Rebane's Ruminations

The Evil Party Marches On (updated 4jun21)

George Rebane

You can fool some people most of the time; you can fool most people some of the time; and today you can also fool most of the people most of the time.

As ensconced in communist Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, the new Democratic Party has thoroughly embraced its dictum ‘Accuse others of what you are guilty.’  Nowhere has this been more profoundly demonstrated than over the last decade as the Democrats have started their short march to socialism.  The notion of socialism was anathema in post-war American politics as demonstrated by almost daily reports of ruinous suppression of all human rights and freedoms that our Cold War enemies were imposing on their citizens.  Now, going on three generations of the Left’s dominance in public classrooms, the nature of socialism has been obfuscated in the American mind so that at least half of our citizens view it as another viable form of governance that we should perhaps try.

All this has been built on a complex façade of lies designed to install a political monopoly based on constantly customized collective ideologies du jour from the Democrat Party that cascade through the various channels of the now propagandized lamestream media.  A partial list of these very large, significant, and nationally consequential lies includes –

1. Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election;
2. Democrats are not taking America into socialism cum Marxism;
3. C19 from a Wuhan virology lab has been a baseless rightwing conspiracy;
4. HCQ and IVT are not useful for fighting C19;
5. Today China is not America’s mortal enemy;
6. Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon;
7. Our Mexican border is closed and secure;
8. There is no human crisis at our southern border;
9. Raising taxes and regulations does not impact economic behavior;
10. The 6jan21 Capitol invasion was a planned insurrection to topple government;
11. BLM is a protest movement and not a Marxist political organization;
12. America continues plagued by systemic racism; no progress made since 1964;
13. America’s Left and its corporatist allies have not rolled back 1A rights and practiced cancel culture;
14. The systematic destruction of black families and perpetuation of urban ghettos is the Republicans’ fault;
15. Rolling back 2A rights from law abiding citizens will eliminate ‘gun violence’ such as ghetto murders and mass shootings;
16. Police have been purposefully murdering blacks;
17. America’s colleges don’t have racist admissions policies and welcome free speech;
18. The biggest existential threat to America is climate change;
19. There is a scientific consensus that preventable manmade global warming is occurring;
20. The great American experiment was founded on the racist principle, promotion, and practice of slavery; today Critical Race Theory correctly teaches that America is still a racist country, and its teaching is not anti-American propaganda.

And finally, perhaps the biggest, most damaging, and enduring lie is that the solution to the all of humanity’s problems requires our embrace of collectivist governance at its most comprehensive scale possible.  There, the admitted goal is achieving a Marxist-Leninist society populated by the “communist Man”, at which time government will naturally dissolve as the then altruistic humanity marches joyously into a future of eternal peace and plenty.  (A similar list is always invited from our left-leaning readers.)

Memorial Day – 31 May 2021

George Rebane

Most but not all died to save America from a calamitous tyranny; many have also died for America to remain as the world’s white hat hegemon.  On this day we gratefully remember and honor them all.

‘The Soul of Black Conservatism’

George Rebane

Scholar and commentator Jason Riley of the Manhattan Institute has written a biography of economist Thomas Sowell, one of the country’s most celebrated conservative academics and intellectuals.  Progressives accuse Sowell’s perspectives on race in America as “going against the grain of fellow African-Americans.”  That on its face is wrong, as Riley points out in Sowell’s own words during a Charlie Rose interview - “I don’t know if we can say [that I go] ‘against the grain of fellow African-Americans,’ ” he told Mr. Rose. “You mean fellow African-American intellectuals. But I don’t think African-American intellectuals are any more typical of African-Americans than white intellectuals are of whites.” (more here)

A main thesis of Sowellian thought on race is that successful racial/ethnic groups in America have assumed their places in our pluralistic society by relying on their own resources and means, and not waiting for the dominant culture to provide them special dispensations to smooth the ‘E pluribus unum’ road to assimilated equality.  “If the history of American ethnic groups shows anything, it is how large a role has been played by attitudes of self-reliance”.

Sowell has also maintained that “government has a role to play in social mobility, albeit a limited one, and incentives matter”, but he remains worried about “handouts that ask little or nothing of the recipient, and thus risk creating dependency”.  Thanks to the Democrats’ imbued plantation mentality on the nation’s blacks, that kind of dependency has now been created and etched in stone as the foundational principle of modern black politics – white supremacists have taken the blacks’ share of the common weal, and through the practice of ‘systemic racism’ deny blacks the ability to garner their fair share of the nation’s riches.  Hence, America must be fundamentally transformed so that a more comprehensive and encompassing government can then use its gun to force an equitable redistribution.  The Left teaches that is the only way to achieve social justice in the land.

As a concluding thought, Rebane Doctrine holds that to the extent that systemic racism can be shown to exist in America, it is practiced and maintained by the country’s elitist Left (both black and white) with the unwitting support of their purposely under-educated legions of urban African-Americans.  Our main street whites have long been indifferent to the racial make-up of their neighbors, team mates, fellow workers, and even spouses.  Nowhere has this been more demonstrated than in our post-war military.  A litmus test for the end of such racism will be a time when we no longer require organizations, institutions, and agencies to have race-specific names, race-based memberships, and that provide race-based dispensations.

Scattershots – 24may21 (updated 31may21)

If "being shot is a risk police officers take with the job", then isn't being shot a risk criminals take when breaking the law?

George Rebane

Tomorrow our Left will celebrate the life of George Floyd on the anniversary of his death last year in the custody of the Minneapolis police.  The ‘celebration’ itself is a specious undertaking of political propaganda at its most blunt delivery while cloaked in the highest level of obfuscation for the nation’s hoi polloi.  Mr Floyd was a career petty criminal and drug addict, in and out of jails, who devoted his life to victimizing fellow blacks.  His unfortunate death at the hands of white police officers set in motion a perfect storm that has been used by Democrats, cum socialists and communists, to convince the country’s lightly read that America remains a deeply racist country with persecuted minorities, especially our African-Americans, whose lot has not improved since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Huckster Al Sharpton will feature prominently in the coming kabuki, as will President Biden’s White House meeting with the Floyd family to assure all the country’s blacks it is America’s racist Right that has deprived them of their ‘fair share’, and has kept them suffering on the plantation all these decades.

Victor Davis Hanson (here) and Bret Weinstein (here) whose essays have both hit it “outta da park” according to a longtime commenter, who again joins with RR’s cohort of other astute commenters who regularly bring to our readers’ attention significant commentaries that reveal and characterize these historic times, during which our country is rent and the world order is changing.  These pages have featured both writers over the years, and again their recent contributions do not disappoint.

All the news youse can use

George Rebane

Ever try to find a coherent set of TV program ratings on the web?  I just tried to do it again, after avoiding the frustration for a number of years.  My sweetie-pie and I were having one of our breakfast conversations when the topic turned to a news article that cited how informed Americans were about our country’s basic facts/numbers.  The 18may21article from Rasmussen Reports (cited by a reader), headlined ‘Conservative Viewers Are Better Informed About Important Topics’, got us thinking about the information sources regularly accessed by our mostly uninformed neighbors across the land.

So, we wondered how many people got their daily news from where.  And that again turned out to be a no easy task to google.  After some considerable surfing of various web sites I was able to assemble the following somewhat coherent table drawn mostly (entirely?) from Nielsen ratings.  I look at these numbers as being a snapshot of a noisy time series of viewers of the six major cable and mainstream television news outlets.

Looking at the above numbers, let’s assume that another 50% of our news consuming countrymen (which definitely includes women and others of all kinds of sexual orientations and configurations) get their news from other TV, print, and online outlets, in more or less the same liberal v conservative proportions.  That brings our total of, shall we say, ‘informed cohort’ to about 40 million.  Say, that this cohort is drawn from those aged 20-84 potential news consumers (and voters?) who currently total about 230M out of a population of 331M.  This number ties nicely to the total number of potential voters in the country, of whom only 55-60% or 127-138M actually, on average, turn out to vote.  (2020 was an extraordinary year in which almost 67% of eligible voters voted.)

From the above table we note that between 1 of 7 and 1 of 8 voters get their information from what can be labeled as conservative or rightwing sources.  The remainder get theirs from robustly liberal or leftwing sources (in these pages charitably labeled the lamestream media).  This provides conservatives a core of about 31M informed voters.  Through daily contacts with neighbors, it is these right-leaning Americans who convince the remainder to bring in the remaining Republican votes during elections.

