Archive for May, 2023
23rd May 2023
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
23rd May 2023
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
23rd May 2023
Washington Free Beacon.
It goes without saying: The mainstream media is run by liberal activists. This ideological bias manifests itself in several ways, including the words journalists are allowed to use when discussing controversial issues.
For example, the New York Times might publish an article about how “a group of anti-fascist uterus-bearing individuals deployed Molotov cocktails to peacefully express their grievances over Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law, which critics say could prevent access to gender-affirming care and reproductive freedom for undocumented Latinx immigrants, substance-affected unhoused citizens with prior justice system involvement, and full-figured sex entrepreneurs.”
The story would read a lot differently if it wasn’t written, edited, and published by liberal activists and members of the cultural elite who are constantly trying to impose their “correct” opinions on the general public. The woke words and phrases used in media reports would make a lot more sense to the average American if these people weren’t in charge—if journalists were forced to abide by the Washington Free Beacon Alternative Style Guide for Reporting on Issues of Controversy (ASGRIC).
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Analysis: What If Woke Liberals Didn’t Get to Label Everything?
23rd May 2023
Sarah Hoyt.
Phantom — in comments, recently — mention at the basis of all the leftist policies is the idea of overpopulation: the Malthusian hot mess that believes humans, like some kind of fungus will reproduce till the Earth can’t support them.
I’d never realized that. It is true sort of, though it’s perhaps based on an even crazier premise which in turn is at the very heart of not just socialism/communism but the idea that anyone gets to arrange all of human life from the top down, to spare individuals’ making wrong decisions. Which is, objectively, an idea so crazy that you can’t figure out how any human alive can think it.
And yet, if your theories tell you that humans are too stupid to stop reproducing when they’re starving, then any level of intervention is justified, because, OBVIOUSLY humans are brainless.
Except for the Ruling Class, of course.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Debit or Credit?
23rd May 2023
The American Mind.
Many policy experts, politicians, and everyday citizens have long been concerned with the breakdown of the family as a result of divorce or separation. But the lack of family formation in the first place is now an even more pressing problem. Birthrates have been falling around the world, a complex phenomenon with many contributing factors. Women are not finding partners in time to become mothers (though the vast majority want children), and young men are disproportionately single.
Sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin has observed that marriage—to the extent it is desired at all—is now viewed as a “capstone” rather than a “cornerstone” of life. That is to say, marriage is no longer considered the foundation of adult life but a kind of feather in the cap of a successful person. We have lost a shared understanding of the human person, of how familial and civic responsibility provide meaning, and what encompasses a life well-lived (as evidenced by this recent Wall Street Journal-NORC poll). These shifts in beliefs have affected marriage rates. But technologies like the smart phone, social media, and online dating have exacerbated the family formation crisis for the youngest generations.
Think of it as evolution in action. The only women who will have children are those who put family ahead of career, and thus the Power Feminists will slowly get weeded out of the gene pool. Natural Selection works even when you don’t want it to.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Role of Technology in Family Formation
23rd May 2023
John Hinderaker at Power Line.
At the G7 meeting in Japan, Joe Biden went on a riff that seems to be about our federal budget. See if you can figure out what he is trying to say….
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Joe Biden Speaks
23rd May 2023
ZMan peers behind the curtain.
Since the late Middle Ages, political thought in the West has started with the assertion that the point of social organization was to reduce coercion. The ideal society is one in which everyone naturally played their role without being forced into it. The assumption is that forcing people into roles for which they are not suited, or they do not wish to perform is both unjust and dangerous. It is also more costly to compel people to obey the law than if they voluntarily abide by the law.
If the goal of your political model is to reduce coercion to the absolute minimum, then you ideally want a society that agrees on everything. After all, if everyone agrees that society must have gong farmers and some people are better suited for the task than others, then everyone is going to agree on having gong farmers. Even the guy chosen for the task will agree if it is explained to him. He may not like the task, but he will understand he is playing a vital role in his society.
Straight away you can see the problem for individualism and the natural rights crowd when it comes to organizing society. If we start from the assumption that we are all unique individuals in control of our own destiny, then we are free to not go along with being the town’s gong farmer. Even if all the facts point to that role being best for the person and his community, he is free to reject it because he is an autonomous person free to live his life as he sees fit.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Liberal Theocracy
23rd May 2023
Associated Press.
