Rebane's Ruminations

Right vs Left – what distinguishes us (updated 17jun22)

George Rebane

Of the several correspondences in which I am currently active, one is on the perennial topic of the Great Divide and America’s irredeemable polarization.  In these correspondences with two of my left-leaning intellectual friends, we are attempting to create a mutually acceptable inventory of ideological belief tenets.  These would form a starting point for another attempt at finding any common ground to support dialogue from which some form of rapprochement could result.  This is a work-in-process in which I think some of our readers might be interested, and to which they could contribute their own thoughts toward progress in this enlarged conversation.

I attach the following pdfs for your critical comments and perhaps even reading pleasure.  The first piece - 'Versions of Fundamental Transforms (2020) - serves as background, and the second piece - 'Right/Left Belief Inventory' (v14jun22) - is a WIP currently in discussion with my correspondents.  Notwithstanding general interest, I do want to include these in the RR archive.

Download VersFundTransforms

Download BeliefInventory_220614

[17jun22 update]  A longtime RR reader posted the link to an important or possibly a milestone essay – ‘Heading Toward the Abyss’ - by David Horowitz on the nature of the Left, and particularly the Democratic Party, with which America is contending today for its survival.  The points that Horowitz expands on are familiar to RR readers.  I highlight the essay in this update so that it does not get lost in the comment stream below.  H/T to Mr Tozer.

The Many Ways to Regulate Militias (updated 21jun22)

[This post also appears here in the op-ed pages of 14jun22 Union.]

George Rebane

In his 10jun22 ‘Read it yourself – ‘A well-regulated militia’’ Union columnist Taylor Carey seems focused only on the interpretation of the nation’s leftwing anti-gunners.  The Left has always held that the Founders' intention for the Second Amendment was that members of the local militias were to be unarmed until their government decided to assemble them and issue guns from the local armory.  That was and is the only mode of regulation that makes sense to the big government, command/control progressive.

Private possession and ownership of guns is not necessary in a well-regulated and organized collective because the government will fulfill all functions of internal security and external defense, arming trained citizens to augment the standing LE and military only as and when the leadership determines that the need arises.  Being at the mercy of armed criminals or the insane until, or if, LE arrives is just the price people must pay to live in a civilized society.  Your personal safety is the responsibility of the collective, and your home is definitely not YOUR castle.

And perish the thought that either the state or its LE cadres go rogue.  In the socialist ideology there is no provision for such an eventuality, no matter the abundant historical evidence to the contrary.  A centralized state under the leadership and administration of educated elites dedicated to the proposition of their interpretation of common good, that benefits everyone equitably, there is no provision for such roguish contingencies – by definition, the state is always fair and just, and as such, brooks no challenge to its power to organize and administer society.  Revolt and revolution by an armed populace in the embrace of a “rabidly corrosive cult of individuality” is “inimical” to such governments that deliver and sustain “ordered liberty” according to Mr Carey.

A Nation to Transcend Stupid?

George Rebane

The Atlantic usually contains ideas that are antithetical to the perspectives with which I interpret what happens in the world.  A longtime and dear friend, who leans a bit to my left, forwarded to me an essay with which he concurs “with 90% of the points made in this article (regardless of the source!)”  After reading it, I must admit to a similar concordance.  The piece – ‘WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID’ – by Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and NYU Professor of Ethical Leadership (here).

Dr Haidt is described variously as someone who “has attracted both support and criticism for his critique of the current state of universities and his interpretation of progressive values. He has been named one of the ‘top global thinkers’ by Foreign Policy magazine, and one of the ‘top world thinkers’ by Prospect magazine. He is among the most cited researchers in political and moral psychology, and is considered among the top 25 most influential living psychologists.”

In the cited essay, Haidt uses the Tower of Babel metaphor to interpret what has happened to America in the last two decades as “the fractured country we now inhabit.”  Like many of us, he sees that “something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.”  Regular RR readers will recognize these longstanding themes in these pages.

The author goes on to outline “the rise of the modern Tower” in concert with the rise of the smartphone, the internet and its extremely influential social networks which now unite the various thoughts and ideas of several billion people.  For Haidt “the high point of techno-democratic optimism was arguably 2011, a year that began with the Arab Spring and ended with the Occupy movement. … For techno-democratic optimists, it seemed to be only the beginning of what humanity could do.”  Then things started going downhill as “humanity rebuilt the Tower of Babel.”

The problem, as dissected by Haidt, began as social media weakened “at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories.”  He then goes on to detail how the Left has dominated the various institutions, specifically the media and academe.  He abets this argument by citing James Madison in Federalist #10 on “the innate human proclivity toward ‘faction’, by which he meant our tendency to divide ourselves into teams or parties that are so inflamed with ‘mutual animosity’ that they are ‘much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to cooperate for their common good.’”  

But since then, thanks much to social media, the Tower has fallen and the factions no longer communicate.  The hows and whys of the fall are of some considerable interest to those of us who claim to pay attention.  He even details how closed groups of “jerks” dominate discussions and debates on the various blogs.  I won’t go on giving you clips of Haidt’s expansion of that very recent and ongoing history.  Suffice it to say that Haidt also agrees that we are at least two distinct countries – with appropriately differentiated cultures, languages, histories, values, … - sharing a common border.

What struck me as a significant shortcoming in Dr Haidt’s contemporary ontology is his apparent ignorance (neglect?) of some significant findings by sociologists that dovetail with teachings from the systems sciences.  He argues that ‘Democracy after Babel’ will require a ‘redesign of democracy’ that includes reforms in three categorical areas – “three goals that must be achieved if democracy is to remain viable in the post-Babel era. We must harden democratic institutions so that they can withstand chronic anger and mistrust, reform social media so that it becomes less socially corrosive, and better prepare the next generation for democratic citizenship in this new age.”

When expanding on these areas, it is not clear at all that Haidt’s recommendations do not require the enlargement of our already encompassing government(s).  How else would democratic institutions be “hardened”, social media “reformed”, and the “next generation prepared” for a more compliant and compatible “democratic citizenship”?  What Haidt misses is the underlying truth that for large complex systems to remain viable, they need to be decentralized – they need to be based on a structure of distributed control and knowledge.  In this universe, nature does not support large systems that are centrally comprehended and controlled.  On Earth, the evidence for this abounds when we open our eyes and understand what we see in the natural world.

The alternative approach to successful societies in the post-Babel era, missed by Haidt, is to abandon globalism and work to enlarge the community of sovereign nation-states to have members with much smaller and more culturally cohesive populations.  I have lost track, but somewhere in the archives of such sociological studies are solutions that identify ideal national populations to be in the five to ten million range, and comprise of jurisdictional units that are not larger than 50,000.  This kind of global structure of independent states and free peoples would promote specialization, trade, and the ready transfer of ‘best practices’, as one people sees how another people have a better solution for a common problem.

