex output promises to be based on even less input than evinced today by the millennials.  Oh my.

[26aug17 update]  And then there is this timely and apropos contribution from Ramirez.

The conundrum of culturally cohesive communities (updated 22aug17)

George Rebane

Cultural cohesion has been the propensity of humans living together for millennia and perhaps longer.  The clear and simple dictum is that people like to live with people who share their social values and view the world pretty much as they themselves do.  The benefits of such communities is both manifest and manifold because it engenders mutual trust and even affection as it lets people work without having to constantly watch their backs, and therefore specialize, knowing that there is a reliable clientele for their product or service.  Promoting this paradigm has been one of the foundations of RR and part of my personal belief system (more here).

People with limited ability to nuance concepts mistake the promotion of cultural cohesion with a childlike understanding of simple black/white alternatives.  For them, if you like cultural cohesion, then you are probably a racist who doesn’t tolerate the existence of other cultures.  It’s as simple as that.

Progressives’ True Colors Reexamined

George Rebane

Progressives embrace any science only to the extent of how many other progressives embrace that science.  That is sometimes called consensus science, auto-repressive science, or simply circle-jerk science.

The copy progressives, and the Left in general, have put out for over a century is that they want to transform society into its new and improved version.  History shows that nothing could be further from the truth, and also explains why the Left has always been busy revising history in whatever venue it gains a foothold.  Socialist (cum communist) countries have always instituted the most repressive form of morals that their captured cultures have practiced in the past.  In the taxonomy of governance, socialism and its big brother communism are the best known forms of collectivism – governance informed and dominated by central planning and control.  Under such regimes individualism is neither condoned nor tolerated; people belong to classes, and classes are the proper units of humanity to be managed.

Progressivism arose in the United States during the late 19^th century, and immediately became the fount of American collectivism, ultimately finding a warm welcome within the Democratic Party whose principles had been revealed in its embrace of slavery, practice of post-war repression of blacks, and rejection of the Founders’ legacy at every turn.  With its new progressive allies the party saw the masses as a sea of humanity that needed strong guidance, and even culling (see eugenics and forced sterilization) in its promotion of human progress.  But the problem was that progressives saw the masses divided between the educated elite – the social technocrats – and everyone else who needed their strong hand for guidance.  And the solution was a step back to the top-down form of governing that hearkens a direct return to the ancient autocracies and tyrannies of church and monarchies – the proposed approach forward was functionally equivalent to doing an about face and going backward to the days of princes, priests, and peasants, albeit now in different garb.

The bottom line of all this is that today’s progressives are peddling a form of stasis and repression that their undereducated minions can barely perceive.  The latest generation of their minions has been either coddled beyond comprehension or left in a permanent state of dependency to wallow in neighborhoods where dodging bullets and drugs are the only skills needed to survive.  Today’s more fortunate young progressives are blanketed with safe zones, trigger warnings, and other politically correct prophylactics to shield them from untoward (read ‘all imaginable’) risk and assuage their tender psyches.  When we witness their mass protests against a more demanding and invigoratingly brisk society, we understand why the metaphor ‘snowflake’ accurately describes their fragility and brittleness.

“THE LAST ONES”

[This little essay on the children of 1930s and 40s was sent by a RR reader and correspondent.  He shared it with a number of us who join in an ongoing dialogue about the times and events.  It is posted as received.  gjr]

By Denise Eyherabide

Born in the 1930s and early 1940s, we exist as a very special age cohort.  We are the “LAST ONES.”  We are the last, climbing out of the depression, who can remember the winds of war and the war itself with fathers and uncles going off.  We are the last to remember ration books for everything from sugar to shoes to stoves.  We saved tin foil and poured fat into tin cans.  We saw cars up on blocks because tires weren’t available.

We are the last to hear Roosevelt’s radio assurances and to see gold stars in the front windows of our grieving neighbors.  We can also remember the parades on August 15, 1945; VJ Day.

We are the last who spent childhood without television; instead imagining what we heard on the radio.  As we all like to brag, with no TV, we spent our childhood “playing outside until the street lights came on.”   We did play outside and we did play on our own.  There was no little league.

The lack of television in our early years meant, for most of us, that we had little real understanding of what the world was like.  Our Saturday afternoons, if at the movies, gave us newsreels of the war and the holocaust sandwiched in between westerns and cartoons.  Newspapers and magazines were written for adults.  We are the last who had to find out for ourselves.

As we grew up, the country was exploding with growth.  The G.I. Bill gave returning veterans the means to get an education and spurred colleges to grow.  VA loans fanned a housing boom.  Pent up demand coupled with new installment payment plans put factories to work.  New highways would bring jobs and mobility.  The veterans joined civic clubs and became active in politics.  In the late 40s and early 50s the country seemed to lie in the embrace of brisk but quiet order as it gave birth to its new middle class.  Our parents understandably became absorbed with their own new lives.  They were free from the confines of the depression and the war.  They threw themselves into exploring opportunities they had never imagined.

We weren’t neglected but we weren’t today’s all-consuming family focus.  They were glad we played by ourselves “until the street lights came on.”  They were busy discovering the post war world.

Most of us had no life plan, but with the unexpected virtue of ignorance and an economic rising tide we simply stepped into the world and went to find out.  We entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity; a world where we were welcomed.  Based on our naïve belief that there was more where this came from, we shaped life as we went.

We enjoyed a luxury; we felt secure in our future.  Of course, just as today, not all Americans shared in this experience.  Depression poverty was deep rooted.  Polio was still a crippler.  The Korean War was a dark presage in the early 1950s and by mid-decade school children were ducking under desks.  China became Red China.  Eisenhower sent the first "advisors" to Vietnam.  Castro set up camp in Cuba and Khrushchev came to power.