A divided federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld the constitutionality of a new admissions policy at an elite public high school in Virginia that critics say discriminates against highly qualified Asian Americans.
The 2-1 ruling from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond overturns a ruling last year from a federal judge who found that the Fairfax County School Board engaged in impermissible “racial balancing” when it overhauled the admissions policy at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.
The school frequently is cited among the best in the nation, and parents jockey and prepare for years to get their children admitted. But for decades Black and Hispanic students have been woefully under-represented, while Asian Americans made up more than 70% of the student body.
And, since we all know that Black and Hispanic students are just as smart as Asian students, this is obvious racism. The swine. (I guess Asian Is The New White. Good to know.)
Taking book on how long this schools reputation lasts once they start stocking up on students chosen for their skin color rather than smarts….
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Appeals Court Upholds Admissions Policy at Elite Virginia High School
23rd May 2023
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
22nd May 2023
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in BIPOC Privilege
22nd May 2023
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
22nd May 2023
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
22nd May 2023
Why was this massive Trump scandal hiding in plain sight for 28 months? (Philadelphia Inquirer) Will Bunch holds the Jennifer Rubin Chair at the Inquirer.
Why won’t conservatives ask Trump tough questions? (The Spectator) Maybe because they don’t have to? There are plenty of progs and RINOs queueing up to do that job.
The GOP Is in an Abusive Relationship with Trump (The Bulwark) The Bulwark is certainly in an abusive relationship with Trump, with them doing most of the abusing.
Why Trump Wants U.S. to Default on Debt (The Bulwark) Of course Trump doesn’t really want the U.S. to default on the debt; he wants Republicans to be willing to go that far in order to get concessions from Biden, rather than the usual go-to-the-brink-and-then-roll-over that Republicans have historically done. But any excuse will do for an invented smear by the left-adjacent Bulwark.
GOP Rep. James Comer Implies Biden Family Probe Is Really About Helping Trump In 2024 (Huffington Post) No he doesn’t–but I’m sure they’d like to believe that he does.
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
22nd May 2023
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
22nd May 2023
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in War
22nd May 2023
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
22nd May 2023
The American Mind.
In Japan, social withdrawal among young men is now so severe that the Japanese have a very specific term for it: hikikomori. Hiki means “to withdraw,” and komori means “to remain inside.” At least 1.5 million Japanese people, many of whom are young men in their twenties and thirties, have completely withdrawn from society.
They don’t date; they don’t mate; they don’t work; and they don’t socialize. In short, they refrain from doing anything that requires them to leave their hyper-isolated chambers.
Many of these young males are hurting—financially, spiritually, and psychologically.
Up until very recently, hikikomori was considered a culture-bound syndrome, a problem unique to Japan. That is no longer the case. Hikikomori is now a global phenomenon, observed across the world regardless of culture—from Asia to Europe to the United States.
Huh. I didn’t know this was an option.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Let’s Stay In
22nd May 2023
The American Mind.
Marymount University sits on a high hill over the Potomac River, in northern Virginia. Founded in 1950 by a religious order devoted to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the school’s undergraduate courses focus on the humanities—or they did until the president and the board of governors met to “restructure” earlier this year. This meant gutting nearly all the humanities, plus mathematics, science, and even theology and religious studies.
The sheer extent and suddenness of this transformation caught the public’s imagination. A small university’s restructuring is not typically the stuff of frontpage, international headlines. But these cuts perfectly illustrate how Christian education has squandered its moral, intellectual, and religious inheritance in a 100-year search for prestige—a search which has been inevitably followed by a retreat into rootless, commercial secularism and left-wing, political glad–handing. In this, the plight of Catholic universities offers a microcosm of the institutional capture that afflicts traditional institutions around the country. But it also offers instructive, object lessons in how to fight back.
Prior to, oh, say, Vatican II (early 1960s), this could not have happened. The entire reason for ‘Catholic schools’ was to provide education with a Catholic intellectual foundation explicitly separate from secular intellectual fads and fashions. But that was then; this is now.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on The Fight for Catholic Schools and the Future of American Institutions.
22nd May 2023
ZMan turns over a rock.