Here you can see what kind of an uphill battle this disorganized core of conservatives have in order to take their message to the news-oblivious masses so that election outcomes are as tight as we have witnessed.  This ideological war is made even more one-sided when you consider the progressive propaganda that is constantly purveyed through academe, institutions, entertainment, and now also corporatist sectors.  Into today’s maelstrom of Marxist thought and values, the Republican party barely responds as it is outgunned in the public square by Democrats who effectively control the majority of the non-news voting community.

In a country of wimps and wooses

George Rebane

We’ve been on travel over the last couple of weeks, doing a ‘southeast’ tour that started in Washington DC and worked its way down the coast to Miami, and then up the gulf coast visiting friends along the way.  We are currently in New Orleans and will finish in Houston after seeing our niece and her family in San Antonio (another set of California expatriates).  There is a lot to report on what we’ve seen in all the states we’ve been in, especially as it comes to how the country continues its pandemic response.  The bottom line of all that we’ve witnessed is that 1) there is no consistency in what people are doing and 2) the state-to-state public policies.  How/when/where people wear masks and socially distance varies all over the place.  No one seems to be sure of anything, except that they must comply to whatever insane diktats of their governor or mayor they believe to be in effect.  I am sad to report that in the large we Americans are a bunch of subservient wimps and wooses demonstrating over-abundant cautious behaviors - timid, compliant, and confused - that were more appropriate to serfs than a population of informed and independent minded citizens of a free country.  That kind of responses the Left appears to have successfully beaten out of us – ‘I don’t know why I’m doing it other than following orders.’  

Neil Patel of the Daily Caller is one of several national journalists who observes the same degradation of our citizens, and in his ‘Masks In Cars — What’s Behind America’s COVID-19 Insanity?’ writes –

If you wanted to teach a class on how to cause confusion and distrust, you would follow the U.S. government’s coronavirus playbook. A lot has been written about the historically low levels of trust Americans have in their leaders and institutions. There’s been less analysis on what happens when a government has no faith in its own citizens. We are seeing the results today. From the start of the pandemic, health authorities have chosen gamesmanship over honesty. This has resulted in muddled and inconsistent messaging from national leaders. The end result is a broken country of citizens at one another’s throats. Mask fights, deboarding flights and, of course, the crazy people driving around alone in their cars with masks on all stem, at least in part, from a government that refused to treat Americans like adults who could handle the truth.

Critical Race Theory and the March of Marxism

[CRT is the most putrid piece of anti-American pedagogy to infect our institutions in at least the last 100 years.  Thanks to the Democratic Party, it is now rampant as it metastasizes the minds of our lightly read neighbors, products of schools that for years have focused their students on America’s sins.  Today CRT is being rapidly incorporated into California’s public schools, government agencies, and politically compliant corporatist enterprises.  Conservative journalist Christopher Rufo recently gave a speech at Hillsdale College on ‘Critical Race Theory: What it Is and How to Fight It’ which was published in the March 2021 Imprimis.  It is the most cogent, clear, and concise description of CRT and its current spread across our land.  It is reprinted here by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.  gjr]

Christopher F. Rufo

Critical race theory is fast becoming America’s new institutional orthodoxy. Yet most Americans have never heard of it—and of those who have, many don’t understand it. It’s time for this to change. We need to know what it is so we can know how to fight it.

In explaining critical race theory, it helps to begin with a brief history of Marxism. Originally, the Marxist Left built its political program on the theory of class conflict. Marx believed that the primary characteristic of industrial societies was the imbalance of power between capitalists and workers. The solution to that imbalance, according to Marx, was revolution: the workers would eventually gain consciousness of their plight, seize the means of production, overthrow the capitalist class, and usher in a new socialist society.

Quo tendimus? (updated 20apr21)

George Rebane

[My ‘Farewell Unity’ commentary was also published in the 3apr21 Union (here). Its lengthy comment stream made clear again that most liberals had trouble understanding my proposition for finding common ground.  Nevertheless, the piece has since then garnered considerable interest.  This week the newspaper printed on separate days not one, not two, but three op-ed columns by liberals delivering most revealing critiques of the future Americas desired by both sides – ‘Path to unity in America’(13apr21) by Elliot Schneiderman, ‘A point of near unity’(15apr21) by Paul Hauck, and ‘Finding Unity in America’(16apr21) by Nory Fussel.  When “retired scientist” Schneiderman took me to task, I responded with the piece below, prematurely, it turned out, since I was not aware of the subsequent op-eds by Hauck and Fussel.  I address the latter two in the addendum to this post.  Perhaps all this interest provides hope that the conversation toward unity, which I outline below, will start here or elsewhere.  20apr21 update - an edited form of this commentary was published here in the 20apr21 Union.  More here.]

I was halfway heartened to read ‘left-leaning neighbor’ Elliot Schneiderman’s 12apr21 ‘Path to unity in America’ response to my 3ap21 ‘Farewell Unity’ column.  It appears both of us support a future America that is persistently hailed by our Right, and seldom if ever described by our Left.  In fact, Elliot takes exception to the neo-Marxist future that I describe, and the one to which the current administration and the Democrat leadership publicly subscribe.  These disparate visions of America are well documented by the commentariats of both sides.  Elliot writes -

George quite wrongly states that “our neighbors on the left work feverishly for” this Marxist global government world view. I’m on our country’s left and will have none of it, I don’t personally know a single American that would ascribe (sic) to it, and I am convinced that the vast majority of our country’s left do not ascribe (sic) to it.

This remarkable view from the Left is easily explained by the recorded half-century decline of our progressive schools that have assiduously omitted any mention of such historic realities.  And it is easily confirmed through conversations with a sampling of your left-leaning neighbors, especially the ones cited by Elliot.

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 Creation.

This has now become RR's annual message celebrating Easter.

Scattershots – 2mar21 (updated 5mar21)

George Rebane

Those who judge the past in terms of the here and now are doing a great disservice through their ignorance of the then and there.

The Left’s promotion of America’s new cancel culture is in full swing.  We now have full scale censoring of politically incorrect content on our mass media – broadcast, internet, print, entertainment, … .  This incorporates the modern version of book burning.  The latest volumes to be ‘digitally burned’ and no longer available from major outlets include Justice Clarence Thomas’s ‘Created Equal’ video and , and now Dr Seuss.  Dr Seuss has been an icon of Americana and children’s literature for a couple of generations now.  Even an annual children’s reading day (2 March) was ensconced to recognize the birthday of Theodor Seuss ‘Ted’ Geisel (1904-1991).  But today our commissars of correct culture have deemed many of his works to racist and contain “crude and offensive stereotypes in several drawings of blacks and Asian-Americans.”  But those well-read in the country’s leftward lurch will recognize that such book burnings are nothing more than pages out of Stalin’s and Hitler’s playbooks to erase the old culture in order to make room for instilling their brave new world.  It was ever thus. (more here)

Common culture counts.  That has been a fundamental tenet of RR, and is now being adopted by many other national voices to counter the Left’s all-out assault on America’s traditional culture.  Six former US education secretaries co-authored ‘America Needs History and Civics Education to Promote Unity’ (2mar21 WSJ).  In there they cogently argue for a national education plan “to help teachers instill an understanding that is complete and honest but not cynical.”  The 6jan21 frustration that was expressed by Americans on the Mall and in the Capitol is a harbinger that the country’s political leaders, those who truly want to promote unity, should take careful note of and respond with appropriate legislation and regulatory relief for our public schools.  It’s a tall order the chances of success for which are not high given the entrenched collectivists in politics and the teachers unions.  Nevertheless, the authors cite the ‘Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy’, the culmination of a 19-month project by 300+ “scholars, educators, practitioners, and students from diverse backgrounds.” (more here) In sum, a minimally common culture for a constitutional democracy “requires a citizenry that has a desire to participate, and an understanding of how to do so constructively, as well as the knowledge and skills to act for the common good.”  The Roadmap provides the guidance for the several states to develop curricula that can provide such an understanding.

Joe Biden puts all his credibility chips on a Big Lie, and takes a page of bombast from Trump’s playbook.  He and Team Biden, echoed in the lamestream, now trumpet the claim that he is the nation’s savior from Covid-19.  Specifically, “he is staking his legacy on the lie that the pandemic was out of control until the day of his inauguration.”  And a more comprehensive segue to the old days of ‘journalism’ was made possible by the former president’s CPAC speech.  The hiatus is over, we can now stop having to explain (or avoid) Biden, and shift back to coverage of Trump topics that fit like an old shoe.  Gerard Baker says it best (here) –

The return to the limelight of a certain former president has triggered an unfortunate but probably inevitable relapse for the Trump addicts of our news-gathering class.  They’d gone cold turkey for a whole month and there were tentative, encouraging signs that the cure might be taking. Deprived of their favorite drug, some were gingerly discovering other, more wholesome pursuits: tackling the mountain of evidence that Andrew Cuomo might be a mendacious, incompetent, bullying sex pest; investigating the slight but tantalizing possibility that not all of America’s social and economic woes can be attributed to white supremacy; slowly weaning themselves off the urge to ask penetrating questions of the White House about Joe Biden’s rescue dog.