We are the last to experience an interlude when there were no existential threats to our homeland.  We came of age in the late 1940s and early 1950s.  The war was over and the cold war, terrorism, climate change, technological upheaval and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life with insistent unease.

Only we can remember both a time of apocalyptic war and a time when our world was secure and full of bright promise and plenty.   We experienced both.

We grew up at the best possible time, a time when the world was getting better... not worse.

We did not have it easy.  Our wages were low, we did without, we lived within our means, we worked hard to get a job, and harder still to keep it.  Things that today are considered necessities, we considered unreachable luxuries.  We made things last.  We fixed, rather than replaced.  We had values and did not take for granted that "somebody will take care of us."  We cared for ourselves and we also cared for others.

We are the “LAST ONES.”

The Still Muddled Middle (updated)

George Rebane

Recently consideration of America’s political landscape has resurfaced in these pages, motivated by Nevada County’s self-declared middle roader RL Bob Crabb who published a powerful condemnation of both the Left and Right upon which I expanded in ‘Oh, were it only that simple’.  From that Bob took umbrage at me, RR, and our commenters, and then we were off to the polemical races on his blog and here.

Readers know that I am no fan of the middle roader (MR) approach to our country’s politics, especially when the L/R schism has become a broad chasm over the last decades.  My beliefs about MR ideology have been covered in past posts, summarized most recently in ‘The Muddled Middle’(2012)  and ‘The Muddled Middle – a revealing look’(2015).  But that was then, and this is now when the chasm has widened considerably, and shows no sign of slowing down, let alone beginning to close.  Let me explain.

He Is Risen!

George Rebane

Hearing that strong assertion, the Christian answers joyfully, ‘He is risen indeed!’

For us, Christmas is the promise, and Easter its fulfillment.  The summation of all Christianity is Christ’s covenant in the promised transcendence of Man, all concentrated into one simple declaration – ‘He is risen!’  Without this, our faith is a fraud; with it, Christianity promises Man to become an unending part of God’s love of all of Creation.

It’s the Dawa, stupid! (updated 10apr17)

George Rebane

‘Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Islam’s Most Eloquent Apostate’ now makes her latest attempt to explain the sum and substance of Islam in a well-summarized interview conducted at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.  Longtime RR readers will recognize that this American scholar, born as a Somalian Muslim, corroborates every point made in these pages about the threat that the spread of Islam portends to western civilization and all non-Islamic cultures.

In the above WSJ article, the multipli-fatwaed Ms Hirsi Ali (portrait by Zina Saunders) issues yet another dire warning to the west while our politically correct cadres continue to blindly support the growing communities of the so-called moderate Muslims in our midst.  As a former Muslim and now a celebrated academic and student of Islam, she cannot underline strongly enough that the west is in a civilizational war with the disciples of the Prophet Muhammad.  An early herald detailing the nature of this war in these pages is my ‘Of Ragheads and Racism’.

Let me attempt a structured summary of Ms Hirsi Ali’s understated yet eloquent cri de Coeur which she expands in her latest and extensively referenced The Challenge of Dawa.  The compact book is published online as a pdf (download here) by the Hoover Institute where she is a research fellow.  She is also a fellow at the Kennedy Government School at Harvard University, and married to Scottish historian and public commentator Dr Niall Ferguson whom we have also met in these pages (here, here, and here).

The Depth of Dumbth (updated 1apr17)

George Rebane

Evidence continues to pour in that the most recent generation of Americans – the so-called millennials – have turned out to be the dumbest in our history.  Specifically, their literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking skills hover above the barely adequate levels to conduct modern life according to diverse sources ranging from America’s employers to our National Center for Educational Statistics (more here)  What makes it worse is the fully functioning, concerted effort to deny any of this that is delivered daily by the nation’s progressive lamestream media piled on by our local leftwing lackeys.  The latter take it upon themselves to confuse the critiques of this state of national ignorance with an ignoble and gratuitous denigration of the ignorant, thereby firmly establishing their own membership in this cohort.  

The situation has gotten so bad that a currently popular form of easy entertainment are videos of reporters – e.g. Jesse Watters and Mark Dice - encountering people on sidewalks to engage them on topics ranging from current events, through popular history and geography, to common sense.  Watching the respondents either flail in their ignorance or unwittingly exhibit confidence where none is warranted illustrates the more formally published statistics (many reported here over the years).

A recent volume (pictured) by Mark Bauerlein – The Dumbest Generation – is packed with data from the now numerous studies and includes information about the organizations engaged in quantifying the extent of our endemic ‘dumbth’ (q.v.).

The problem caused by these people who don’t know the difference between a million and a billion, or the structure of our government, or the role of our Constitution, or …, is that way too many of them vote.  And they vote on topics about which they have neither the slightest clue nor even basic knowledge.  From our common past we can still hear Will Rogers’ paraphrasing Mark Twain - ‘It ain’t what you know that troubles me, it’s what you know that ain’t so.’ (more here)

This generation’s state of knowledge was most vividly illustrated during the ‘women’s marches’ after President Trump’s inauguration.  When asked why they were marching, their answers ranged from the incoherent to the inane.  When ‘diversity’, one of the millennials’ main memes, is brought up, their inability to define or discuss it surpasses high comedy.  The source of their malady is the education that they have been denied since their parents first enrolled them in their neighborhood public school.  From there through the halls of higher academia, their ability to think critically about diverse ideas was carefully expunged, and replaced by a memorized catalog of politically correct progressive notions which in the past were known as politicized slogans (the very embodiment of Orwell's 'newthink').