‘Genes vs. Culture’

George Rebane

This is the title of a landmark essay on the American condition by Lawrence Mead, Professor of Politics at New York University, published in the March/April 2022 edition of Chronicles, flagship publication of the Charlemagne Institute.  Continuing the work of Charles Murray et al, Professor Mead makes the case that “conservatives face a juggernaut determined to transform society in the name of equity. In order to fight it, they must have the courage to state the truth: There are real differences, both genetic and cultural, between races and sexes.”

The essay presents a compendium of information about the racial and cultural differences inherent in the people who today populate the United States.  Almost everything that is cited is currently censored in today’s land of the free and home of the brave.  That we compliantly accept this is ongoing evidence of the country’s continuing decline toward autocracy cum tyranny.

When I wrote ‘Equity Denies Reality’ and also submitted it to The Union, its publisher told me in so many words that the subject was too hot to be handled in our rapidly bluing Nevada County.  It would generate way more heat than light, and besides, our publisher’s own worldview did not countenance the presentation of such government data - not all that the government gathers and archives is suitable for sheeple fodder.

The main thesis this forbidden research and recorded data supports is that we are a variegated citizenry in an historical melting pot that has yet to melt into a homogenous amalgam when it comes to individual propensities and capabilities which are identifiably and unambiguously still distinguished by genes and culture.  Denying this, and making it public policy to lie about it over the past fifty years has done untold harm to our e pluribus unum work in progress.

I strongly recommend both Murray’s Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America (2021) - source of graphic - and Mead’s ‘Genes vs. Culture’ in order to understand the quantitative details about the nature of our divisions, and how today's Left seeks to capitalize on these as we march toward the Great Divide or the global Great Reset.

The Great Reset

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” ― George Orwell, 1984

George Rebane

Given that the world will always have at least one hegemon, it is therefore imperative that America should always remain a hegemon - Rebane Doctrine.

A prime objective of RR over its now considerable lifespan has been the discovery, discussion, and dissemination of the resurgence of global collectivism under its various guises.  This enterprise has been promoted under various names and transnational programs, possibly the earliest organized launch occurred thirty years ago during a UN conference in Brazil.  There we heard about Agenda 21 (A21) and read its manifesto for a brave new world populated by a much smaller and tightly controlled population of humans.  It was a plan for a ‘sustainable world’ under an overarching collectivist government run by elite technocrats.

The road to A21 was admittedly long and had to be carefully planned and implemented so as not to awaken any early ire to the admitted loss of freedoms, wealth, and quality of life in general in order to redistribute resources to a radically reducing population.  The provisions and policies for A21 were to be installed bit by piece at all levels of government, first and foremost at the local level.  The cadres to do this would be the local electeds, bureaucrats, and civil servants trained by a global network of A21 offshoots called International Councils for Local Environmental Initiatives (which is now known as ‘ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability’).  These government cadres would quietly attend and study the ideological and operational principles of bringing what eventually came to be called neo-Marxist thought to shape and control local societies and economics.

Locally in Nevada County, almost all county staff at the managerial level have attended our regional ICLEI.  This is replicated state and nationwide.  California leads America in the number of ICLEIs, and America leads the world.  Managed from over 20 offices around the globe, more than 1,750 cities, towns, counties, and their associations in 126 countries are a part of the ICLEI network.  These many trails and tributaries to socialism are purposely ignored and unreported by leftwing media, and surprisingly also ignored by right-leaning outlets.

Today the US is being reconfigured (“fundamentally transformed”) socio-politically to prepare for its place in the new global order under a central power structure run by a cadre of elites immune from the policies they will mandate for the population at large.

A large literature has come in place to promote, analyze, and oppose what was introduced as the ‘Great Reset’ at the 2020 World Economic Forum (WEF) held in Davos.  The Great Reset is now the latest refinement of what began as the UN’s Agenda 21 lately renamed Agenda 2030.  As long documented here, on the surface these ‘agendas’ are lists of “Sustainable Development Goals” re-adopted in 2015 to reduce world population to a more controllable level that can be corralled into high-density population centers connected by a limited number of transportation corridors.

Liberal Hypocrisy Fuels American Inequality

George Rebane

What do Dems actually do when they have all the power?  The short answer is that they have created the worst states in the Union with regard to housing, education, taxation, homelessness, … .   And first and foremost, they turn on their political and media lying machines to deny what horrible messes in governance they create when voters unwittingly hand them all the levers of power in a state.  This has gotten so bad that even the NYT now runs op-eds decrying the Democrats’ hypocracies, illustrating in chapter and verse the 180 differences between the nation’s progressive talk and walk.

Today Democrats control the legislative and the executive branches, or else have veto-proof majorities in the legislatures of 18 states – Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Illinois, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, Hawaii.  And these are the worst governed states in which progressives promote and maintain the greatest inequalities between their rich and their poor.  In these states there is no possibility for any Republicans to stand in the way of Democrat public policies – the Left owns these states lock, stock, and barrel.

Noted author and NYT editorial board writer Binya Appelbaum has zeroed in on these states to discover the nature and magnitude of leftwing travesties in operation.  He teams up with video journalist Johnny Harris to report on the details in this NYT Opinion video.  Here they present the data that forms the basis for the fabric of Big Lies on which our Left has based its access to power by buying the votes of the less-read, and keeping them on urban plantations for decades during which millions of American lives have been destroyed and/or stunted.

To me the information presented here is yet another confirmation that the Democrat Party is fundamentally evil, especially in how it has bamboozled the poor, and succored its rich into believing they have the moral high ground on the nation’s conservatives.  The Great Divide cannot happen soon enough.  (H/T to reader and correspondent)

Scattershots – 8mar22 (updated 12mar22)

George Rebane

Probability is the measure of possibility.

H&I fires.  The Russians are using an unusually insidious, deadly, and dastardly artillery tactic to kill fleeing civilians on negotiated evacuation routes.  The tactic is called Harassment and Interdiction fires, and are designed to deny the enemy free use of designated areas over extended periods.  H&I fires are conducted randomly with high explosive shells fired from one or two tubes, and set to denote at 50-150 feet above ground level.  This results in an anti-personnel ‘kill circle’ of at least 200-300 feet radius depending on shell size.  Historically artillery is the biggest killer on the battlefield, spraying shrapnel (extremely jagged and irregularly shaped pieces of steel ranging from bullet to tennis ball sizes) at extreme velocities around the detonation point.  And whereas small arms military bullets travel at around 3,000 ft/sec, shrapnel comes at you at over 20,000 ft/sec.  Targeting H&I fires on escape routes that are used only once by escapees is like shooting fish in a barrel – they never know whether or when its incoming, and they’re always out in the open.  I wonder what a Russian battery commander feels when ordered to schedule H&I fires that he knows will kill/maim only civilians?  Talk about war crimes.