What must ol’ Bumblebrain do now to get back into an adult-level news cycle?  After all, he’s still the president.  Isn’t he?

[4mar21 update]  A CPAC puzzle?  A straw poll was taken at the recent CPAC conference at which many Republican luminaries – including former President Trump – spoke.  The poll indicated that 68% wanted to see Trump run for president in 2024, and only 55% wanted to see him nominated for the office.  This conservetarian doesn’t understand how the excess of the 68% would have him become a Republican candidate in 2024 without first being nominated – especially after he made clear that he would not support or start a third party.  From my perch it looks like a collective brain fart.  Other solutions most welcome.

The Capitol Fortress.  Thousands of troops remain guarding our razor wire wrapped Capitol.  Why?  The Dems insist on fake intelligence reports of another imminent attempt at a rightwing ‘insurrection’ (when there never was one in the first place).  The disorganized and frustrated mob that charged the Capitol on 6 January had no idea what they were doing or were supposed to do.  They got in only because the on-duty Capitol police were incompetent in every aspect of operational planning and execution, or ordered to allow a politically useful penetration of the building.  And the mob had nothing to do with the deaths that day, that was another fabrication by the Dems and their lamestream media.  So, the whole thing today was a set-up for the Dems kabuki security theater to defend against a supposed repeat today of 6jan21.  This attack was supposed to occur according to some unknown advisory from an unknown agency in our intelligence community – perhaps the FBI.  In spite of today’s nothing burger, the military will continue to occupy DD for another two months – to defend against some unknown threat - at which time another fake intelligence advisory will launch the next phase of political histrionics to keep the public apprised of their assigned place under the heel of the state.

[5mar21 update]  ‘A Compromise on Creationism’ – in this little 5mar21 WSJ essay (here) physician/scientist Dr Joshua Swamidass calls for reaccreditation of colleges that teach creationism as long as they also permit discussion of and courses in evolution, along with some other provisions about the transfer of creationism course credits.  (He misses the reciprocal call for accredited secular colleges to also welcome speakers who counter theistically progressive narratives.) What again astounded me was the citing of a 2019 Gallup poll that “showed that 40% of American adults ‘ascribe to a strictly creationist view of human origins, believing that God created them in their present form within roughly the past 10,000 years.’” (more here)  Interesting to note is that 40% with college degrees believe that the evolution of Man was guided by God, which indicates a belief in Intelligent Design (here, here, and here) that for obvious reasons is purposely confused with and perfidiously equated to Creationism by our secular humanists.  My own concern is that these ‘strictly creationists’ reject most of what science teaches about how we and universe function, knowledge that is also the basis for the politics of public policies.  How do these religionists vote?

$15/hr Dumbth on the March

You always get less of what you tax more.  Eternal Truth #461

George Rebane

For some years now RR has chronicled and mourned America’s decline in intellectual resources and critical thinking skills.  This national dash to dumbth continues (nay, accelerates) as a purposeful process by progressives who have carefully husbanded public education at ALL levels for the last half century to achieve today’s new lows in pedagogy.  Various writers and academics have observed this process for some decades now – Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind (1987) and Bork’s Slouching Towards Gomorrah (1996) are some earlier works that come to mind.

Most recently we have a comprehensive essay – ‘The Decline of Intelligence in the West’ - by educational theorist and literary critic David Solway that cites the work of many psychologists and cognitive scientists who have documented our “plummet in cognitive abilities” over the course of these years.  These assessments come from a broad range of socio-political ideologues – e.g. Gruber’s on-target assertions on “the stupidity of the American voter” that would help pass Obamacare as his next step toward socialism.

Consideration of this descent is not an idle undertaking for those who want to sustain America’s achievements and support its continuing ascent in the 21^st century as the world’s ‘shining city on a hill’.  Denying the data, as Solway points out, hastens our decline, and serves the aims of globalists yearning for a post-national America.  Science historian Morris Berman in The Twilight of American Culture (2000) observes that “a society cannot function if nearly everyone in it is stupid.”  This truth is embraced by autocratic elites everywhere, and our cynical central planners daily devise and implement stratagems to keep America maximally dysfunctional, knowing how that concentrates power in government.  Our Founders’ realization of this was summarized in Jefferson’s immortal ‘A nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.’

Today we see an example of such a stratagem about to be run by the American voter one more time – the next rise in federally mandated wage controls in the imposition of the $15/hr minimum wage.  Without going through the catalog of damages this will do to the poorest already in and those seeking to enter our workforce, I want to point out that almost no one in the country knows how and when America came to accept a minimum wage.  That is one of the many parts of our history that has been wiped from our schools’ curricula in their dispensation of dumbth.

Manhattan Institute fellow Jason Riley recounts (here) the “racially discriminatory roots” of America’s minimum wage laws born in the 1930s, and of today’s Pelosi-led progressive prevarications designed to bamboozle the ignorant and free into supporting the Dems’ $15 vote buying scheme.  For openers, the minimum wage does NOT provide the breadth of economic benefit to the claimed target populations of women and the poor.  But it will kill more jobs (1.4M according to the CBO) and remove another tranche of entry-level rungs of the economic ladder from those who need it the most.

But the most politically damaging part of the governments’ minimum wages is the history of their introduction and implementation.  As Riley recounts, minimum wages were introduced to the country’s North in the attempt to stem the migration of blacks from the economically bleak agricultural South.  The North’s black-excluding unions lobbied Congress where compliant “lawmakers complained openly about the ‘superabundance’ and ‘large aggregation of Negro labor’, and cited complaints by whites of black Southerners moving north to take jobs.”  They knew that “low-income minorities stand to lose the most from lifting the wage floor because they are overrepresented among less-skilled and less-experienced workers.”  And Team Pelosi, with Bumblebrain in the wheelhouse now, have not forgotten the benefits of that policy tool.

Perhaps most damning of today’s progressive narrative would be to recall JFK’s attempt in the Senate to protect New England industry by promoting minimum wages that would price blacks out of the low end of the labor markets.  There in 1957 the young senator and soon our future president lectured a NAACP official, stating, “Having on the market a rather large source of cheap labor depresses wages outside of that group, too—the wages of the white worker who has to compete, … and when an employer can substitute a colored worker at a lower wage—and there are, as you pointed out, these hundreds of thousands looking for decent work—it affects the whole wage structure of an area, doesn’t it?”

We conclude with an apropos picture of America’s dumbth on the march.  This is the Democrats’ siren song to their incomprehensively loyal African-American constituencies with carefully cultured deficits in history and economics.

Dark Days Diary – 28jan21 (updated 30jan21)

George Rebane

Quietech in Grass Valley is a very capable local computer service store owned and run by Melissa Hannebrink.  The Rebanes have been satisfied customers since Melissa’s retired father established the business.  This morning Melissa sent her customers an email that begins with, “I am writing you today with a very heavy heart. As I have shared with some of you, here at Quietech we have endured daily abuse over the past 10 months. By enforcing basic COVID guidelines, there are some who feel their rights are being infringed upon. In addition, we have some who walk through our doors and are so disappointed to find that they aren’t next in line, or that they can’t have their device fixed on-the-spot, that they have full-blown tantrums. These unfulfillable expectations, in addition to the pressures of COVID, seem to be creating the perfect storm for abuse, shockingly even from some of our longest-standing clients. This morning, we had an incident that went too far. We decided to temporarily close to regroup, although the last thing we want is to close our doors and stop helping those in our community who need us.”  As the country sinks into its woke-powered autocracy, we will be reminded more frequently than ever that a gossamer thin veil separates civilization from barbarians at the gate.

Welcome to the After-Trump Era.  Victor Davis Hanson explains the matter to us in his latest commentary.  There he points out, “During the Trump Age, the president was supposedly responsible for every death from COVID-19. Now, the media report that career scientists and health administrators in the federal government, especially at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were largely to blame for past slow testing, and were tardy and lax in apprising the nation of the infectious threat. … In the new age, expect the media and government to suddenly resent any pushback against a sitting president. Questions about the Biden family’s past multimillion-dollar influence-peddling overseas or Biden’s cognitive ability can no longer be asked. … None will compare the recurring violence of Antifa or Black Lives Matter to that of Islamic terrorists. None will compare Biden, who dismissed Antifa as a mere “idea,” to Mussolini or the Nazis. Any retired officer who smears the president, we will be reminded, would violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice. … The media, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Hollywood, top retired military brass, corporate America, universities, and professional sports are all recalibrating the truth for our Year One. … In about a month, they will have it down. And soon, we won’t even be able to tell the old reality from the new.”

