Letters from the Revolution – 8jul20 (updated 9jul20)

George Rebane

Reports of the number of cumulative C19 cases in any given jurisdiction misses the point.  Nobody should care about cumulative cases, only the number of active cases, and maybe the number who have died.  It’s the active cases that communicate some measure of risk for those who are out and about.  The ones who had it and were “released” (died or recovered) are history.  The 7jul20 Union headline piece (129 total cases as of last Friday) misses the point and tells us nothing about how risky it is to go grocery shopping.  This kind of reporting is shared by our crack journalism industry across the country.  (more here)

Our Bob Crabb is again flying hot, true, and normal in the Left lane as is evident in his latest graphic contribution in yesterday’s Union (filched below).

Bob's cartoon falls right in line with the nation’s lamestream outlets advancing the narrative that it’s the people from the Right who are the dangerous gun-toting rioters out there amongst the righteous folks of Left filling the streets with their "peaceful protests against racism".  The falling statues, looted shops, and burning buildings can easily be explained away by natural expressions of social justice and spontaneous combustion – remember, correlation is not causation.  Bob would do a lot to rescue his ‘mid-road’ credentials were he to draw something that illustrated the riotous actions of clearly identifiable Antifa and BLM thugs.  But with high likelihood that could also cause  the locals to pull his Leftwing License, and maybe even get him booted from The Union – worse things have happened for less to those progressives who stray from the straight and narrow.  We are reminded that revolutions first and foremost eat their own.

The causes of “gun violence” in minority neighborhoods continues to be ignored by the nation’s pro-communist commentariat.  Even FN (‘fair, balanced, and scared shitless’) is using that label in reports of the mass murders occurring every weekend on a Democrat-controlled urban plantation near you.  So when the next anti-2A push comes, you won’t have to worry your little head in the effort to discriminate between law-abiding ownership and use of guns, and the ongoing onslaught on black lives that really don’t matter.  Everyone wants to stop gun violence, right?

Speaking of legal guns, entering our Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital yesterday, I was again reminded of the utter insanity of policies that put up signs reading ‘The carrying of firearms in this facility is prohibited.’  This ensures that the facility is a ‘free fire zone’ for any deranged shooter until the police arrive, and then get organized to enter and confront the shooter.  Experience has shown that an in situ CCW-armed individual is the fastest way to stop the murderous mayhem and save countless lives.  For those not familiar with the safety stats of America’s CCW holders, consider that you are six times more likely to be murdered by a criminally rogue LE officer than a CCW civilian.  And here we’re not talking LE shootings caused by mistakes and/or incompetence.  Given the background checks and vetting required for a permit, CCW holders are the nation’s safest cohort of gun-carriers.

[update] The Bumblebrain Administration.  It is now old news that his VP woman of color will exercise historic powers in the Executive Branch; the DNC will have it no other way (and you heard it here first, I think).  But now a cascade of leaks from the Dem leadership also inform us that it’s “inconceivable” that Bumblebrain would run for reelection.  (Recall, for me it’s inconceivable that he’ll complete his first term.)  Additionally, in order to calm their constituencies, the Dem king-makers want our presumptive president to identify the complete spate of nominees for his cabinet, preferably by convention time.  Then everyone will know that capable and politically progressive people will be in charge of the various arms of government, and a vote for Bumblebrain will really be a worry-free vote for a socialist POTUS-optional government – the fundamentally transformed country’s first steps toward a post-constitutional Politburo.

[9jul20 update]  Victor Davis Hanson, one of my many mentors, makes a curious argument in his ‘The Fragility of the Woke’.  He correctly points out their fecklessness, insanities, and virulent ideology, but makes no case for the movement’s fragility.  In fact, he seems to do the opposite and confirm what we all witness in the news and daily round.  The woke movement, along with its militant BLM and Antifa arms, Democrat political support, and Soros et al financial support, appears to be the most robust, dangerous, and long-lasting  anti-American enterprise yet launched by the Left as their latest political road to socialism.  I’m confused as to why anyone keeping up with today’s events would consider this movement to be fragile as more and more institutions fall to its socio-political dicta.

Among the cavalcade of Dem Big Lies is Pelosi’s daily refrain about “the president is not above the law.”  What her constituents apparently are too dense to puzzle out is that President Trump has never been above the law, but has always gone through the bowels of the appropriate legal processes, defending himself as the law allows everyone to defend themselves.  And this is what is happening with the recent SCOTUS ruling concerning his financials and tax returns.  It’s only the lying leftwing loonies who continue to portray the process as the president somehow remaining above the law.  Now you have another litmus test to tell if a person is an idiot – just ask him if what the president is doing is above the law.

Comments

[Bill Tozer]

Interesting theory presented by Matt Taibbi. Why all the unhinged media, entertainment, and political world is operating at maximum-level emergency to explain and atone to the world for the election of Donald J. Trump.

‘Year Zero’

“As journalism, 1619 read almost exactly like the paper’s post-mortems on the 2016 election – probably not an accident, since Baquet told us it was conceived identically as an effort to “understand the forces that led to the election of Donald Trump.” In both cases history was reduced to a simplistic showdown between evil racists and oppressed peoples.

The best explanation for these sudden reversals in rhetoric is that Trump broke the brains of America’s educated classes. Like Russian aristocrats who spent the last days of the Tsarist empire flocking to fortune-tellers and mystics, upscale blue-staters have lost themselves lately in quasi-religious tracts like White Fragility, and are lining up to flog themselves for personal and historical sins.