Minds that never will meet.  We have yet one more example of the Great Divide in progress.  In my recent ‘Pentagon teaches socialism’ post’s comment stream we have one of our longtime leftwing readers deny acceptance of this important piece of anti-American news, why? because he considers the cited Newsmax “hardly a credible news source”.  This reader is an established representative of this kind of progressive mentality – if the messenger is unfavorable, summarily reject the message.  He never even bothered to examine the further referenced links which would have taken him to the DoD website where the conference was announced, described, and additional links provided.  Instead, he and his consider CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo, … and other lamestream news media as reliable, no matter that they don’t report news that doesn’t comport with the DNC narrative, and are unrepentant and uncontrite about most items they falsely report and/or spin.  People of the Right have no problem consuming leftwing news and progressive literature – we demand to know it.  However, those of the Left never lift the blinders they had carefully installed during their K-12 years.  Such news consumption practices of the Left and Right are but one of many asymmetries that have made meaningful communication between the sides a rapidly fading episode in our country’s history.

[10mar22 update]  Re the restraining order on my daughter.  Nearly everything that has been admitted as evidence from the plaintiff at the hearing is a lie as corroborated by the available videos and the physics of the possible (e.g. see 1032am comment below).  The judgement was a preordained political act.

[12mar22 update]  Putin’s Rasputin bubble?  Perhaps a little play on words, but a friend and reader sent me a link and asked whether I had ever heard of Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin.  It turns out that Dugin has been the political philosopher and intellectual ideologue of Putin’s inner circle for some time now, dishing out his esoteric views on neo-fascist ‘Eurasianism’. (more here)  Now I have never heard of Dugin or even that Putin has had an ‘inner circle’ of confidants.  From what has been reported it appears that Putin has used the Machiavellian structure of alternating advisor circles whose members are political enemies of adjacent circles, thereby making it hard for a court conspiracy to mature sufficiently to topple the prince.  But according to the referenced article, it appears that Putin’s Rasputin may have successfully implanted his ideas about the historical resurgence of a post-czarist Russia extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific.  “Gestated in anti-communist right-wing activism during the waning days of the Soviet Union, indebted to a specifically anti-liberal and anti-Enlightenment philosophical embrace of authoritarianism, irrationalism, and hyper-nationalism, Dugin dreams of a reborn Orthodox Tsarist state surpassing the borders and spheres of influence as they existed before 1989, of a Novorossiya (New Russia) built not on socialist principles, but fascist ones.” 

The mentality of a Russian soldier has always been a puzzle to westerners since at least the 1905 Russo-Japanese War.  (Recall that my grandfather was a czarist conscript in that war, transported to and from Pacific rim battles on the trans-Siberian railroad in cattle cars which served as troop trains for Russian soldiers.)  The Russian soldier has been distinguished by his overall and abysmal ignorance of his mission, especially as it fits into the geo-strategic situation du jour, and his lack of what the western soldier knows as patriotism.  The Russian soldier always has found himself poorly led and poorly outfitted – his main goal is just to stay alive and go back home.  To achieve this, he will follow any orders and do anything that lets him survive the day.  Questioning authority is an unknown concept as long as it doesn’t put his life in immediate danger.  However, he has been known to sabotage his own equipment, and even his own body, in order to avoid being thrown into the next maelstrom from which retreat often means summary execution.  In this light one can understand Russia’s wanton shelling of Ukrainian civilians, be they in their apartments or fleeing on an open road.

The Success of Socialist Schooling

George Rebane

In the last Dark Days Diary (here) I highlighted a short dissertation on the spread of communism by a former KGB agent.  As we have frequently pointed out, and he confirms, the spread of that evil ideology is made possible by its acolytes initially gaining control of a target nation’s public educational system.  This is from the Marxist-Leninist playbook – ‘let me educate one generation of your youth to assure communism’s triumph.’  In the United States we are now educating the third generation with a curriculum that ranges between pure trash and insidious collectivist propaganda – e.g. Critical Race Theory.  And this is done in our public K-12 schools and also academe, which has for the most part eliminated all dissenting voices and thought on their campuses.

Historian and classicist Victor Davis Hanson makes the extensive case (here and here) that this onerous task is being carried out by teachers’ unions and faculty associations which have wholeheartedly embraced the goal of a socialist world order.  Their success can be measured by the fraction of our graduates who are profoundly ignorant of their American heritage and equally lacking skill sets which enable their entry into a productive workforce.  A disturbing share of them find work with government as the employer of last resort.  There they immediately fit in with the correctly thinking and compliant deep state extension of the Democratic Party, doing its work no matter who currently happens to control Congress or reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

For the Left, this fortuitous outcome is to a large extent the fault of our ‘go along to get along’ Republicans.  Over the years they, as the conservators of our Constitution, have shown little interest to understand and a backbone to resist the nation’s ratcheting of anti-American public policies.  The Republicans appear to measure their political progress by how good they feel when grumbling and griping about the Left to their likeminded constituents in cloistered gatherings.  These pity-party nodding sessions motivate only a trickling of attendees, if that, to take an active stance to counter the encroach of socialism in their communities.  The rank-and-file Republican then returns to his homestead to continue living a productive and non-contentious life minding his own business.

The only plausible road back (from beyond the tipping point to the Great Divide) is to regain local control of educating our children.  Rebane Doctrine has long taught that to do this is to change education policy so that in the public funding of education the money follows the student, and parents determine where the students are schooled.  This calls for a restructuring of our education industry into a more open-market, capitalistic format, and away from the rank socialist structure of today.  In the main, K-12 education should be available to parents in the same manner as is the choice of a college education.  This means that schools would become transparent for-profit institutions that make their performance (quality of their product) accessible to their clients.  Overall, given today’s cost of education, such a change would significantly reduce costs, and increase the relevance and quality of the delivered education.

Our leftwing knows that Sapir-Whorf’s theory of language enabling thought (q.v.) is correct as was made public by Orwell and put in practice on a national scale by Mao et al.  Today’s public educated true believers can neither believe in the existence of alternative ways to organize a beneficial society, nor understand where our nation’s present path is taking us (e.g. evidence of that abounds in these pages).

No one knows the truth of all this more than does our Democratic Party which has viewed their support of socialized education as required maintenance of their private manufactory of an ever-increasing horde of compliant constituents and unquestioning voters.  The last thing our Left will tolerate is making school choice possible and letting parents decide where their children will be schooled.

Stupidity, against which there is no defense

Fools all who seem it, and half of those who do not.  Gracian #201

George Rebane

Executed anti-Nazi cleric and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer correctly maintained that “stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than evil.”  In America, we overwhelmingly confirm this daily.  Now I admit, sometimes it’s hard to accept this as the better of the two alternatives, but for the most part one can embrace Bonhoeffer’s observation because there are way more stupid people in the country than evil ones.  This has also been a Rebane Doctrine tenet for many years.  (more here)

Democrat politicians and lamestream ‘journalists’ demonstrate this with their audacious and ongoing stream of lies – e.g. the $4T+ BBB cost “will not raise the national debt by one penny.” - they constantly use to convince their cognitively impaired constituents who make up almost half of the country’s voters – without an adequate knowledge base and critical thinking skills, they’ll believe literally anything their favorite information sources spout.