[29jan21 update] Danny Pearl’s killer is set free by Pakistani courts (more here and here).  Pearl, WSJ’s South Asia bureau chief, was kidnapped and beheaded in 2002.  Danny’s parents, who have been fighting the Pakistani justice system for almost twenty years, stated “Today’s decision is a complete travesty of justice” that “puts in danger journalists everywhere, we urge the U.S. government to take all necessary actions under the law to correct this injustice.”  RR has covered this Islamist travesty in previous posts here and here.

[30jan21 update]  Ms Hannebrink has surprisingly taken exception to my above Quietech entry.  Her remarks with my reply may be found @1058am in the comment stream.  I find it remarkable that she seems to think that I ascribed a political leaning to her remarks, especially when I explicitly declined to do so.

Scattershots – 27dec20 (updated 30dec20)

Suspension of judgment is always the part of wisdom in a listener, and the remission of faith to authority the part of wisdom in a speaker.  Gracian #154

George Rebane

Identity politics is a totalitarian enterprise, as called out by Paul Gigot, op-ed editor-in-chief of the WSJ.  About Gigot's defense of Joseph Epstein’s commentary on Jill Biden’s doctorate – ‘The Biden Team Strikes Back’ – Roger Kimball of The New Criterion writes,

The governing strategy of identity politics is not to encourage free expression but to shutter it. In essence, it is a totalitarian enterprise, deploying the shibboleths of race, gender, and radical egalitarianism to enforce a stultifying conformity. It is heartening to see Gigot affirming that, at one of our nation’s most important newspapers, “these pages aren’t going to stop publishing provocative essays merely because they offend the new administration or the political censors in the media and academe.” If, as we suspect, the preview we just witnessed was a sort of sighting shot, it suggests that Gigot is going to have his hands full dealing with ever more intolerant efforts to “turn the page” and enforce ghastly new modes of “healing” and “unity.”  (and more here)

[29dec20 update] Speaking of ‘doctors in the house’ (here), we are now not surprised to hear that the pandemic is causing most leading universities to ‘pause’ their 2021 admissions to PhD programs.  “More than 140 humanities and social sciences programs at top schools have suspended admitting students for fall 2021.”  And also we’re not surprised to hear that STEM PhD programs are not affected by these cutbacks.  During disasters, society in the large acts pretty much as humans do in the small when it comes to deciding who gets to stay in the lifeboat – utility rules. (more here)

Trust government ‘science’ when spouted by agenda-driven politicians?  The short answer is ‘No’, the long answer is NFW!  One of our astute readers draws our attention to “Joe Biden's decision to hold over Dr. Anthony Fauci in his administration as his chief medical advisor as a symbol of his commitment to ‘trust science’ is coming under new scrutiny following Fauci's recent admission that he altered public scientific estimates based on opinion polls.” (more here)  The most vulnerable double dummies are those who believe science speaks with one infallible voice.  We witness their blather nightly on the lamestream.  And the Democrats (including their local lackies) still claim that theirs is the ‘party of science’.  Please note the above entry on PhDs when recalling their braggadocio about all the Left’s college graduates.

Biden’s education programs promise to be on steroids in their announced path to destroy the last vestiges of the nation’s public education.  From here on all curricula in union-dominated government schools will be focused through the lens of critical race theory.  It is now in the open that progressives have no desire to produce students with market-valued skill sets and the ability to think critically,  The overt K-12 objective from here on is to produce a generation of dumb and woke kids, indoctrinated to believe that meritocracy, personal responsibility, diligence, achievement, industry, intelligence, … are all characteristic traits of white supremacists and racists, and therefore to be eschewed in the coming socially just world of newly-minted, anti-capitalist socialism.

Anyone notice how silent the EU has been about China’s global policy of stealing commercially and militarily critical IP from any and all?  The most plausible answer to that silence has been that EU countries neither develop nor protect much homegrown IP, but license it from IP producers like the US.  Countries like Germany and the Netherlands incorporate licensed IP into their higher-quality manufactured products, and have been more than willing to meet aggressive thieves like China in the marketplace.  In the past they haven’t cared much about China and others stealing IP as long as they can market their stuff to the pilferers.  Now things are changing as China’s ability to manufacture quality products grows along with its domestic consumption for same.  The EU is coming around to America’s assessment of China (thank you President Trump), and they are becoming wary of China’s global commercial and political ambitions being carried out on a very tilted playing field.  (more here)

[30dec20 update]  ‘California may be losing its business mojo’ was the 29dec20 Union’s lead editorial.  In there Dan Walters of CalMatters presents a thoughtful summary of what has happened to our formerly golden state.  The exodus is now at such a fever pitch that only the most dedicated progressives in epiphany-free Sacramento are still blind to it (of course all their local lackeys have no hope of comprehending this ongoing disaster).  Nevertheless, they outnumber all the more saner ones.  In recent weeks tech giants like Tesla, HP, and Oracle have headed for greener pastures (Texas of course).  Why stay in a state encrusting with regulation- and tax-numbing socialism when your post-Covid workers can work from anywhere?  There’s less benefit in Silicon Valley than meets the eye.

71% of America’s military age youth cannot qualify to serve.  That’s the latest from the DoD.  The reasons for this horrible statistic is that since the military became an all-volunteer enterprise, their standards were raised.  The major disqualifiers for our young people are intellect, drugs, and bad health.  Modern warfare uses a lot of high-tech combat systems that require more than a two-digit IQ to operate, with druggies and overweight people not measuring up. 

Christmas - 2020

Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.  Matthew 1:23

George Rebane

Last year I wrote - Another tumultuous year is ending with celebrations for peace and joy.  The Rebanes count themselves among the diminishing number of American Christians who still wish their family and friends, and RR readers of all persuasions a season of remembrance and reflection on what has been bestowed on this third planet, circling a modest star, making its way with billions of similar stars in a galaxy that populates this universe with uncounted trillions of other such galaxies.  Christmas still reminds many of us that we are among the blessed in our seeming insignificance.

2020 has given new meaning to ‘tumultuous year’ which now ends with a foreboding not seen during my lifetime.  So, more sincerely than ever, Jo Ann and I wish everyone a season of remembrance and reflection of what we once were and how we may regain the blessed parts of our country's past.

Is there a Dr/doctor in the house? (Addended 18dec20)

George Rebane

Joseph Epstein’s column in 11dec20 WSJ (here) about Jill Biden’s doctorate started a national row that has even penetrated our country’s hinterlands and backwoods.  The FLOTUS-elect likes to be called “Dr Biden”, and the compliant media has, well, complied to the extent that Dr Biden has become an ever-present, in-your-face item in today’s news.  Most people (including Epstein) debating the use of that honorific in a salutation are innocent of the genesis of ‘doctor’ and ‘Dr’, so maybe a little background would help.

Signs of Our Time – 9dec20 (updated 10dec20)

George Rebane

This will be a category of highly opinionated observations from an octogenarian who has been privileged to witness (often unwillingly) more of the human travail than that to which most have been subjected.

Innovator extraordinaire Elon Musk is moving his Tesla et al out of Silicon Valley and California to (wait for it) Texas.  That will not come as a surprise to those freedom-loving capitalists and conservetarians who have paid attention to the accelerating autocracy bound downward slide of the once golden state that was the envy of the world.  And to the Democrat-dimmed of our state (and nation), this ongoing exodus has been totally invisible or worse – it has been denied, thereby rejecting the need for any policy corrections.