Classics professor Anthony Esolen of Providence College has been studying and writing about the whys and wherefores of today’s ‘diversitarians’.  For this revelatory work he has been mercilessly pilloried by the Left.  To get a sense of our educational decline I recommend his latest essay ‘Ut Plures Sint’ (May Be More) in which he focuses on the constricted (mis)understandings about the diversity of cultures – today a topic that so much exercises the progressive mind.

I offer this little update to further buttress RR’s contention that the damage to our national mind is both deep and done; there is no feasible way to fix it or fill the educational chasm.  This generation will embrace progressive policies wherever they are encountered, and cement them in the voting booth.  At this late stage of their development they have no choice; they are forced to consume information in the only way they have been taught – in small bite-sized, standalone pieces that describe a very simple and simplistic world that simply ain’t so.  The only solution remaining from this side of the long-passed tipping point is to wish us both ‘Vaya con Dios’, and work for a peaceful Great Divide.

[1apr17 update]  “Shaky numerical literacy can undermine our sense of issues like the federal budget that deal in millions and billions” says Jo Craven McGinty (here) as she adds to the evidence of our national dumbth.  She points out that the overwhelming percentage of Americans have no idea about how to deal with the very large and the very small numbers that are supposed to inform us about everything from government budgets, borrowings, and taxes to temperature and pollution levels impacting (or not) our environment.  Our innumerate citizenry continues making nationally impacting policies in the voting booths without a clue as to what is big, small, or significant.  Therefore demagoguery and pandering politicians abetted by their local echo chambers rule the day.

On a more hopeful note, the eleventh annual TechTest was administered today by the Nevada Joint Union High School District in the NUHS Science Lecture Hall.  Taking the four-hour merit scholarship exam were some of the county’s best and brightest students.  The exam attracts qualified students who plan to pursue STEM careers after completing their post-high school studies.  The exam is sponsored by the Sierra Economics and Science Foundation which also sponsors TechTestJr (completing its fourth year) to motivate fifth through eighth graders to take STEM qualifying classes in high school.  Scholarship monies and prizes are provided through the generous support of SESF donors and local high-tech businesses who have made possible awards totaling over $150,000.

As a sad footnote to these programs benefitting our youth, our local (now called) Alt-Left started politicizing and denigrating this scholarship program years ago solely on the basis that the test is written, sponsored, and administered by people some of whom hold conservative political views. (e.g. I write the TTs and give the seminars.)  The tests and related seminars are and have always been ideologically neutral, however that has not made any impact on people who have a history of looking at everything through correctly polished political lenses.  And if your politics don’t pass their muster, then they relentlessly demand that you withdraw from the public forum.  Only those approved should be visible in our community and allowed to contribute.  The portents of this dreadful worldview has long been dealt with in these pages.  

Scattershots – 29mar17 (updated 30mar17)

George Rebane

“America is more divided politically, demographically, and geographically than at any time in recent history”, so argues demographer William Frey from newly released US Census data in a report from the left-leaning Brookings Institute (here).  The overwhelming evidence for the Great Divide just continues to pour in from all sides.  The American Left is at a propaganda crossroads – they cannot afford to allow the explicit pro-US policies of Donald Trump succeed, for that will give lie to everything they have been preaching since the end of WW2.  Their goal remains the destruction of constitutional America.  (H/T to reader)

Bill Gates wants to tax job-killing robots.  While the man no doubt has a good heart and is the world’s richest, he definitely is not the world’s smartest.  His latest brainstorm to equate robot labor with that of humans is based on the thinnest of thinking since there exists no way to either circumscribe technologies qualifying for such treatment, or to ascribe human labor equivalents to what machines have done for years and the new tasks they are doing today and will do tomorrow.  When you have that much money, it becomes a burden and thoughts of redistribution begin to inhabit your dreams.  But Bill’s latest idea is one more slippery slope (from the many popular today) that will lead to the death of the goose that lays the golden eggs.  (more here)

Starting this year, the Knifefish robot mine countermeasures vehicle designed to compete with Flipper.  Detecting modern bottom mines – especially those buried in silt in cluttered environments – is a hard nut to crack (more here)  Mines are among the most cost-effective means known for denying your enemy access to ports, coastal regions, and passage through constrained waterways.  For decades now the Navy has been using dolphins to do this job.  But it appears that advances in bio-sonars has come a long way since we developed the first critter systems in the 70s (my involvement has been described elsewhere in these pages).  Now all that remains is for the developers to figure out how to neutralize the detected and localized mine.  Flipper was a complete system in that it could also destroy the mine that it found.  But what we should note is that not even critters’ jobs are safe from advancing technology as ol’ dobbin found out starting in the 1800s. 

For my occasional foray into the ‘fair and balanced’ realm, I have to report that NPR ran a border wall piece this morning that featured a leading contractor bidding for the job who is the grandson of illegal aliens from Mexico and with relatives in stereotype numbers for such Hispanic-Americans.  The man admirably handled his interrogation by the progressive reporter, explaining patiently that 1) yes, no wall will be perfect, but 2) the porosity of the border must be greatly reduced before any kind of ‘immigration reform’ would make sense or be effective.  And to put a bow on it, the contractor reported that his family, initially opposed to his participation, has upon reflection and much discussion come to understand the sanity of first plugging the hole in the boat before putting all your efforts into bailing it out.

Did you ever notice that communicating with politicians, people of high rank, and the ignorant is very hard?  The prime reasons are that almost all of them have a small knowledge base and a carefully cultivated short attention span disguised as an ‘I’m too busy’ façade.  They maintain their informational deficits by restricting all their inputs to 30 second elevator speeches.  The media have long recognized this and have appropriately conformed to support the status quo.  Thus the behavior has become vogue.