Bonhoeffer went on to say –

Against stupidity we have no defense.  Neither protests nor force can touch it.  Reasoning is of no use.  Facts that contradict personal prejudices can simple be disbelieved – indeed, the fool can count by criticizing them, and if they are undeniable, they can just be pushed aside as trivial exceptions.  So the fool, as distinct from the scoundrel, is completely self-satisfied.  In fact, they can easily become dangerous, as it does not take much to make them aggressive.  For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one.  Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reason, for it is senseless and dangerous.

This why so many of today’s conservative and libertarian writers, along with moi, see no common ground across which a trail may be blazed to the unification of our polarized population.  The only solution being a negotiated Great Divide or barricades in the streets.

The Great Divide – America’s Cultural Split

George Rebane

Victor Davis Hanson continues the ongoing study of how America is coming apart.  In ‘Is America Repeating the Cultural Split Between Rome and the Byzantine Empire?’ VDH lays out the parallels and answers the question in the affirmative.

When the Roman Empire split into its western part centered on Rome, and its eastern part centered on Constantinople, the two halves took distinctly different approaches to governing their territories, with catastrophic results for Rome.  Rome’s hedonistic practices and passive acceptance of a “polyglot and often fractious” tribal cultures and religions (including versions of Christianity) soon focused people on the regional me and mine that came to vie with the you and yours.  By 600AD the disintegration that started around 450AD was complete.

This was not the case in the east – “the glue that held the East together against centuries of foreign enemies was the revered idea of an ancient and uncompromising Hellenism—the preservation of a common, holistic Greek language, religion, culture, and history.”  The Byzantine Empire, as it then became known, held together for a thousand years after Rome, finally becoming so over-bureaucratized and corrupt that it was overrun by the Ottoman Turks in 1453AD, and Constantinople became today’s Istanbul.

Today we see the definite analogue of such a split in our red/blue America.  Now “millions of Americans yearly self-select, disengage from their political opposites, and make moves based on diverging ideology, culture, politics, religiosity or lack of it, and differing views of the American past.”  Our conservatives are migrating to the interior, leaving both coastal areas to liberals.

This is producing two distinct Americas.  “While red states welcome change, they believe America never had to be perfect to be good. It will always survive, but only if it sticks to its 234-year-old Constitution, stays united by the English language, and assimilates newcomers into an enduring and exceptional American culture.”  The more conservative traditionalists prefer states “where there is usually smaller government, fewer taxes, more religiosity, and unapologetic traditionalists.”  

America’s Left prefers the blue state “bicoastal salad bowl” as their “model for immigration” where “newcomers can retain and reboot their former cultural identities”, and where “religion is less orthodox; atheism and agnosticism are almost the norm. And most of the recent social movements of American feminism, transgenderism, and critical race theory grew out of coastal urbanity and academia.”  Tribalism par excellence.

VDH concludes with – “Our Byzantine interior and Roman coasts are quite differently interpreting their shared American heritage as they increasingly plot radically divergent courses to survive in scary times.  But as in the past, it is far more likely that one state model will prove unsustainable and collapse than it is that either region would ever start a civil war.”  From his mouth to God’s ear.

So here again is the bottom line.  Today a lot of lip service is paid to ‘finding common ground’ and ‘coming together’ and ‘there’s more that unites us than divides us’, etc.  But for any of these attempts at dialogue to bear fruit, we must first and foremost recognize the gorilla in the room – the “radically divergent courses” that have been plotted and embraced by the tens of millions of polarized Americans which give rise to the Great Divide.  If these radically divergent courses are not resolved first, the rest will only continue the rehash of hot air.

Scattershots – 1aug21 (updated 4aug21)

The redistribution of wealth does not affect its creation. - Democrat/Marxist shibboleth

George Rebane

According to its director Dr Rochelle Wolensky, CDC’s new national mask guidance – even vaccinated people should wear masks in regions of high C19 incidence - is based on data from a spike of cases that occurred in Barnstable County, Massachusetts.  Well, it turns out that the data is a bit more than skewed.  The data was compiled subsequent to Bear Week, an annual gathering of thousands of gay men who congregate for socializing, entertainment, and sex.  The CDC did not point out Bear Week nor that 85% of the new cases recorded were men.  It confirms that the more CDC attempts to inform the public, the more muddled are its messages.  (more here)

National Propaganda Radio has finally gone public with a policy that allows its ‘journalists’ to also be political activists and report on their supposedly non-partisan efforts opposing racism and white supremacy while promoting social justice, equity, and the usual leftwing list of progressive policies.  Meanwhile, they continue to maintain that they remain a government-funded, non-partisan news and information outlet.

Gymnast Simone Biles’ withdrawal from competing in certain events at the Tokyo Olympics has the media abuzz.  Most reports and commentaries celebrate her “courage” for choosing not to compete due to mental issues.  This attitude is taken by all in the lamestream media, but also by some conservative talking heads.  Some on the Right are being less accommodating about the young lady’s decision, going so far as to view her decision as a national embarrassment.  It’s hard to tell how much of the division of sentiments is based on Ms Biles gender – would a similarly disposed male athlete garner equal rations of celebratory courage and embarrassment?  I can only imagine the pressures that Biles has been under to perform, and am told how important it is for gymnasts to have their head together in order to safely perform their routines that regularly threaten life and limb. IMHO, her decisions do not call for celebration nor denouncements of embarrassment.  In the age of ‘trophies for all’, no one wants to set a precedent of hailing athletes who refuse to compete as expected, a simple expression of disappointment should put such matters to rest.

Taking a knee or other ways of showing disrespect for America when representing our country at the Olympics is an altogether different matter.  I have no sympathy for athletes who take their highly partisan and dreadfully misguided political sentiments for exhibition on the world stage.  Such acts and expressions are blatantly anti-American, and do nothing but succor our enemies abroad, dispirit their more patriotic fellow athletes, and expand the partisan chasm that already rends our homeland.  Keep America’s internal politics in America.

[4aug21 update] Our beloved Union continues flying its true op-ed colors.  I am disappointed, not so much in its ongoing tilt to the left, but in its uneven application of the editorial corrections it inserts at the end of contributed commentaries with which it does not agree, and in which it detects an error about which readers need to be notified.  This morning’s Union has a piece by devoutly blindered leftwinger Richardt Stormsgaard (here).  He ends his piece with -

Much of the Republican Party has edged perilously close to outright authoritarianism. Hundreds of moderate and conservative national security and military members from current and former administrations have warned against this disturbing tendency under Donald Trump. … A majority of Republican voters still support Trump and his attempted coup even though the leading perpetrators of the “Stop the Steal” myth in court have defended their false claims in court documents stating, “No reasonable people would consider these statements believable.” … Despite these damning admissions, a major portion of Republicans is increasing their assaults on our democracy leading up to the next elections. There are disturbing similarities between the USA today and Germany in the early 1930s, including the attacks on the democratic rule, along with the personality traits of Hitler and Trump and their fanatical supporters.