On the road to progressivist autocracy, YouTube has announced new censorship rules.  The latest batch has them removing all content that gives any hint that the recent election contained any fraud.  To these supreme hubristicates, the dispensing of news that covers the massive amount of submitted evidence and legal battles affirming fraud are considered not suitable for processing by the nation’s main street minds.  YouTube will relieve us of the burden and just focus on delivering all the pravda we really need.  We anxiously await their next installment. (more here)

‘Stakeholder capitalism’ is the label for destroying the best approach to generating and allocating wealth.  All the world’s major corporatists, as they assembled at Davos, are on board with ‘The Big Reset’ which is “a vague and open-ended mandate for corporations to do good in the world. Yet beneath the lofty rhetoric, stakeholder capitalism is mostly a front for irresponsible corporatism. It is an attempt to siphon off cash flow from productive uses to advance the mission of ‘global governance’ and create corporate and government sinecures for cronies along the way. … Stakeholder capitalism is used as a way to obfuscate what counts as success in business. By focusing less on profits and more on vague social values, ‘enlightened’ executives will find it easier to avoid accountability even as they squander business resources. While trying to make business about ‘social justice’ is always concerning, the contemporary conjunction of stakeholder theory and woke capitalism makes for an especially dangerous and accountability-thwarting combination.” (more here)

Team Biden will take full credit for correctly dealing with the C19 pandemic.  Not adding anything to the Trump administration’s accomplishments, the Democrats will just subsume all of it, with their lamestream telling us repeatedly that it was really they who put together and now deliver what Trump had done.  High school history books will memorialize the accomplishments that followed after President Biden rescued the country from the tragedy of the Trump years.  In gratitude we will be made happy to pay more taxes, welcome new layers of socially just regulations, and take comfort in no longer having to exercise such a wide spectrum of risky liberties.  What’s not to like?

[10dec20 update]  The manufacture of America’s double dummies in its schools – public and private – has ascended to a new level of intensity.  The Woke Revolution is now descending into the nation’s middle and high schools with the widespread adoption of curricula based on ‘critical race theory’ (q.v.) and specific subjects like history adopting the anti-American propaganda version as publicized by Project 1619.   The “tip of the iceberg” of this new aspect of our socialist revolution is described in ‘The Woke Managerial Revolution Goes to School’.  The question is, as always, ‘where are the parents?’

Scattershots – 3dec20 (updated 8dec20)

George Rebane

SCOTUS finally ruled against Gov Cuomo on the religious freedom case.  The 26nov20 NYT reported, “The Supreme Court late Wednesday night barred restrictions on religious services in New York that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had imposed to combat the coronavirus. … The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s three liberal members in dissent. The order was the first in which the court’s newest member, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, played a decisive role.” (more here)  Justice Barrett was the crucial vote for the 5-4 majority, with Chief Justice Roberts (the court’s new ‘swing vote’) going limp again and voting with the liberals.  Justice Gorsuch wrote the excellent majority ruling (here) wherein he states, “It is time — past time — to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues and mosques,”

‘This is why Yuja Wang is Wonder Woman’.  Ms Wang is unquestionably one of the greatest piano virtuosi to come along in many a year.  Take a listen to a five minute sampling of what this woman can do with a piano – truly a celebration and vindication of western culture and how it has contributed to the shaping of global cultures.

‘Big Companies Urge Biden, Congress to Address Climate Change’ - Amazon, Citigroup, Ford and others support a U.S. return to the Paris accords from which Trump withdrew.  Well, whouda thought?  (more here)  With the advent of the Biden administration we are going to see a return of corporatism on steroids.  Cash rich corporatists have always been lobbyists and supporters for all kinds of new regulations and fees that can be levied on their respective industries and business sectors.  We recall that a corporatist is a big corporation that can no longer effectively compete in free markets without some kind of government support.  Increasing costs for their smaller competitors and raising the barriers to entry for newcomers is always best achieved by established corporatists who can pay off legislators and regulators to do their assigned duties – all for the benefit of the consumer, of course.  These are the naïfs who ultimately will get it in the shorts, and pay for the whole thing.  (In case we have some new readers here, please recall that corporations pay no taxes or fees; they just pass those costs on to their customers.  But that’s a whole ‘nother story.) 

[4dec20 update]  Cutting the unemployment bonus again proved that the Left doesn’t do economics.  Writing unemployed low-wage workers checks with an added $600 bonus was supposed give the economy a boost and lower unemployment according to progressive economists like the socialist sage Paul Krugman.  Wrong again.  Workers got paid more for not working and the economy didn’t go anywhere.  When President Trump had to compromise eliminating the bonus to just lowering it to $300, then, lo and behold, unemployment plummeted and the economic growth set decades-long records.  As the song says, ‘When will they ever learn?’

Marc Andreessen, web browser pioneer and venture capitalist, years ago claimed that ‘software will eat the world’ (here).  AI has now achieved the ability to automatically generate code for some very structured applications, and soon will become smart enough to write programs from only verbal instructions, thereby promising to make legions of programmers redundant.  Some interpret this coming state of affairs with the claim that “Software Ate the World, and Soon It Will Write Itself”, going on to conclude that “developers are in short supply, but their products may acquire the capacity to replace them.”  Well no, that’s not quite true.  Most non-techies still believe that ‘line programmers’ create the wondrous systems that dazzle and deliver us.  But learning to code in a programming language, and learning to conceive and design a system to do what has never been done are two different skill sets – the first any smart high schooler can accomplish, the second takes a bit more education in one of any number of specific fields.  Bottom line, software is no more ‘eating the world’ than did movable type in days of yore – you still had to have something more to become an acknowledged wordsmith than what was needed to learn how to smith the words into print.  In the same way today, it will take more from fewer to come up with novel things the software must do, than the larger number who can learn how to make the software do it.  It’s the latter who should soon tremble.

Ever hear of ‘emotional support animals’?  Well, they’re a couple of steps beyond ‘service dogs’ in what they apparently provide to their owners.  And there’s more to be said about the portents of such critters, the humans they emotionally support, and the crumbling culture that now puts up with such nonsense.  This morning we awoke to news of a passenger bringing his peacock into the passenger compartment of an airliner.  Now those of you who know peacocks can readily conceive of the pandemonium that such an aggressive animal with non-existent toilet discipline will create attempting to come down the aisle and be confined to the middle seat.  Today’s laws do not allow anyone to question the legitimate and beneficial purpose that such arbitrarily selected support animals satisfy for those emotionally short-changed.  On that flight the pilot was astute enough not to take off with a cabin catastrophe in the making, but we were not told how the gathered authorities adjudicated the affair.  From my semanticist’s perch, it is clear that our language has not evolved at a sufficient pace to provide adequate adjectives to describe the depths of insanity that today’s progressive ideology is inflicting on our society.

[5dec20 update]  Check out the report on the anti-viral Ivermectin in 'Mismanaging Covid-19 ...'.

[6dec20 update]  Andrew Cuomo – talk about scumbag politicians lying to the public.  This political hack is one of the few in the nation to whom hundreds of Covid deaths can be directly attributed – recall his tragically misguided care facility diktat.  Now he tells the country that Trump’s Operation Warp Speed had nothing to do with the early development, testing, and approval of C19 vaccines; the big pharmas would have developed it anyway since they’re only interested in profits.  He believes his audience to be appropriately ignorant of what Warp Speed did to pave the path and lower the financial risk to the pharmas for them to put a very expensive full court press on their vaccine developments.  We know from decades of data how long it would have taken doing the same ol’ same ol’.  But that don’t make no never mind to another Democrat Big Liar telling people another Big Lie.

"Inside Every Progressive Is A Totalitarian Screaming To Get Out", David Horowitz here aligning with Rebane Doctrine.

[8dec20 update]  Cringing capitalists and the great Cocoa Collusions.  The cocoa growers of Ghana and Ivory Coast (61% of world supply) decided to collude and raise the price of cocoa by almost 20%, claiming to alleviate worker poverty.  Naturally candy producers like Hershey and Mars don’t want to pay more for their prime ingredient, so they are working together trying to find ways to pay less for cocoa (what a concept!).  In this crazy world of progressive pandemics, virtue signaling has become a de rigueur for both corporatists and cringing capitalists.  Both Hershey and Mars are denying that they are trying to circumvent the ‘virtuous’ price increase, when instead they should counter with the free and open markets’ correct argument.  They should tell the cocoa growers that producers also have an obligation to keep prices low for their customers whose financial welfare is no less important than that of the cocoa workers.  Virtue signaling has become a particularly contagious and corrosive form of cringing for capitalists in the face of socialism’s global advance.  (more here)

A new approach to ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’  In the 8dec20 Union, Mr Rob Cairns attempts to heal our divide by suggesting that, instead of attacking, we sit down with our opposites to have a “real conversation” with “them”.  The conversation would launch with questions like ‘What’s important to you?’, ‘What are your concerns?’, ‘What are your fears?’, ‘What are your hopes?’, ‘What are your priorities?’.  A laudable approach indeed, but one having little chance of success when considered in light of the now drastically different belief systems that today propel our polarization.  RR has spent years revealing and dissecting our contending beliefs, and the record is here for all to see.  When a leftist finally deigns to reveal his belief(s) and/or solutions to social problems, to rightists they range from the odious to patently unworkable.  What such questions serve to divert from is an exploration of the meta-world views (i.e. ontologies) of the two discussants.  Without understanding each other’s basic views of how ‘their world’ functions, the rest of the conversation quickly becomes moot since the participants cannot help but talk past each other.  And the real problem, encountered in the attempt to explore ontologies, is that perhaps only a small share of people are capable of such productive pursuits.  Alas.