In desperation to help the country atone for their idea of why Trump happened, they’ve engaged in a sort of moon landing of anti-intellectual endeavors, committing a generation of minds to finding a solution to the one thing no thinking person ever considered a problem, i.e. the Enlightenment ideas that led to the American Revolution.

The same pols and pundits who not long ago were waving the flag for wars and insisting that American-style democracy was so perfectly realized that it made sense to bring it to all the peoples of the world, by force if needed (think Friedman’s hypothesis of a borderless utopia of forced wealth creation called the Golden Straitjacket), have now reversed course to tell us our entire history needs to be wiped clean.

Everything is a lie now. CNN even put “Independence” in quotes when describing the holiday today (i.e. “Reexamining ‘Independence’ Day”). This revolution will end with Wolf Blitzer pulling a switch to dynamite the Statue of Liberty. Even if America is an idea whose time is past, I doubt it deserves an ending this ridiculous.”

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/year-zero

[scenes]

re: BillT@12:59AM July 16, Year Zero.

That was a good article and led me to this:

"For corporate America the calculation is simple. What’s easier, giving up business models based on war, slave labor, and regulatory arbitrage, or benching Aunt Jemima? There’s a deal to be made here, greased by the fact that the “antiracism” prophets promoted in books like White Fragility share corporate Americas instinctive hostility to privacy, individual rights, freedom of speech, etc."

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-white-fragility

[George Rebane]

scenes 904am - Is not "... corporate Americas instinctive hostility to privacy, individual rights, freedom of speech, etc." too broad of a brush for painting all of America's businesses? One can easily make that assertion about corporatist America. But the overwhelming share of our enterprises, those that don't require government to manage their competition, depend on a diverse and eclectic economy with consumers who value 'privacy, individual rights, ...' to be their willing customers free to choose. Thoughts?

[scenes]

It's obvious what Taibbi means by 'corporate', but I admit that it's not the strict meaning of the word. I don't believe he's referring to corporations generally, which often have one person in them (and provide surprisingly little value to an individual), but to companies which steer both government and the economy.

To steer it back, what it the most reasonable way to limit the legislative and economic power of companies (or even individuals)? It's especially dangerous when people simply can't see the issues that go along with single sourcing, regardless of how cheap it is, or lack of privacy. The laughable part is that liberals believe that it would be straightforward to merely grow government and increasingly control 'private' enterprises over time...the government itself is simply the largest instantiation of a corporation.

[Bill Tozer]

Now, gentlemen of high esteem, i. e., Dr. Rebane and Scenes, let’s not miss the forest from the trees here. Scenes from Year Zero’s 9:04 am link is an excellent book review of White Fragility and is an informative a nice deep dive into the debts of the twisted minds of ...er....how others see things, especially race. (The Redskins should just go back having the big R on their helmets. R mean Race and it’s all about race..) Good article lays out White Fragiliy and it’s author.

Book Review:

“It takes a special kind of ignorant for an author to choose an example that illustrates the mathematical opposite of one’s intended point, but this isn’t uncommon in White Fragility, which may be the dumbest book ever written. It makes The Art of the Deal read like Anna Karenina.”

“Yet these ideas are taking America by storm. The movement that calls itself “antiracism” – I think it deserves that name a lot less than “pro-lifers” deserve theirs and am amazed journalists parrot it without question – is complete in its pessimism about race relations. It sees the human being as locked into one of three categories: members of oppressed groups, allies, and white oppressors.”

[Don Bessee]

Now you cant even honor LE, wrongthink and snowflakes don't ya know -

In a statement published on the university website, Chief Chedester said that the “blue stripe” flag represented his commitment to his work as a police officer. However, he went on to say that he recently learned that the flag is a “traumatic” symbol to some students at West Virginia University.

Breitbart News reported this week that students called for the termination of Marymount Manhattan College Professor Patricia Simon after she reportedly fell asleep during a video conference on “anti-racism.” Simon claims that she did not fall asleep and that she was merely adjusting her trifocal glasses.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/07/16/west-virginia-u-police-chief-faces-calls-for-firing-over-pro-police-flag-in-home/

;-)

[scenes]

I was poking through twitter streams to get some flavor of the crazy, and ran into this one:

https://twitter.com/gwensnyderPHL/status/1283784699278761989

It's like some sort of mirror-image Alex Jones minus the ativan, but I did like this subsidiary tweet...

"WHITE SUPREMACISTS TRY TAKING OVER DEMOCRATIC CITIES: IF TRUMP IS NOT RESTRAINED, WE WILL LOSE OUR DEMOCRACY.Portland has joined Berkeley, New York, Charlottesville, and Seattle as liberal cities that have become flash points for far-right violence since Donald Trump took office."
https://twitter.com/marygribbin809/status/1284208961210781698

lmwao. You know, there really is no arguing with The Mob.

[Bill Tozer]

And Trump responds: Worse than Afghanistan.

https://www.facebook.com/95475020353/posts/10165772041085354/

[scenes]

A bit of that 'a little graffiti' action

https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1285554323187879937

https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1285489684752199680

[scenes]

Collateral damage to the Mob of Peace.

https://kvia.com/news/us-world/2020/07/21/body-found-in-minneapolis-building-burned-during-george-floyd-protests/

[scenes]

It's hard to beat this kind of coverage for an overview. Skip to about 2:00:00 for a general idea of goings on. (Portland federal courthouse).

https://youtu.be/MQilNP9rmVQ