Aside from the fact that it is and always has been the Democrats who attempt to drive the country from a constitutional republic to naked collectivist authoritarianism, Republicans are explicitly impeded from taking that tack because their proposals and policies all inhibit the growth of government and/or actively seek to reduce its size.  No authoritarian governance is possible without an ever larger, growing, and intrusive government, exactly the kind that Democrats have always sought to bring about.  The Union’s editorialists are unwilling to point out such glaring errors in the op-ed contributions they print.

And celebrated Union cartoonist RL ‘Bob’ Crabb does his part to underline the newpaper’s editorial policy with his latest cartoon, filched and presented below.

This Crabb contribution is an excellent example of soft vitriol against the Right.  Note the number of bases in the progressive narrative he covers with these cleverly constituted panels – a master’s touch.  And it behooves the rest of us to never forget that this is exactly what they think of us, and given the chance, how they will send us knuckledraggers to be re-ejikated in new institutions that will be built for our benefit.  The templates for all this have been operated by the Left all over the world since the turn of the last century.

Bernie Sanders answers ‘Why We Need the $3.5 Trillion Reconciliation Package’.  He sidesteps the Democrats’ real answer – the biggest vote buying “package” in the country’s history.  Instead, he talks about oodles and oodles of goodies for everyone from the terminally unemployable to illegal aliens invited to continue their surge across our southern border in order to get free everything and citizenship to boot.  For our mis-educated youth, the law will establish a Civilian Climate Corps in the hopes they could be taken off the streets and stop murdering each other, and marshalled into more institutionalized settings in which they will work on approved progressive priorities and projects.  The last couple of decades have seen Democrats offer different proposals to set up institutions to politicize and propagandize the unemployed and unemployable.  The ultimate function of these nascent legions of brown shirts is not a mystery; we can already see them ferreting out ‘white supremacists’ and other undesirable irredeemables across the country.

The Great Divide – an updated review (updated 20jul21)

George Rebane

This piece on the Great Divide is a continuation of the thread I started with ‘America the Unnatural’.  The July issue of Chronicles from the Charlemagne Institute features a series of articles under the heading ‘Divided America’.  I bring these to your attention because they contain excellent reports and analyses of the socio-political state of our country.  And also because these three essays appropriately summarize my own views over the years under the rubric of Rebane Doctrine.  I believe them to successfully make the case that Rebane Doctrine has widespread support among a sizeable cohort of rightwing thinkers and writers.

The first is ‘A Tale of Two Americas’ by Bruce Frohnen.  Its main proposition is that “The United States has split into two peoples with two fundamentally different characters”, and as a result “we are a nation and people at war with itself”, or as I have maintained that we are two nations struggling in and enclosed by a common border.  Frohnen goes on to point out that “this division is more than a political divide; it represents a fundamental shift in the character of our people or, rather, our splitting into two separate peoples with two fundamentally different characters. Worse, only one of these characters is capable of self-government in a free, constitutional republic.”

The Ubiquity of Bias

George Rebane

I am a biased ideologue (q.v.).  My biases, along with their reasoned bases, have been spelled out in detail on these pages for well over a decade.  No other blog I’m aware of has so meticulously presented its host’s credo and glossary of vocabulary relevant to the topics covered.

Having again made that statement, I go on to the more universal contention that there are no unbiased presentations of facts or fiction by Man, especially when it comes to matters of human affairs.  We all have a specific world view, a specific way we receive and incorporate new evidence into that world view, a unique set of desiderata for almost all aspects of human striving, and, of course, our own way of communicating and convincing others of the correctness of our particular perspectives.

People who claim to be innocent or cleansed of bias, and therefore present views which they claim are in some sense ‘ex cathedra’, are charlatans, deluded, or both.  This assessment applies especially to those self-proclaimed middle-roaders who profess to clothe their preferences in various forms of authoritative infallibility.  Even in science and every other STEM field we find biased presentations and ongoing debates as to where resides truth, goodness, and light.  The most visible charlatans here are those who seek to buttress their biases with claims of non-existent ‘settled science’.

From this, I and others like me conclude that bias in human affairs is ubiquitous – it was ever thus.

Therefore, the best that disputants in a debate can do is present their case in the context of their respective utilities (definitions of ‘good’), and the reasoned bases which support their propositions.  Wise debaters know beforehand that even with the best intentions and transparent interchanges, all disputes cannot be successfully resolved.  In the art of negotiation, participants are advised to approach all such contentious proceedings with a firm handle on their own BATNAs (best alternative to negotiated agreement).

In our country’s gathering socio-political storm, ongoing debates, accusations, and indictments between the polarized sides are seen at all levels, from the national to the thousands of towns and villages across the land.  As detailed on these pages, the manner in which these contentions are conducted is highly asymmetrical – the Right always willing to spell out the America they want, with the Left keeping secret the details of their vision of a fundamentally transformed country.

From the Left’s published proposals and ensconced public policies, the Right cannot help but conclude that their desire is for a socialist (anti-capitalist) state under a much enlarged and intrusive government that controls almost every aspect of Americans’ lives, livelihoods, thoughts, and speech.  And the Left’s leadership continues to broadcast its vision of those on the Right as being racist, white supremacists who desire to return the country to Jim Crow days with an economy dominated by large oligopolies that pollute the environment and beggar their workers.  They present no evidence beyond repeated allegations to support their case.

[Addendum]  In discussions and debates with my leftwing counterparts in private communications and on this public forum, I often have my supportive citations of verifiable facts rejected on the basis of their having been presented by sources considered hopelessly biased, unreliable, and therefore rejected on their face.  Their opposition is seldom a substantive refutation of the message, it’s always based on the received credentials of the messenger.  The obvious reason for this gambit is that they have no substantive refutation of what has been cited, and therefore must needs be reduced to denigrating the source with claims that all of its output are widely known and acknowledged falsehoods – neither being the case.

A second gambit of the leftists is to require the rejected citation to be additionally buttressed by sources they consider unbiased and reliable.  It never occurs to them to simply go to their own sources and delineate the specific error(s) that were contained in the originally presented citation.  That may also be a too generous conclusion.  The reason they exercise either of these gambits is that they know the original citation to have presented the truth, and all that now remains for them is to deny, delay, and/or deflect the subsequent course of the exchange.  For the Left, countering citations with an equivalent depth of evidence seems to be terra incognita.