Today's joke from Rush Limbaugh illustrates the above ontological differences.  A capitalist sitting at a bar is sandwiched between Bernie Sanders and AOC while watching the news.  They see a tense video of a man ready to jump from a tall building.  The capitalist says, 'I have $10 that says he jumps.'  Begrudgingly Sanders and AOC take him up on the bet.  The man jumps to his death, and the capitalist collects his winnings.  Then a moment later he says, 'I can't take your money, because I saw this report earlier on the news.'  AOC responds with, 'That's OK, so did we, but we didn't think he'd do it again.'

From Fox News to …? (updated 14nov20)

George Rebane

OK boys and girls, things have gotten rotten in the Murdoch media empire.  I’ve been pissing and moaning about Fox News for months now (always did have my gimlet eye trained on them) as their news coverage and copy kept drifting, now visibly sliding, toward lamestream journalism.  Their ‘fair, balanced, and unafraid’ has always brought out a chuckle in me and mine, but today the ‘unafraid’ part is an out-and-out farce – they are very afraid of straying too far from the progressive narrative.  (As I’ve noted many times before, ‘fair’ and ‘balanced’ has always been a fool’s errand that only convinces the naïfs.)  For lack of a better target, I blame the entire transformation on Rupert’s liberal son Lachlan now in charge of their news outlets.  The even more liberal son James has already departed Fox because it still wouldn’t follow the leftwing narrative well enough, especially the coverage and promotion of climate change (i.e. preventable manmade global warming).  So now the cat is out of the bag.  Once daddy left the business to his sons, things immediately started listing to port.

FN’s and FB’s stalwarts like Bret Baier and Neil Cavuto have already tossed in the towel and joined their liberal colleague Chris Wallace and former colleague Shepard Smith in how they select and wordsmith their news reports and interviews – today the prematurely departed Smith would feel very much at home at FN.  But the real canaries in the Murdoch media mine are conservative stalwarts like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham (and maybe even Jesse Watters).  If any of them start leaving FN, then that network’s turn to the dark side is a done deal.

It would be interesting to see where such conservative commentarians would take their established brands.  Newsmax is an obvious destination.  And there are more conservative streaming news outlets available like Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly’s new homes that would get a tremendous viewership boost if they garnered any of FN’s big three.  And now we’re starting to hear rumors that a former president Donald Trump may again be in the business of starting his own news network or buying into an existing one and turning it into Trump TV (more here).

To all this I will add our country’s losing fight with the First Amendment as the forces of darkness continue to throttle free speech and religious liberties.  A significant telltale about the ‘progress’ of progressives in this arena was SCOTUS Justice Alito’s recent speech to the Federalist Society on these topics of America’s freedoms. (more here, here, here, and here)

Exciting times ahead as the nation starts its foreplay with socialism after Biden’s inauguration.  I’m hoping that our intrepid RR readers, who seem to know all that’s happening on the web, will keep the rest of us informed as to the best post-Fox destinations on cable or online.

[14nov20 update]  Bill Whittle at Instapundit.com delivers the first of a multi-part series (here) on the downfall of America’s media and the particulars of how the election was impacted by their fake news and daily streams of lies.  (H/T to reader)

I fear for our beloved Republic (updated 7nov20)

George Rebane

With the election over and unknown thousands of votes yet to be discovered, counted, and adjudicated, we have entered a virgin and wild land untrammeled in our history.  Having arrived therein, today we are literally a polarized population of pioneers who see the other as savages to be subdued.  Common ground for launching a healing dialogue was forsaken long ago.

Reminding readers that these pages contain ‘Observations and Interpretations from the Last Great Century of Man’, we now begin in earnest to witness and partake in our country’s dissolution – the Great Divide has arrived, what remains is how we can go forward to a mutually satisfactory political solution that describes the form and functions of a newly divided continent.  If we cannot resolve this peacefully, then we may have our country’s first true civil war in which both sides wish to take over and rule the entire land.

History students understand that the conflagration of 1860-65 was not a civil war, as it is erroneously described today.  In reality it was a War for Southern Independence launched by secessionist states that had no desire to ‘take over’ the United States of America.  Were violence to be our fate, then one can foresee a similarly purposed conflict with the Right wanting to secede, and the Left opposing secession with the force of arms.  That is a political asymmetry the Left has refused to acknowledge, as it vigorously opposes its natural outcome.

The Right wants to live in a land where it can practice its values of liberty, freedom, enterprise, and capitalism.  The Right has no desire to force other people to adopt their values and mores.  The Left, as the perpetual hatchery of totalitarian regimes, will force everyone it can control to adopt and practice its ideology, even if that necessitates a vast gulag and re-education camps.  The Left has demonstrated again its perennial practice of soiling its existing nests, and then emigrating to unspoiled regions and communities to repeat the process.  There is no evidence of emigrations in the opposite direction; the people of the Right continue to escape to a shrinking collection of unspoiled pastures with the vain hope that they will not be followed.  It is anyone’s guess how long this pattern of migrations can continue.

The election of 2020 is yet to be decided, but the outlook for Republicans does not look good.  I assess President Trump’s chance of being re-elected at less than 5%.  The only hope for America dodging the fundamental transformation bullet for the near term is that Republicans retain the Senate, and that SCOTUS will revert to a strong constitutionalist bench in adjudicating the blizzard of cases it will encounter.  With a Republican Senate under Majority Leader Mitch, we can hope for blockage of the most egregious socialist GND legislation that will issue from Speaker Pelosi’s House.  Under the Harris/Biden administration gridlock will be good.

What disturbs (terrifies?) me the most is the fraction of the electorate that support a fundamental transformation of our Republic from the historical country of Makers to a country of government promoted Takers.  This is the key attribute that illustrates our divided house, and therefore portends the Great Divide.  None of our leading thinkers ensconced in their Institutions of Thinking has a clue on how to stop the ever-widening chasm so well illustrated this week, let alone providing even a rough outline for bringing us back close enough to preserve the Union.  I say this because the Takers have been taught to believe that the only means to reduce their pain – real, imagined, or self-inflicted – is to have government take more from the Makers.  As has been shown in so many other countries passing through socialism, there always comes a time when the Makers quit making.

The 2022 election will respond to whatever pain the Democrats inflict on the country.  Even though fewer Republican Senate seats will be up for grabs, the solution of inducing more Makers to make more is not on any progressive horizon.  If the Senate flips to the dark side, then Nellie bar the door; even a conservative SCOTUS on the way to the packing house will be of no help.  This election, now going for the bumblebrain and socialist-in-waiting, demonstrates that we Americans no longer have the collective wisdom to preserve our liberties or our land of the free.  Once a political monopoly is established at the federal level, it will take the country down the trail so visibly blazed by California and its like-minded coastal calamities.  What happens then is anyone’s guess, but for sure it will not be pretty.

During this tendentious week, my final wish is that President Trump will act presidential when this election’s dust settles.  And if he must depart, that he does so with newfound dignity and decorum, that were it practiced more frequently during his years in office would have guaranteed him a second term.

[7nov20 update]  "Joe Biden is Elected the 46th U.S. President"

Scattershots – 31oct20 (updated 2nov20)

George Rebane

A progressive argues that America’s income inequality has actually increased under Obama, instead of having decreased per their national narrative.  This is shown in RL Crabb’s comment stream (here) where I contended with a typically snarky liberal about the Gini Index worldwide rankings.  I used a 2007 CIA table that gave GI = 0.45 for the US, and the liberal used the more recent Wikipedia value of 0.47.  GI ranges between 0 (total equality) and 1 (total inequality).  In reality, GI changes slowly because it reflects the slowly changing income distribution over an entire economy.  The liberal then argued that America’s income distribution became more unequal under Obama.  BTW, my point on Bob’s blog was to illustrate that the GI is not a reliable indicator of autocratic vs liberal governance, showing that both kinds of countries had GIs both greater and less than that of the US.  This point was totally lost on the liberal genius.

Lest we forget –

The Left claims that the Hunter Biden scandal is a manufactured ‘October Surprise’.  Seamus Bruner is the associate director of research at the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) counters, “A lot of people think this is, you know, (an) October surprise or just for the election to tarnish Joe Biden’s name … These stories were released in 2018 in a book called ‘Secret Empires’. … Joe Biden wasn’t a candidate, we didn’t ever think Joe Biden would run for president, we kind of just followed the money.”