Speaking of the media, the new label of ‘fake news’ has served to focus the public’s attention on the many and longstanding sins of journalists the journalism as a profession.  All for good and appropriate reason they are held in low esteem which most of them maintain through their daily labors.  The news here is that they have now been so badly tainted that they are taking out full page ads in leading newspapers.  One of these reads “Reporters, editors and photographers create real news you can trust.” (Emphasis theirs)  It ends with the plaintive appeal, “Help show your support for the journalists – in local communities and across the country – who are working tirelessly to bring you real news.”  Now if we could only reliably identify such journalists.

[30mar17 update]  Readers know of my deep interest in things to do with human origins, human destiny, and the status/role of intelligence in the cosmos, specifically in our own (and most likely the only) universe.  Hence all my scribblings about the Singularity, religion, and Intelligent Design (e.g. here and here).  A dear friend, similarly stimulated, just sent me the lavishly produced hard copy of Homo Deus – A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Hariri, an Israeli historian who achieved world renown with his Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind.  I am excited about the new and thought provoking ideas that the book’s reviews promise the reader as Dr Harari leads us in an exploration of “the projects, dreams, and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century from overcoming death to creating artificial life.”  As with many of you, my reading list is barely managed with more than a handful of books concurrently under way.  I will report back as my progress warrants, and invite any readers similarly afflicted and engaged to share their thoughts about what Hariri’s tomorrow portends.

Nationalist Reflections (updated 20mar17)

Nationalism is a complex, multidimensional concept involving a shared communal identification with one's nation. It is a political ideology oriented towards gaining and maintaining self-governance, or full sovereignty, over a territory of historical significance to the group (such as its homeland). - Wikipedia

George Rebane

The Dutch voted yesterday in high numbers to determine which brand of populism they favor to stop the Muslim onslaught of their country.  Of course no one, save Geert Wilders of the Party for Freedom, speaks of it in such terms, but they all hold that in their minds as the major issue to support or ignore.  The media continue to confound the issue by calling those who oppose illegal migration across borders of being “anti-immigrant”, which is the smelly red herring nowhere near the truth here or abroad.  But such is politics combined with a broad-based linguistic deficit.

The voters in Holland are watched by their EU neighbors because all of them will sooner or later have elections addressing the same populist and nationalist issues.  Center-right leader Mark Rutte “has portrayed the election as the quarterfinal round in Europe’s effort to stem a populist tide, with the French presidential elections in April and May the semifinal and the German parliamentary elections in September the finals. Polls in France indicate that anti-Islam right-wing politician Marine Le Pen will win the first round of voting, while Germany has been rattled by the influx of over a million refugees and migrants since 2015.” (15mar17 WSJ)

Most RR readers know that I am a dyed-in-the-wool American nationalist, a term denigrated by the Left since the Bolshevik Revolution.  I believe in the Westphalian world order of sovereign-nation states with secure borders engaged in vigorous commerce with each other, and each learning from the others’ successes and failures in governance and social organization.  I am a devout opponent of globalization as prescribed in the UN’s Agenda 21, and promoted by our domestic naïfs who believe that more and more comprehensive government benefits humanity.

I am also a proponent of global multi-culturalism that nurtures a worldwide environment in which people of distinct cultures can thrive, celebrate their own cultures, evolve at their own pace, and teach their children to honor and appreciate their heritage as the prime bond that forms communities of free people who freely support each other because such behaviors also support shared values and mores.  My studies of how people live together have confirmed the belief that social disorder and grief is maximized when un-assimilating people of markedly different cultures attempt to live in each other’s proximity within the same jurisdictional bounds and governance.  The evidence for that stretches back into the mists of time and overwhelms us today.

A Sea Change at MIM

George Rebane

Last night Jo Ann and I attended an all-Beethoven concert at the Amaral Center.  It was the launch concert of a new series put on by Music in the Mountains that featured the Sacramento Philharmonic and violin virtuoso Chee-Yun Kim.  Those who arrived early got to hear MIM Artistic Director Pete Nowlen detail the five concerts of the series spread over the coming twelve months.

The Amaral was set up as usual for such concerts with a large foyer/reception area with tables and chairs featuring two refreshment services – one for coffee, cookies, and other delights for the more innocent palates; the other offering flagons of sterner stuff for those seeking to make their pre-concert tete-a-tetes a bit more free flowing.  When the lights flashed and we all ambled to our seats, the hall was pretty much filled with a noticeable sprinkling of younger families with children (hope springs eternal) there to enjoy an evening of world class music right here in River City.  And that, dear reader, is the real news about this season.

MIM has negotiated an agreement with the SacPhil, joined by internationally recognized soloists, to become a regular part of Nevada County’s classical music scene, and I’m told this is a very rare arrangement in our land for communities of our size to attract and feature such a high quality of music performance.  Kudos go out to MIM’s Executive Director Dr Mieko Hatano and Artistic Director Mr Pete Nowlen for designing the season and making it all happen.

Last night’s performance opened with Beethoven’s 4^th Symphony (B-flat minor, Op 60) written in 1806.  The orchestra was conducted by Maestro (Maestra?) Michelle Merrill who did an outstanding job bringing out the best that SacPhil can deliver, and showed the ease with which the orchestra could produce the unbelievably rich sounds of the various instruments and execute the complexities that Beethoven poured into the work often referred to as the composer’s “symphonic ideal”.