The Joys of Juneteenth (addended)

George Rebane

As most Americans know, today we are a nation fractured into tribes of various victimized and victimizer identity groups.  This new social order started gelling in the national consciousness under Barack Obama, hardened during Trump’s contended presidency, and is on schedule to become a fully petrified structure of America’s society under the pro-Marxist policies of the Biden/Harris/Pelosi presidency.

A contributing policy for realizing that anti-American future will require a constant and heightened flow of reminders in the public news, entertainment, sports, and social media for which our lamestream is now experienced and fully prepared to support.  To that end, and as of today, we have started adding national holidays to remind everyone of our history’s warts, each of which will be designed to maintain the sense of ongoing victimhood for every tribe to which an individual can claim membership and find meaning.

Biden signed into law ‘Juneteenth’, the newest federal holiday that will annually celebrate June 19^th as the real day of freedom from slavery for the nation’s blacks.  It will fly in the face of our historical July 4^th Independence Day which has already been losing its luster in the minds of the various progressive cohorts.

And now we may look forward to other aggrieved groups with heightened consciousness, in the name of equity arising to remind us of their milestones and demand that more days be set aside for their particular observations, celebrations, and remembrance.  I can see our Latino, Asian, women, LGTBQ, …, and European (aka white supremacist) contingencies, all demanding equal recognition and opportunity to remind us of America’s historical blights and blemishes, to provide frequent recounts throughout the year that the only thing exceptional about the United States is its provenance of evil.

So, we start with Juneteenth today to celebrate when the blacks of Galveston, Texas were told that they were no longer slaves on 19 June 1865.

Our Latinos can claim the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on 2 February 1848 that made Mexico cede most of today’s American west to the US.  February 2^nd would be a day of remembrance and mourning the beginning of an epoch during which Mexican-Americans and other Hispanics were relegated to second-class citizenship as newly minted Americans.  (It would also serve to keep the fires of Reconquista burning.)

Asian-Americans will demand December 17^th as their special day of recognition and liberation from second-class status, and a time to remind all of ongoing discrimination against Asians.  On 17 December 1943 Congress passed the Magnuson Act which did away with all exclusion acts that primarily focused on denying Asians immigration rights, which began with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

Women of all shades, shapes, and biological origins will want to have August 18^th be designated a federal holiday.  For it was on 18 August 1920 that women’s suffrage ended with the ratification of the 19^th Amendment.  It will be a day of marches and speeches reminding us, not only of the past, but of the here and now when women still have to fight ‘glass ceilings’, unequal pay, and the right to be masters of their own bodies.

And of course, the LGTBQ tribe will want its annual place of pride in the federal sun.  They can militate for September 21^st as a national holiday, for it was on 21 September 1996 that DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) was passed by Congress and became effective.  This started a period (1996-2020) during which SCOTUS passed five landmark rulings to the benefit of our LGBTQ group.

We can go on, but let’s just finish with a new national observance of the evils of European culture in America.  Actually, this federal holiday will not be demanded by Americans of European descent.  Instead, it will be established by a woke Congress as a day to recognize and never forget that white supremacy continues as the nation’s foremost threat and abiding enemy.  It is the ever-present possibility of a white supremacist insurrection against which our government must always be prepared to defend with new laws, regulations, processes, procedures, and agencies.  That day of national vigilance will receive an appropriate name like ‘Democracy Preservation Day’ or ‘Insurrection Day’, and will, of course, be celebrated on January 6^th, during which we will be regaled and reminded by demogauges of all stripes of how close we came to ‘losing our democracy’ on 6 January 2021.

[Addendum] A reader sent me the most appropriate Juneteenth graphic shown below.

Scattershots – 3jun21 (updated 8jun21)

Why promote a minimalist government – “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”  Thomas Sowell

George Rebane

Anyone notice how student debt is propagandized as an act of nature that afflicts students who were innocent of getting into financial straits?  Even FN is bamboozled by the Dems and the almost hysterical reporting in the lamestream on this issue.  Those poor students played no part in voluntarily signing up for those loans.  No siree, they were struck down as if by a dreaded disease, blindsided into a terrible state of affairs, sorta like getting Covid or having your house devastated by Katrina.  And now the national response to those fiscally innocents wailing about their wallets has to be another vote buying dip into the public purse to forgive their debts.  And, oh yes, Trump is guilty for not having done it last year.  And here's the solution sent by a reader.

Biden’s spending spree is definitely designed to swing the nation’s double dummies into believing that he is the one who is reviving an already revived and ready-to-roar economy.  Again, the purpose is to buy some near-term votes for the 2022 election with a handful of good quarterly bumps to the GDP.  What the lightly reads neither understand nor pay attention to is what this massive near-term spending portends.  Even liberal economists agree that these initial spurts will guarantee that the rest of the 20s will be mired in ‘a future of secular stagnation’.  The next 8 to 10 years will then see GPD growth under 2%, hearkening back to the Jimmy Carter years.  The anti-American Dems are all for that because it will mean that the US will not have the money to properly fund its military against China and Russia, and to complete securing our southern border against all who will cross it illegally to a waiting basket of welfare benefits not available to American citizens.  The policy is designed to keep America divided with an increasing cohort of Democrat voters who will guarantee that we will become a socialist-bound one-party state, you know, sorta like California. (more here)

[8jun21 update]  The Dems and their constituents – both lightly read and dismally educated – are in terminal denial that America’s Left has put the country on the road to Marxism.  This strong belief is repeated continuously on their lamestream media, even though evidence ignored pours in daily.  The latest can be seen in their grassroots being convinced to pine for new and stronger measures of censorship to established for national media.   In the 8jun21 Union (here), local leftwinger Linda Schuyler Horning (“Fox News was established to launch its assault on American democracy.”) calls for re-establishment of the Fairness Doctrine and formation of a new federal Truth Commission to specify and filter what you and I can consume from the news and entertainment media.  In Dangerous Ideas: A Brief History of Censorship in the West, from the Ancients to Fake News, Eric Berkowitz writes, “What emerges from Dangerous Ideas is that ideological terms like blasphemy, subversion and hate speech are impossible to define. Thus there are never clear guidelines for censorship, which is inevitably inconsistent and often absurd.” (more here)  As I said, the evidence abounds for our current march to authoritarian Marxism, and maybe worse.

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.

Working the Unity Myth (updated 25mar21)

George Rebane

Today’s Left seeks to suppress and supplant the legacy, history, and practice of Western culture as an evil instantiation of racism and white supremacy.

One of Jo Ann’s recent Union articles (here) addressed the futile attempts in the Left’s ongoing calls for unity, supposedly addressed to people like her – conservative, Christian women who pay very close attention to national affairs and are active in their communities. (more here)  The piece garnered a record reader response in print, online, and snail-mailed letters.  One heartfelt, well-written and long letter from a liberal woman gave Jo Ann kudos and concluded with a strong appeal for all of us to come together.  It is the ongoing flood of appeals like that, appeals that imply coming together is something as simple as throwing an attitudinal switch, that motivates the present reflection.