I love capitalism.  We just got back from the weekly shopping at Safeway.  I bitched to the manager last time that they were always out of tonic water; they should change their inventory policy on that SKU.  He thanked me and promised he’d solve the problem.  And sure enough, today there was tonic water galore.  Also, their first edition of plastic grocery bags were on the fringe of fragile.  They saw the problem and had their supplier up the heft, and now we have plastic bags so sturdy that they are reusable.  In more regulated economies – those I’ve experienced in Europe – if you lodged such a complaint to a clerk, you’d get the gimlet for being a disaffected nonconformist.  And in places like the USSR/Russia, your complaint would be noted on your state dossier for future reference as a noncompliant misfit.  In North Korea the Ugly Fat Kid would have you and your family being re-educated in a labor camp.  Guess which of our politically polarized poles likes the UFK’s solution.   

[2nov20 update] CDC-attributed corona deaths are a Big Lie according to their own accounting. (more here) It's the money and lamestream promotion of the Democrats that give rise to maintaining one of this year's biggest lies in order to influence the election in favor of Bumblebrain.  (H/T to reader)

‘I want Trump to die’ addended

George Rebane

[Apologies for the late posting of this promised follow-on commentary.]

Thoughtful comments from readers expanded the scope of my 4oct20 ‘I want Trump to die’ commentary to encompass social behaviors that may or not be acceptable and/or legal under our current form of governance.  And this includes a wide variety of people’s aspirations for regicide and its modern versions that include the leaders of more representative and therefore more liberal governments.  More specifically, comments from progressive readers such as Steven Frisch who strongly asserts, “I have stated here on many occasions that I do not believe that political violence is justified in American society. I have also stated on many occasions that I believe that some of the rhetoric used on this page, and the tacit acceptance of the threat of, or insinuation of, political violence is philosophically un-American and un-patriotic.”

As a conservetarian, I take great issue with such a belief while acknowledging that it is held by most, but not all, liberals and progressives in America.  The new neo-Marxist wing of the Democratic Party has no such inhibitions against political violence.  In fact, in the written manifestos on their websites, neo-Marxist organizations such as BLM, proudly declare their support of, and even the necessity for such violence to topple corrupt and unjust political orders.  They back this up with their actions in the streets and voluminous statements to the press justifying politically motivated riots.

In these pages over the years I have often argued that in a liberal and free country, the citizens’ right and ability to violently oppose their government should always be recognized, celebrated, maintained, and not be insidiously abridged by government.  Although and without contradiction, if such a purposely violent cohort does arise, the non-violent citizens opposing that cohort have every right to petition and support their government in opposing such violence with all the force provided it by established laws.  In short, a free people are free only to the extent that they retain their ability to successfully resist their government in order to be able to fundamentally transform it through reform or revolution.

We understand these truths from the historical fact that America was born through political violence, and that the subsequent exercise of political violence has served to preserve the Union many times since.  To now declare that political violence has suddenly become “un-American and un-patriotic” as a basic right of a free people, provided for in our Constitution, is both preposterous and ignorant of the fundamental principles and means of our country’s founding and maintenance.

Here I once more expand on the rationale for these beliefs in ‘Versions of Fundamental Transformations’ which you can download here -  Download VersFundTransforms.  Long time readers are aware of the bases for these beliefs from the collected tenets of my credo and related commentaries over the years – see also the Bastiat Triangle, a Conservetarian Credo, and the Rebane Doctrine category of this blog.

‘I want Trump to die’

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Da Shadow do!

George Rebane

That wish by the president’s opponents and enemies has been reported numerous times since he tested positive for Covid-19 and was admitted to Walter Reed.  Many commentators, led by Tucker Carlson of FN, immediately reacted to such remarks with condemnation, citing moral strictures and other value statements, supposedly both communal and personal.  The bottom line was that all such wishes were evil in and of themselves, and most likely those who expressed them were also evil persons.

However, there is another perspective to be had on such statements from the Left.  A correspondent and RR reader questioned the automatic attribution of ‘evil’ to both the wish itself, and more strongly to the wishers.  The argument offered is based on how a nation’s military is motivated and trained to kill when its members carry out the legitimate orders of its government.  In the combat arms branch of every military service, the fighter is motivated to kill by being told that the enemy wishes to destroy his country and everything that is dear to him should that enemy prevail.  Therefore, to prevent this, the fighter is taught to fight and kill the designated enemy.  And during this process there is no moral deficit that is attached to such killings.  On the contrary, this kind of killing is celebrated, and the bravest and most successful killers are recognized, congratulated, often decorated, and always appreciated for carrying out a task of great and unquestioned benefit to the fighter’s society – nation, way of life, culture, … - in short, the fighter is a defender of all that is good, and a patriot of high order.

Upon deeper examination, the rationale for such justified killings and sentiments that promote your enemy’s death is that the enemy’s survival endangers the survival of things that you value (starting with your own life), hold dear, and the succor of the environment in which you and yours want to live.  When your hopes or actions are motivated by such beliefs, then such hopes and actions are not attributed to be evil.

Now stepping back to a peacetime political environment; if a group of people sharing an ideology and worldview which holds that the ascendancy/survival of a politician will result in a disaster for their country and its citizens, a disaster that will give rise to uncounted subsequent deaths of innocents through tyrannical and/or negligent public policies, then is it evil to hope for the early and imminent demise of the so-identified dastardly political leader?  From that group’s perspective such a hope is socially just and a responsible sentiment.  For all of them see a benefit to the nation’s common good were that politician to die.

A counter argument might be that only governments can be morally justified in wanting, preparing for, and carrying out the death(s) of its enemies (individuals, armies, cities).  But such sentiments, let alone acts, are denied, nay proscribed, to smaller groups or to individuals no matter their strong beliefs about dire consequences.  Killings by appropriately sized collectives are then seen to rise unblemished above the moral boundaries that contain and restrict lesser cohorts and individuals.

So what are we to make of those who wish President Trump dead?

Ruminations – 20sep20 (updated 24sep20)

George Rebane

‘Why the Abraham Accords Happened’ is another reason so many Americans focus on President Trump’s walk and not his talk, and another reason they (I included) will vote for his second term.  I cannot believe the incompetence, let alone the socialist cynicism, that will descend on the White House and country if the Harris/Biden administration is installed.

[21sep20 update]  Here are some (non-exhaustive) bullet points that summarize why I favor the re-election of President Trump –

1. Experienced and accomplished businessman who understands the role and function of the private sector v the government in a nation’s economy.
2. Demonstrated accomplishments in revamping America’s foreign policy in international relations and trade.
3. Demonstrated accomplishments in growing America’s economy, managing the C19 pandemic, and has plans for more of the same.
4. Understands the role of a strong military in maintaining America’s hegemony.
5. Understands the role of secure borders in maintaining America’s sovereignty.
6. First president in generations to help blacks start shedding their plantation mentality.
7. Understands the correct way to maintain energy independence and integrate green energy into our economy.
8. Speaks his mind directly to the public without embellishments, but with some unfortunate braggadocio which detracts from his more substantive message and methods.
9. Understands and opposes the evils of collectivist governance and the history of collectivist governments.
10. Is a demonstrated constitutionalist, understands and opposes the Left’s efforts to fundamentally transform America into a socialist cum communist state.

Here are some (non-exhaustive) bullet points that summarize why I oppose the election of former VP Biden –

1. A dismally unaccomplished political hack with almost half-century of undistinguished service in Congress – no one has served longer and done less.
2. A record of uniformly wrong calls on foreign policy issues and decisions.
3. Understands nothing demonstrable about the operation of a nation’s economy – an economic imbecile as witnessed by his endorsement of the 2020 Democratic platform.
4. Opposes the maintenance of a strong military in favor of expanding vote-buying social programs.
5. Opposes the maintenance of secure borders and does not understand their function in preserving a nation’s culture, cohesion, and sovereignty.
6. Long history of supporting programs which destroyed black families and shrank their middle class. Intends to maintain and amplify our minorities’ sense of victimhood and dependence on transfer payments – a naturally divisive politician.
7. Has no discernible understanding of science or how it communicates and advances, which includes his support of devastating programs to prematurely mandate the nation’s abandoning fossil fuels and conversion to renewable energy sources.
8. Has a long history of two-faced speech and lying to comply with the political winds du jour from the Left. Is now sufficiently senile (possible dementia?) and in poor health as to make a farce of executing the office of the president – clearly would not complete first term if elected.
9. Strongly supports collectivism in all its forms as confirmed by his embrace of the 2020 Democrat platform (especially the provisions of the Green New Deal).  Strongly supports widening the voting franchise to include incarcerated criminals, non-citizens, and malleably ignorant teenagers.
10. Is a demonstrated constitutional revisionist who believes the Constitution is a ‘living document’ that is badly outdated and in need of major overhaul. Wholeheartedly supports the nation’s fundamental transformation into a socialist state.