After the intermission we were treated to Beethoven’s D-major Violin Concerto (Op 61, 1805).  Frankly I have never paid that much attention to this violin concerto when delivered on some audio medium.  I always thought of it as basic Beethoven and let its strains fade into an inconsequential musical wallpaper as I went about my other work.  Well, after a patience demanding sans soloist intro by the orchestra, that philistinian attitude was dashed when Ms Kim put bow to the strings of her “Ex Strauss” Stradivarius (Cremona, 1708).  Seeing that virtuoso violinist live on stage bring out what I never thought a violin could do was indeed a most enjoyable and almost startling eye/ear opener which also gave me an added appreciation of Ludwig’s genius.  The most startling revelation came when Chee-Yun Kim teased out with utmost precision and tonal control the conclusion of an arpeggio that must have ended under a generous handful of pianissimos, and yet we heard every note.

After a well-deserved standing ovation and a number of curtain calls Ms Kim played a virtuosic arrangement of the Beatles' ‘Yesterday’ that contained beautiful new harmonies and also sounded as if the melody line was accompanied by another violin.  We were enthralled.

OK, enough gushing, now it’s time to tell you what’s ahead in this year’s MIM classical subscription series.  On 2-3 June 2017 the MIM Festival Chorus performs a collection of choral works at Peace Lutheran that includes one of my very favorites, Morton Lauridsen’s ‘Dirat-on’.

On 13 October 2017 the SacPhil returns to perform Brahms Symphony No. 1 and Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 at the Amaral Center.

Our holiday (nee Christmas) concert at the Amaral Center on 9-10 December 2017 features the MIM Orchestra and Festival Chorus delivering a festive mix of carols, classics, and more.

Then please prepare yourself for the unhacked Russian spectacular on 26 January 2018 at the Amaral Center that features Glinka’s ‘Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture’, Mussorsgky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’, and, seatbelts fastened please, Rachmaninoff’s ‘Piano Concerto No. 3’.

Further details about the performances and how to subscribe to the entire series can be found on the MIM website.

OK, that’s about all I can muster about my favorite brand of music, cool sounds that have been around for much longer than the forgettable tunes that pour over us by the thousands, and then are quickly replaced by the ever more titillations du jour.  We must remember that something is classical when it endures with time.  There must be a reason, you’d think.

The Benedict Option

George Rebane

America can afford to care for its poor, but not the world's poor.

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 22 February 2017.]

Our world is going through an historical upheaval - possibly the penultimate one for humankind.  The salutary effects of western capitalism and colonialism have awakened peoples whose indigenous cultures gave no signs of being on the cusp of technological breakout, industrialization, or aggregation into modern nation-states, let alone exploring new forms of governance that recognize individual fulfillment based on new concepts of liberty and self-determination.

Today western civilization, after many centuries, is coming full circle as it rapidly sheds its former exceptionalism by relinquishing its culture bit by piece while elevating those it formerly taught to become its new teachers.  In this progress, we of the west have come to worship the new gods of diversity and inclusivity.  What we now belatedly realize is that these new gods are more jealous and demanding of sacrifices than is the God of our fathers.  These sacrifices require us to abandon who we were, how we thought, what we valued, and the traditions that defined us.

Ruminations – 17feb17 (updated 20feb17)

George Rebane

‘We are not a democracy’ is again patiently explained by Ms Cindy Hren in today’s Union.  Numerous times in history has the Left led the least-read into social cesspools as they followed banners screaming ‘Democracy Now!’  They know not for what they wish.

Climate change hysteria abating?  Am I not monitoring the correct news channels?  Because it seems that the voices of preventable manmade global warming are becoming shriller as they are crowded onto the back benches of public concerns.  There appears to be a growing tide of comprehensible information today that illuminates the doubtful, deficient, and doctored climate data, highlights the missing or mangled climate science touted by self-made ‘scientists’, and finally exposes the malformed, misused, and politically manipulated models predicting our certain doom unless the objectives of Agenda21 are adopted quickly and globally.

It continues to amaze me that johnnie-come-latelies like Hawking and Musk are credited by the media as being some kind of AI visionaries when they are nothing of the kind.  However, their recent epiphanies, added to their celebrity status, are helping to awaken our politicians to something of which we professionals have been warning them for over 20 years.  Bottom line – let them promote and bask in their ‘new insights’; we will all benefit if we address systemic unemployment sooner than later.

President Trump’s new US policy of getting our Arab ‘allies’ to police their own rogue nations and fanatical ragheads is a refreshing change.  And he understands that we should help them militarily only when our national interests are directly threatened – e.g. attempting to blockade the Strait of Hormuz or again attacking Israel.  Our relationship with Russia should be conducted strictly on a Skinnerian behaviorist (q.v.) basis to operationally condition their actions on the world stage.  Today Russia has no idea of how it could benefit by normalizing its domestic policies within its current borders so as to invite foreign investment to develop its natural resources, harness its considerable intellectual capital, and hold Islam at bay.  Russia’s deteriorating demographics demand alliances with similar cultures to oppose real enemies along its entire southern border from Vladivostok to (now) Sevastopol.  A weak and collapsing/fragmenting Russia serves no American interests.  Our new president seems to understand that.

[Update] The Left’s fake news factory was in full swing today since their nationwide general strike of immigrants was an unqualified bust.  Their union schools are hyperventilating that “we have to protect our families and our children” from the ongoing massive ICE “sweeps and round-ups” of ‘immigrant families’.  The leftwing schools are handing out propaganda leaflets and instructions to children on what they should do when the nasty ICE people show up at their door.  ICE denies that any of these Gestapo tactics are being used, especially against illegal aliens who have no criminal records.  ICE reports that this month they have arrested 680 criminal aliens.  This is not unusual since during Obama’s administration they arrested 2,900 in September 2011, 3,100 in April 2012, and 2,059 in March 2015 without the lamestream raising a peep.  Today we are led to believe that anti-illegal alien pogroms are sweeping the land with screaming parents and children being separated and hauled away to deportation detention camps.