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?

Right Wing Watchers

George Rebane

For some time now a hard-left commenter signing himself as ‘Nevada County Right Wing Watch’ has been visiting these pages and leaving a trail of his intelligence, understanding, and thoughts.  He claims to be part of an extensive organization, apparently one of several reported in the news that are doing their best to intimidate and shut down all wrong thought in the country.  It’s hard to tell how authentic all this is.  But it’s very easy to tell from both the news and as corroborated on this blog, that the communication between the polarized sides is extremely asymmetrical.  The Left wants to silence the Right.  The Right wants an open forum debate on ideas, happenings, history, economics, etc.

A microcosm of this activity has been recorded in RR’s comment streams for the last 14 years, and in recent years the exchange has become more intense.  During this time the leftwingers come here to repeatedly tell us that our views are grossly in error, evil, and that no one cares what we think – and yet they come.  All of them appear to think that the conservetarian ideas promoted by me and others are unique, constrained to a tiny group in these foothills, and only represent fringe far-right thought.  They have no idea of the existence of the tens of millions of every-day Americans with whom we are ideological soulmates.  From the content of their comments, it’s clear they think that if only they could silence RR, then such wrong thinking would be eliminated from the land.

In the following I present a couple of extracted comment threads from recent posts to give readers a clearer picture of the virulence experienced here and, no doubt, elsewhere.  We start with the contribution of our ever-vigilant Right Wing Watcher in a comment thread under ‘$15/hr Dumbth on the March’.

‘Luxury Floating Real Estate’

George Rebane

Living on a huge manmade island may be the thing of the future for those who can afford it and want to escape from the ever more contested and politically roiling lands that cover about 29% of the Earth’s 197,000,000 sq mi surface.  The first of these islands is being built off the Bahamas by an outfit that calls itself The Blue Estate (here).  Multiples of such islands are planned to reside off Dubai in the Persian Gulf which are advertised to be miniature havens of German, Swiss, Italian, and Swedish culture.  The Blue Estate plan envisions an island measuring 1,500 by 1,000 meters as shown below.

The island’s size, modular construction, and high (130ft) free board, augmented by another 100+ foot extendable windwalls, we are told will assure the structure’s calm survival in the roughest of hurricanes.  The island will also have propulsion and guidance so that it can transit open ocean areas to avoid storms.

Yet to be explained is to what extent the island will be energy self-sufficient using solar, wind, and wave energy extraction technologies.  Its home area will be in international waters, minutes by air away from Miami and Bahamian towns.  Apparently, food and other consumables will be imported.

The community will also be economically self-sufficient by being home to clean commercial enterprises and the successfully retired.  The commercial activities will be heavily IT oriented with ample satellite connectivity.  I can envision that it might also be home to small R&D firms engaged in computer science, genomics, and similar areas.  Located in a tropical sea with abundant (300+ days/yr) sunshine, the island can also operate a sizeable nearby sea farm containing various flora supported by an underwater matrix which will give rise to a whole new ecosystem of rich sea life similar to what exist around oil drilling platforms and the Navy’s ‘kelp farm’ (off San Clemente Island) on which I worked years ago.

One of the potential attractions of such seaborne communities may be their ability to provide social stability through a discriminative selection of residents.  It is clear to me that some such island communities will emphasize cultural cohesion of their residents.  Offering such cohesive environments seems to be the goal of the planned Persian Gulf islands that will focus on providing culture-specific resort living and holidays.

As an entrepreneur and systems nerd, I am drawn to the dreaming and planning of such habitats, and in the present case could go on for pages contemplating different concepts and their supporting technical, commercial, environmental, educational, cultural, … support systems and institutions.  But to me the problem of having the seas support a considerable population of such islands in different parts of the world will come down to the solution of the inevitable political problems that will arise and need solutions that can be implemented globally.

Because these island communities will attract (and be limited to) the smart, productive, and ‘financially capable’ people, they will naturally become hotbeds of wealth generation.  And they will therefore become tax and tariff prey for the land-based political grifters who maintain their collectivist regimes by bamboozling their poor and huddled masses yearning to be free.  These people need state supplied succor that their political leaders will not allow them to generate for all the reasons we have discussed in these pages.

In such political landscapes those who can will escape to available locales with lower taxes, regulations, and abundant liberties.  This we see happening in today’s American migrations, and have witnessed for decades (centuries?) in Europe and Asia where the productive congregate in enclaves such as Singapore, Taiwan, and formerly Hong Kong.  Therefore, new political paradigms need to be discovered if the financially and culturally attractive island communities are to thrive and multiply.  Else the early ones will just be economically harvested to oblivion by the land-based stifling autocracies that see such free and enterprising enclaves as low-hanging fruit.

Much more to be said about all this.

States Galore – it’s a’comin’

George Rebane

After three weeks into the Biden administration and Democrat congressional majorities, we have all noticed the latest facet of how the evil party operates.  As Bill McGurn observes in the 9feb21 WSJ (here), “Democrats are happy to throw over any rule, custom, or convention that gets in their way.”  In these short weeks the examples of their modus operandi are legion and growing.  The biggest hoax pushed by Biden in his inauguration speech was that he would be “the unifier”.  Well, that turned out to be the biggest load of crap right out the gate.

These changes reach all the way from the vindictive second impeachment, through partisan ramming through of the humongous $1.9T ‘relief package’, to the butt stupid repeal of and effective EO to successfully fight the country’s other pandemic – our ongoing and tragic opioid addiction.  In the latter case Biden revoked Trump’s waiver of physicians having to get some extraneous training before being able to prescribe buprenorphine – an enormously effective treatment for opioid addiction that has demonstrated itself in several other countries, e.g. France, where it is widely dispensed to addicts.  To reinstate and expand the use of this therapeutic will require navigating a bureaucratic morass while people continue to die. (more here)

But in addition to violating the Byrd Rule that prevents packing budget ‘reconciliation’ with non-budget items that could not pass on their own merits, and moving toward eliminating the 60-vote filibuster, and eliminating the Electoral College, the biggest Democrat travesty is their intention to ideologically pack not only SCOTUS, but also the Senate.  The latter ploy would be achieved by making Washington DC into our 51^st state, guaranteeing the addition of two more perennially progressive leftwing senators.

What no one seems to understand yet is that this can of worms, once opened, can be enjoyed by both sides.  If politically proven partisan cities can easily be made into states by the party in power, then what will prevent the Republicans from doing the same when they again become top dogs in DC?  Why can they not then pick a city or two in America’s heartland that are reliably Republican, and make them into our newest states?  There must be some Democrat with a 3-digit IQ who has thought of that possibility.