[22sep20 update]  Recently read a piece by a retired teacher who lamented the absence of critical thought by our young because of the paucity of their knowledge base, which he charmingly relabeled as “stuff”.  He recounted that as a student he went to school to learn stuff, because in those days teachers taught stuff that was useful and needed for when you grew up.  And when he was a teacher, he taught his students all kinds of stuff that they would need.  But today in our schools teachers no longer know much stuff, and, for mainly political reasons, they most certainly teach very little useful stuff to our kids.  (I like ‘stuff’, and will be using it a lot when talking about knowledge bases and repositiories.)

UV light as a disinfectant.  Given the debate about how Covid spreads through exhaled aerosols, I keep wondering why stores, restaurants, and other closed volume venues don’t install UV lights to reduce the concentration of all kinds of nano- and micro-level critters that can do us harm.

An example of radical leftwing propaganda can always be found on the proto-communist truthout.com.  ‘Trump Fuels March Towards Fascism With “Anarchist Jurisdictions” Edict’ is an example of the typical fare its readers consume on a daily basis.  It’s always worth a read now and then to update yourself on their ideological temperature.  Our leftwing commenters’ contributions read as if they all regularly digest such a ration of rage.

‘The Military's Secret to Fighting COVID-19’  Here’s something to frost your external plumbing.  Check out the stats from the military on how their C19 response policy is working  out.  Out of 1.3M active duty personnel, they have had about 38,500 cases, and (seatbelts please) only ONE death.  You have to digest this with the fact that “the vast majority of those men and women serving in our armed forces are between the ages of 17 and 40”, while, of course, the vast majority of C19 deaths have occurred in the comorbid elderly.  Now what does this little piece, so well covered up by our lamestream, tell us about continuing our current patchwork of restrictive civilian response policies?  (H/T to reader)

[24sep20 update] Florida passes anti-riot and anti-mob law.  Gov Desantis gives an excellent summary of the law in this video.  H/T to the 22sep20 Sandbox commenter who posted this link and asked why no Dem governor is promoting such legislation to bring safe communities back to their state.

Neo-Marxist BLM has blanketed the nation with more lies about the Breonna Taylor’s death at the hands of the Louisville police who did NOT execute a ‘no-knock warrant’, loudly announced their presence, and opened fire after Breonna’s drug-suspect boyfriend shot one of the police.  Sadly, the grand jury returned an indictment against one of the officers for nothing more than poor marksmanship during a tense and chaotic exchange of fire.  Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron explained the facts of the encounter to the nation (here), but that made no never mind to the lied to and organized BLM mobs rioting in various cities across our land – evil afoot.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg – RIP

George Rebane

Justice Ginsburg was a great lady and a great jurist.  Her record speaks for itself.  The paeans to her accomplished career have already started, and deservedly so.  As most readers know, I did not share her social and political orientation.  Nevertheless, I can say that she was from the age when Democrats and Republicans still believed whoever the American electorate voted into office, that they were then the legitimate holders of that office and deserved to serve without the other party launching a campaign of subterfuge to sabotage their term and malign their character.

So with 46 days until the election, now starts a whole new political battle over her successor.  The choice and timely empanelment of the new appointee to fill Justice Ginsburg’s seat will be a critical requirement, since it is almost certain that SCOTUS will have a hand in determining November’s outcome at more than one level.  And for those rulings we need a full court that cannot be irresolute.

My own preference is that President Trump immediately puts forth an appropriately vetted and qualified conservative jurist, and that Majority Leader McConnell gets the Senate to hold hearings and give its imprimatur to the new justice with all prudent haste.  

Evil – a timely reflection

Do not scorn an evil though small, for it never comes singly, but in battalions, as does joy; good fortune and bad concentrate where they are already thick.  Gracian #254

George Rebane

History records that when Christian knights subdued Jerusalem during the Crusades, they slaughtered most, if not all, of the then resident Muslim population, including women and children.  And we are all witness to the killings of thousands of innocents in the 9/11 attacks by devout Islamist fanatics.  Neither the perpetrators, planners, nor their supporting populations considered these acts as anything other than carrying out the will of God; most certainly neither side considered the massacres to be evil acts.

Yet in the eyes of the targeted populations, these and many more such acts were the very embodiment of unspeakable evil.  And the belief systems that spawned them to be wellsprings of irredeemable evil, that were nevertheless confirmed in their respective canons and credible visions wherein God directed and gave imprimatur to the mass killings.

Countless other such historical narratives can be presented to abet the conclusion that evil is almost entirely in the eyes of the targeted recipients and sympathetic observers.  In a broader sense, we may conclude that evil is really culture dependent and/or culture specific.

Today we see more examples of such relativistic expressions and interpretations of evil.  They continue to be a global phenomenon and an historical constant.  Consulting dictionaries gives us lame meanings that should not inflame any sensibilities, but nevertheless cannot help but corroborate the above interpretation.

From Dictionary.com - Evil (adjective) 1. morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked: evil deeds; an evil life.  2. harmful; injurious: evil laws.

From the Random House Dictionary of the English Language – Evil (adj) 1. Morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked.  Evil deeds, and evil life.  2. Harmful; injurious.  Evil laws. … 4. Due to actual or imputed bad conduct or character.  An evil reputation.

From the Oxford English Dictionary – Evil (adj)  A. Antithesis of good in all its principal senses.  1. Morally depraved, bad, wicked, vicious.  2. Doing or tending to do harm, hurtful, mischievous, prejudicial.

All the definitions appeal to the violation of morals which are overwhelmingly determined by culture (e.g. cultural mores), and therefore relativistic, in the eye of the beholder, etc.

When we bring this understanding to today’s polarized America, we run head on into the political attribution of evil by our Left.  Democrats are now on a growing public record of defining Trump and all those who support him and his policies as being evil.  That is their core, and to date, only argument as to why the president should not only be denied a second term, but also be prosecuted for crimes claimed and yet to be claimed.  In sum, he is fundamentally evil, and a good person opposes evil with no further argument or evidence needed – the constant chorus of its attribution should be more than enough to indict, convict, and punish.

In the eyes of the Left, we who oppose BLM, Antifa, et al - the new radical organs of the Left and the Democrat Party - are of necessity painted with the same broad brush.  We too are of the deplorably irredeemable cohort of evil people in the land already blemished by indelible racism, prejudice, white privilege, and social injustice to the very marrow of our bones.

This sentiment is not reciprocated per se by the Republican Party.  The country’s political representatives of the Right today are a timid bunch, that has pretty much lost its way and will to fight in the ongoing chaos.  As an institution it doesn’t know whose ass to kick or kiss, a deficit not shared by its audacious and blustering fearless leader who can still be taunted off-message in a heartbeat by any unsubstantiated charge or even a randomly tossed ad hominem.

I, on the other hand, have no such inhibitions, as RR readers with functioning memories will attest.  (e.g. search ‘The Liberal Mind’ category with ‘evil’)  Along with a number of conservative commentators, I long ago concluded that the Democratic Party, as embodied by its leadership, is an evil and anti-American institution.  And I readily acknowledge that my perspective on evil is not some assessment from Mt Olympus, but one that also succumbs to all the culturally adorned attributes outlined above.  Of course, I don’t value all cultures equally, and consider my own to be the custodian of more goodness and light by far than most others on the planet.  I am among those who do not necessarily want to impose their own culture on others, but I will willingly fight to maintain the right to practice it with other like-minded people.

So from that standpoint, the question arises about America's socialist leadership.  Are these Democrats intrinsically evil in that they recognize the harm their public policies will do to America and its people, as they continue to pursue them for their own political and personal benefit?  Or are they true believers, and therefore as tragically ignorant as their grass roots constituents – all those who oppose meritocracy, free enterprise, open markets, minimally regulated capitalism, smaller government, ownership of private property, lower taxes, and abundant liberty to pursue happiness?

In the final analysis we can ask what difference does it make in how we respond to those who seek to diminish our freedoms, fortunes, and futures.  Whether they deprive us individually while they devastate the country with intentions good or ill, either will produce the same end state.  Socialism in America will not stop with the mild-mannered versions in the EU that have been anchored by capitalist America.  When America succumbs to socialism, with no other great nation to anchor us, our nation will inevitably slide into tyranny.  The governance promised by Democrats will be indifferent to their kind of evil - either will equally will herd us into a draconian land in which all will suffer.