[18feb17 update]  Voice of America has laryngitis.  VoA is one of many government sponsored organs and institutions that have quietly been subverted by our leftwing Deep State.  The international broadcaster was formed to disseminate American values, republican governance, and capitalist enterprise to populations government by leftwing autocracies and theocracies - in short, it was our ideological trumpet to the world.  But in the intervening years it has now become an "irrelevant" music station on the putative theory that it was MTV that 'brought down the Wall'.  Robert Riley, former VoA director who now directs the Westminster Institute, gives us the background of how the rot is quietly spreading. (here) 

The Orville Dam fiasco demonstrates again that if there is a problem, then government is guilty until proven innocent.  It appears that the regulators and state poobahs in charge of dams maintenance have been their old selves - imperialistic, full of hubris, and unbelievably ignorant.  Now our Democrat betters will still not build additional reservoirs to store water in the wet years, and are having trouble using the state's 'rainy day fund' ($8B) to finance fixing our infrastructure.  Moonbeam is hoping that Trump will get the folks in Ohio to pay for it.

[20sep17 update]  Our own Reinette Senum has started her own blog - The Foghorn Express - and it's about time.  On it she promises to feature "STORIES, HYPOTHESIS & POSSIBILITIES BEYOND THE FOG".  I sincerely hope that she will offer more than one hypothesis, or if not, it will be a real humdinger to keep us occupied for some time.  It will be interesting to see how my friend Reinette will manage her commenters according to the standards that she has set.  In any event, Welcome Reinette!, the Left does need a courageous if not coherent outlet to expand on their ideas for local living that will accept a variety of responses ranging from the thoughtful to, yes, even the 'craven'.  RR is proud to add you to Our Links.

Media Structured Chaos

George Rebane

• Trump’s temporary travel ban created “chaos” caused by demonstrators.
• Europe’s leaders castigated Trump while they build walls to keep Muslims out.
• No one brought up the president’s constitutional obligation to secure the country nor quoted the specific US Code that enables him to lawfully do exactly what he did that also duplicated bipartisan 2015 Senate legislation.
• Gov Moonbeam kept Vietnamese out of California because we already had “too many strange and poor immigrants.”
• President Carter had bans on Iranian immigrants.
• ‘American values’ have historically included constitutional exclusionary laws for people permitted to enter the country (I and my family were subjected to such laws in effect when we immigrated).

The Fourth Estate outdid itself over the last four days fomenting what it reported as “chaos” at the country’s airports that erupted as a result of President Trump’s order to stop travel from seven terror breeding countries.  The travel ban is temporary and could have been implemented with more warning.  But it was another campaign promise delivered.

The hiatus is supposed to let Homeland Security improve their ability to filter terrorists before they land on our shore.  But suddenly our president living up to his constitutional obligation to secure America by acting to the letter of established law has now been deemed to violate America’s “values”.  And the outrage was duly expressed by pre-organized sign carrying mobs bussed in to clog airports’ boarding gates and baggage areas – i.e. the reported chaos was not created by the legitimate traffic and operations at the airports.

To the unread this was supposed to be the chaos caused by the presidential order, and all lamestream outlets, abetted by Fox News, carried videos of the screaming hordes.  Even former President Obama lauded all the good folks out there protesting the new president’s policies.  The entire circus came off so well that one might even think it was orchestrated.  According to government tally, the actual count of detainees during the weekend was about 110 out of over 300,000 travelers coming to the United States.

Calexit and the Great Divide

Not all liberals are stupid; many of them just have bad luck when they try to think.

George Rebane

[An edited and 'liberally' criticized version of this post was published (here) in the 4feb17 issue of The Union.  I answer my critics here.]

Well, it’s now official - multi-kulti does not work.  There are limits to cultural differences that even progressives have come to understand.  It wasn’t that long ago when anyone suggesting our Great Divide is real was castigated by the Left, and accused of being everything from a racist to a traitor.  Even the comment streams of these pages are witness to such vitriol from locals of a socialist bent.

However President Trump’s victory has suddenly changed all that.  As the former ‘Never Trump!’ crowd recovers from its apoplectic shock (similar to PTSD) and reorganizes into legions of ‘Trump Trashers’, many of their leading lights are rethinking the entire idea of the American republic.  And California, of course, is the mother temple of all such advanced collectivist thought.

Former notions of the Great Divide describe a reconfigured 21^st century US with new states calved off existing ones to create homes for more like-minded Americans to continue the Great Experiment within a more diverse set of the Framers’ laboratories of liberty and democracy. The current ‘State of Jefferson’ movement to create Northern California is an example of this.  (see also RR's Great Divide)

More radical ideas describe the country divided into a confederacy of culturally cohesive states that would still be under one federal government with a revised or redrawn constitution.  Nevertheless all of these approaches to more responsive governance have retained a United States of America.  We all would still be Americans.

But today the globalist oriented socialists have come to conclude that there really exist irreconcilable cultural differences that reach down into the roots of a peoples’ fundamental ideology of how society should and actually can work.  This Trump-induced epiphany is in some sense also a unifying factor, since the Right has held this belief for decades.  Both sides now share a fundamental belief that may serve as a stake in the ground from which to search for a less drastic longer term solution than secession.