So, if the Dems go ahead with this, the biggest rule change of all, then they must strongly believe that they are on the cusp of making the United States into a permanent one-party state, as we have long surmised in these pages.  Then today’s visibly burgeoning autocracies in the leftwing controlled federal government, heavily populated states (led, of course, by California), and large urban centers will compliantly meld into the national tyranny that half the country has feared during recent decades.

And the alternative to one-party tyranny will then be a destabilizing binge of making states galore until the whole thing collapses.

The Biden Bamboozle Begins

George Rebane

Actually, bamboozle is way too gentle of a descriptive for what was launched yesterday.  This commentary would actually find a better home on the next entry into our Dark Days Diary, nevertheless … .  Our new president spoke of stopping the lies inundating the nation, all the while heaping on new ones while bringing up old ones for another pass over the country’s psyche so that we could all unify in the glow of an inaugural speech that drove so many to tears, albeit for markedly different reasons.

While Seattle again enjoys Antifa’s tender mercies – this time at the state’s Democratic HQ – the Left’s nationwide destructive and murderous riots of last year are either forgotten or repainted with a fresh new coat of lies, Biden’s lamestream (yes, it’s his now) plays the 6jan21 Capitol assault video over and over again as undisputable proof of where lies the real danger to America and democracy.  In his laughable attempt to focus on unifying the country, our new president is characterizing the country as in ruins and continuing crisis, all due to the mismanagement of his predecessor, who is the nation’s Supremacista Blanca El Primero.

And all 75+ million of us who voted for him, and at least that many more of our families, all of whom supported his policies and accomplishments, these now also carry the scarlet letters that label us all as white supremacists, racists, nazis (small n), and incipient domestic terrorists.  For the Left we have become the country’s number one enemy to be sought out, identified, watched, isolated, and dealt with accordingly.  Apparently, we have always been there (as RR comment streams attest), but now Donald J Trump has outed us by rising up as our leader so that the politically proper and prudent could finally see those around them who visibly rose up to support and cheer him on.

By continually citing their carefully formulated versions of our pernicious beliefs in an historically false America and our ongoing unabashed public behavior, the new administration will be free to fumble forth with all of its failures pre-attributed to the disastrous legacy of Trump abetted by his minions, still free to roam the countryside perpetuating perfidy and lies to counter socially just progressive programs and initiatives.  This cannot and will not go on unanswered.

Of course, given the recent tendentious behavior of our Hispanics and blacks, even their own traditional constituencies are not to be completely trusted.  The Left knows that these folks have been successfully bamboozled for years, and the possibility that they may now subscribe to a new pied piper is not to be discounted.

But the 800lbs gorilla in the room remains the November election which more than half of Americans have beliefs ranging from its having unexplained irregularities to outright ballot stuffing fraud.  And all these feelings have been and continue to be reinforced by the establishment, first refusing to look at and substantively refute the presented evidence, and second then upping the ante to launch a national vilifying campaign against everyone who continues expressing concerns and thinks that the conduct of the 2020 election should get at least a small fraction of the kind of attention the Democrats mandated for the 2016 election in terms of countless congressional investigations, the involvement of DoJ and the FBI and its fraudulent use of FISA, various IGs looking into their spheres of purview, the Mueller special prosecutor investigation, and the still ongoing Durham probe.

All we hear from the Dems and their nascent Biden administration is that only racists, insurrectionists, and seditious domestic terrorists remain interested in having a transparent examination of the evidence.  And, of course, no correctly thinking American should be beholden to such an irredeemable cohort of deplorables, no matter how many tens of millions they number.  The Democrats demonstrated that they can roll out a couple of divisions of armed National Guard troops at a moment’s notice if there is even a faint (unfounded?) hint of public opposition to their new power structure.  And in the meanwhile, as our liberal commenters remind us today, they will be taking our names and making lists for when the reckoning comes.  That is who they are and have always been, now it’s their time to flex some muscle and really kick ass.  This is their 'unification' program which will continue until we all unite to 'Sieg heil!' the victory of our new masters.

‘The Sovietization of California’

George Rebane

We have covered this dreadful progress to autocracy for years from a number of perspectives.  In my lifetime California has descended from its Olympian perch as the planet’s jeweled jurisdiction, to one that today competes with second and third world countries in governance, infrastructure maintenance, husbanding its natural resources, extracting tribute from its citizens, and daily ratcheting down more of their freedoms.

Longtime California resident and national columnist Dennis Prager in Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal gives a summation (here) of how the Left has tattered the once golden state.  Prager describes California as “a state where corruption reigns (one of the leading Democrats of the last half-century told me years ago that politicians in California are window dressing; the real power in California is wielded by unions) and where, for nine months, normal life has been shut down, schools have been closed, and small businesses.”

As a celebrated national leader in everything from technology to ideology, the state has worked hard to fundamentally transform America into its own declining state of collectivism.  As one of its leading bamboozles, California has convinced the nation’s light thinkers that the Left follows the science, when demonstrably “the left’s claim to ‘follow the science’ is a lie. The left does not follow science; it follows scientists it agrees with and dismisses all other scientists as ‘anti-science’.”  And then doubles down with the bigger lie that science speaks unambiguously with a single voice, which for some mystical reason only those of the Left are able to hear and understand.

Given our state’s lead, “there is no question that America is becoming, if it hasn’t already become, two countries: one that values liberty, from small businesses being allowed to operate to people being allowed to say what they believe, and one that has contempt for liberty, from eating in restaurants to free speech.”  And more differences between us are legion.  De facto, the Great Divide is already here, and, as observed in these pages, awaits only its de juris resolution.

The fat lady has sung, off key (Addended and updated)

George Rebane

[This is the addended, edited, and updated transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 16 December 2020.]

Last Monday the Electoral College elected Joe Biden to be the 46^th president of the United States.  The election was heavily contested for two distinct reasons, but to no avail.  Let me be clear from the start, I am a conservetarian and therefore not happy with the election’s outcome – also for two distinct reasons to which we’ll get directly.

This election is unique in our country’s history for a few significant reasons.  One of them being in the number of people who decided to get off their duffs and vote.  Another, and perhaps more important, is that this election was fraught with an enormous number of irregularities - procedural, legal, and criminally fraudulent.  Each of these categories contained enough incidents, not only to give credibility as to their witnessed occurrences, but also of the types that should have led to annulment or at least a redo of the cited precincts’ work to correctly qualify and count the ballots.  An alarming number of states violated their own laws, constitutions, and the US Constitution in the manner they conducted their elections prior to and in the aftermath of November 3^rd.  These violations are a matter of record, and they overwhelmingly favored one candidate over the other – always the same candidate.

Then we come to the criminally fraudulent incidents.  These again were reported by witnesses putting themselves at substantial risk of committing felonies, as they filed affidavits that attested to what they saw and heard.  And again, such sworn affidavits, which are accepted as evidence in all courts, numbered in the tens (hundreds?) across the land and described incidents of ballots handling that could have plausibly affected the election’s outcome had they been allowed to be corroborated by the authorities.

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)