Ruminations – 28jan17 (updated)

George Rebane

The progressive media pundits and political cartoonists have gotten a reprieve on creativity.  For at least the next four years they will each get a pass by posting a Trash Trump piece.  I suppose that’s only fair, but while the conservatives didn’t have that latitude with our recently retired Sec8 president, they did have plenty to critique about what the man actually ‘accomplished’.  Progressives and mid-roaders are not about to wait for Trump’s demonstrated performance, since it’s much easier to fabricate incisive commentary out of whole cloth for a constituency that can’t find the mid-east on the map.

It’s turning out that genetics matters in determining a person’s ability to achieve, and hence we all are different based on our heritage.  The recent science is reviewed in The Genome Factor by Conley and Fletcher.  It corroborates the earlier findings in Nicholas Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance much berated by the Left when it came out (here).  How does the Left get away with claiming to base their policies on science when the record shows the exact dismal opposite that started with its support of eugenics and Lysenko’s plant genetics in the early 20th century.

Reading the papers this morning prompts me to ask if anyone ever notices that when homosexuals hold an event, it is widely celebrated and we pat ourselves on the back for being tolerant and inclusive.  But no one would dare attempt to hold an event for heterosexuals because even conceiving such a thing will get you vilified and branded as homophobic.  Is that how we constructively ban events celebrating being straight?

National Propaganda Radio may finally be defunded by the federal government.  That news outlet is the posterchild of the lamestream media as noted here for many years.  With President Trump in office they are now on steroids trashing everything about him and his team.  Here is more on ‘Trump Should End Government Funding of NPR’s Biased News'.

Trump stopped Obama’s midnight transfer of $221M to Palestinians as the last gasp of a blatantly pro-Islamic administration.  Rebane Doctrine for such funding is to pay them for not committing acts of terror against Israel.  The algo would go something like this – say, $X is our annual budget for Palestinians.  We credit/pay them $X/365 for each terror-free day.  When an act of terror occurs, payment stops for, say, 60 days.  For every subsequent act of terror that occurs during the no-pay interval, another 60 days is added to the end of the current no-pay period.  Payments resume when the accrued no-pay period ends.

Finally, here is the newest example of Orwellian NewSpeak that allows progressives to maintain with a straight face that 'free speech is censorship', and 'censorship is actually free speech'.

[update] Ketchup money?  Here's another egregious example of why we will never be at peace with the Left - they are evil even unto the marrow of their bones.

Better men than me need to explain the following.  Perhaps some of our progressive readers are up to the task.  Or not.

‘A High-Tech Rebirth From Higher Ed’s Ruins’

George Rebane

Dr David Gelernter, professor of computer science at Yale and one of my favorite systems guys, writes the title article (here) in today’s (23jan17) WSJ.  It is an important look into the near future of higher education, and reflects everything we have been talking about in these pages – in short, I agree with the good professor’s assessment of today’s higher education and the most probable direction it will take in the coming years.  Gelernter starts with what is obvious to many of us –

U.S. colleges are failing—the fancy-pants institutions along with the rest. … Today’s colleges give students no idea of the structure of knowledge: the topics they should learn, the books and skills they should master. Educators refuse them the guidance and stiff requirements they need and often want. Colleges refuse to provide the survey courses, especially in arts and humanities, that students need to build an educational foundation. Instead, too many teach politicized courses and assign slanted readings and random garbage.

We all should and will have more to say about this.  So read the article and sound off, because the crap that’s going on now in our colleges and universities is destined to take down our republic.

Scattershots – 12jan17

George Rebane

In the aggregate, Millennials lack social skills.  So conclude a number of studies as reported by NPR this morning.  This adds to the list of significant deficits that our new generation has demonstrated (also reported here, here, here, and here).  Most noteworthy are the problems that social services agencies, the military, and law enforcement departments are having hiring new people who know how to meet and communicate face-to-face with other humans.  Both the police and military have hired consulting organizations to study the widespread problem and to develop training programs that will teach these young people the social skills that we formerly picked up from mom and dad, our schools and churches, and other places where human interaction was not stunted by politically correct protocols and abetted by the substitution of online social media.  Modern times.

Obama finally reveals his demonstrated progressive penchant to have the means justify the ends.  The man now reveals a significant part of his ideology in the recent issue of the Harvard Law Review in which he discusses individual rights and freedoms, and advancing criminal justice reform (here).  A fundamental consideration in assessing the criminality of an act is known as mens rea or “the intention or knowledge of wrongdoing that constitutes part of a crime, as opposed to the action or conduct of the accused.”  It is remarkable that in this lengthy essay our president never considers this seminal factor as he waxes eloquent on all kinds of things such as poverty, inequality, and racial profiling.  But rejoice, now that it doesn’t matter, we finally have a look into the man who has brought a new level of counter-constitutional authoritarianism into our federal government.

George Soros is reported to have lost over $1B on Trump’s victory.  The sumbich bet the wrong way on the election, going short on the markets knowing that Hillary would win and cause existing investors to head for the doors.  That’s a billion less for him to invest in the nefarious organizations that promote global socialism and rule by the progressive elites.  Thank the Lord for small speedbumps on the road to tyranny.

Nevada City is numero uno as the best city to live in west of the Mississippi.  The Feb issue of Sunset – with Tom Coleman’s National Hotel on the cover - featured the 20 best cities, and our little town came out on top.  Given this and the continued commercial success our celebratory events have had over the last year, it should put a little egg drippies on the faces of those who attacked local activist and NC councilwoman Reinette Senum for her inflammatory remarks about the nation’s police for which she publicly apologized.  We all remember the long line stretching around the block of people waiting to excoriate her during a city council meeting last summer.  According to the then reigning histrionicians (those versed in and given to the practice of histrionics), the viral propagation of Ms Senum’s unfortunate observations were supposed to sound the death knell for Nevada City’s businesses and as a place to live.  Even I was taken to task for backing her right and duty to express the opinions of many of her constituents on a matter of national interest and debate. (more here and here)  Full disclosure – Reinette is my longtime favorite liberal in Nevada County no matter how differently we see the world.

Senator Booker denigrates Senator Sessions at the Senate confirmation hearings.  Booker impugns Sessions with allegations of racism and bias that not only have no basis in reality, but instead present a flood of evidence in Sen Session’s record along with testifying witnesses to counter every bit of the bullshit that Booker attempted to fling in his unprecedented testimony against a colleague.  Of course Sen Booker had no trouble supporting the two clearly racist AGs who precede Sessions when he is confirmed.  (And he apparently did himself no favors for attempting to assume the mantle of Obama in the Democratic Party's future.)

Ruminations – 5jan17 (updated 6jan17)

Not the village constable. There are men of evil mind, who would make of everything a crime, and not because of passion, but just naturally.  Gracian #109

George Rebane

WSJ editor-in-chief Gerard Baker contributes a worthy analysis and commentary in his ‘Trump, Lies and Honest Journalism’.  Therein he touches on and corroborates a RR piece (here) on the nature of lies.  His bottom line is that journalists should be careful in labeling any false statement, say, by a politician, as a ‘lie’ since that implies intent to deceive – which intent is hard to prove.  Better present the fact along with the erroneous statement and let the reader determine intent.

My toes curl the wrong way every time I see the now accepted punctuation for communicating a list of things.   An example of that is seen in the above title to Baker’s WSJ piece.  Apparent from the article, what the author sought to taxonomize was the discussion of three separate notions – Trump, Lies, Honest Journalism.  Yet the title, by omitting the comma between ‘Lies’ and ‘and’ ambiguates the intended taxonomy by confusing the reader to think that ‘Lies and Honest Journalism’ are on par with ‘Trump’.  In previous times we were taught to express a list of three or more equivalent things as ‘X, Y, and Z’ which allowed the inclusion of compound objects in the list as ‘X, Y1 and Y2, and Z’.  With the modern omission of the comma before the final ‘and’ such clarity is no longer possible, and contributes one more lexicographic factor to reduce the information carrying capacity of English.  You will not see that omission on RR posts lest they snuck in as a typo.  (I’m sure I’ve vented on this before and will again.)

On the road to super-AI (aka Singularity)  BEIJING—A mysterious character named “Master” has swept through China, defeating many of the world’s top players in the ancient strategy game of Go. … Master played with inhuman speed, barely pausing to think. With a wide-eyed cartoon fox as an avatar, Master made moves that seemed foolish but inevitably led to victory this week over the world’s reigning Go champion, Ke Jie of China. (more here)

[update] According to the Left and their lamestream, obstructionism is now the highest virtue, both in and out of government across the land.  It was not so long ago we were told that obstructionism was contemptible and anti-American – remember that it was the dastardly Republicans who shut down government all by themselves.  To man the barricades the NYT is hiring ‘journalists’ with a public record of having been very unjournalistically in the tank for Hillary (even to the editing of their journalistic content).  The chasm grows.

Sen John McCain concluded that “we are in a state of war with Russia” after conducting an a hearing of the Armed Services Committee on Russia’s role in the attempt to influence last November’s election.  The key finding to come out of this morning’s hearing on the Hill is that ‘Espionage is an act of war’.  This immediately implicates most of the world’s nations as being in a continuous state of war with each other.  However, we are assured that this is a “new kind of war” that doesn’t involve shooting (yet).

The St Louis Fed summarizes the Obama years – short and sweet (H/T to correspondent)

[6jan17 update]  From the looks of the invigorating Trump bashing conversations going on in the comment stream of the last 'Scattershots', it appears I may have to start a new regular feature similar to 'Sandbox' that can serve as repositories for all the Trump bashing that we are promised for the next four years.  Such repositories would invite comments not related to then current policy issues or actions of the federal government, but focus on spine tingling arguments like the 497th recounting of Trump's crotch grabbing braggadocio, or making fun of disabled reporters, and similar awkward bagatelles.  Our readers would then know exactly where to go to get the latest barn circling on the President's escapades of yesteryear.  This would be a public service for those whose motto and exhortations will be to 'Never Forget!'

New S#!t List of “creative and liberal minded” artists

George Rebane

The Left’s raw hatred of President-elect Trump and his supporters knows no bounds.  The man is not yet sworn in, and already leftwing artists are going out of their way to proclaim that they will not perform at his inaugural.  Not long ago, being asked to perform at a presidential event was considered an honor and a command performance.  Not any more as our Great Divide widens.

These puffed up prima donnas even claim to have started their own black list, claiming that any of their own who do perform better “get a check in the nine figures.  Because it’s probably the last check they’re ever going to get.”  But what most certainly will come to pass is that anyone who has any right-leaning sentiments or who respects the Office of the President will neither sponsor nor attend any of the artists who are now clamoring to make public their refusal to perform.

And who are these bigoted pinheads who think that their absence will make a difference?  Do they know that this is America where real talent is unending, where there are hundreds of artists looking forward to an invitation, and more thousands ready for their career launching premier.  So here are the current members on that All-American shit list – undoubtedly more will be added as 20 January 2017 approaches.

Elton John, Justin Timberlake, Bruno Mars, Katy Perry, Garth Brooks, Andrea Bocelli, Kiss, Celine Dion, David Foster, …