In The Past is a Future Country, Ed Dutton and J.O.A. Rayner-Hilles, argue that the West is about to be swamped by an unsustainable wave of stupid people. This is not the result of immigration, but rather the culmination of an evolutionary process that began in the Industrial Revolution. Darwinian selection weakened along with the increase in living standards. The result is a steady increase in narcissistic stupid people who undermine the fundamentals of Western society.
In this post, Ed Dutton makes the point that liberal female politicians are getting dumber, as a result of this process he outlined in his book. He relies on two examples, Sanna Marin of Finland and Angela Rayner of Britain, to make his point. Both women are on what we insist on calling the Left and both women are morons. Not only are they stupid, but they appear to have come from stupid parents. They are Nth generation morons who have risen to the top of politics.
It is an amusing and satisfying read for people who think of themselves on the Right, even if he is making sweeping claims from just two examples. For as long as anyone can recall, the people we call the Left have claimed that their opponents are unsophisticated morons who should be dismissed. Having this turned on its head with the use of the human sciences is good fun, but it may be missing the real cause for the great dumbing down of Western politics.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on The Tyranny of the Stupid
22nd May 2023
Charles C.W. Cooke at National Review.
Rich points to a column by Ezra Klein in the New York Times, in which Klein objects to President Biden taking the “14th Amendment option.” Rich notes that Klein has a practical objection to the idea — namely that “if the administration declares the debt ceiling unconstitutional, only to have the Supreme Court declare the maneuver unconstitutional, then Biden owns the market chaos that would follow.”
This is probably true. But it’s notable that, as usual, Klein and those who share his politics seem to live in a completely lawless world, in which there is no such thing as truth, in which ridiculous ideas that were arrived at yesterday by transparent political hacks are as worthwhile as centuries of universal understanding, and in which the only reason to avoid violating the Constitution is that one might get caught.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Why Can’t Progressive Writers Defend the Law?
22nd May 2023
Read it.
We are always told by today’s woke Stasi that “language matters.” They’re quite correct: that’s why their own attempts to police our words have to be so assiduously resisted by conservatives. When the language being policed is scientific in nature, the need for resistance is even greater. To redefine the discourse of science along political lines is to redefine the very parameters of reality itself.
The latest attempt to do so comes in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Language Project (EEBLP), launched in February 2023 by a network of clearly left-leaning scientists from universities across the U.S. and Canada. Predictably, the EEBLP commissars seek to decolonize their subject, whose very origins are supposedly steeped in the Western civilizational filth of white supremacy and cis-heteronormative oppression alike.
In their online “Team Statement of Positionality” (‘positionality’ here being a fancy euphemism for ‘sexual, racial, and political bias,’ but in a good way), EEBLP proselytizers are encouraged to “critically assess their subfield’s terminology,” asking whether it helps “celebrate dominant narratives or oppressive norms”—norms such as the sole existence of the two traditional binary human sexes of ‘male’ and ‘female,’ and not any recently invented new made-up ones like those of the popular entertainer Sam Smith, who self-identifies both as ‘non-binary’ and as a professional singer.
Posted in You can't make this stuff up. | Comments Off on An ‘Egg-Producing Female’ Is a Hen, Not a Woman
22nd May 2023
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
22nd May 2023
John Hinderaker at Power Line.
The scientific method works as follows: 1) You come up with a hypothesis. 2) You look for the implications of the hypothesis. What will be the case if the hypothesis is true, but will not be the case if the hypothesis is wrong? 3) You carry out observations or run experiments to find out whether the facts implied by the hypothesis do or do not obtain. 4) If you find that a fact implied by the hypothesis is indeed the case, it provides support for the hypothesis. If you find a number of such facts to be true, as implied by the hypothesis, then you may have strong support. 5) But it is not conclusive: if a fact or condition implied by the hypothesis is shown by observation or experiment not to be the case, then the hypothesis is refuted, and you go back to the drawing board.
Global warming hysteria is politics or religion, not science. This conclusion follows from the fact that the global warming models have generated many predictions that turned out to be wrong. A single wrong prediction is enough to disprove a model. Numerous, consistently repeated failures mean that the model is a joke.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on “Our Children Will Never See Snow”
22nd May 2023
Read it.
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has asked the U.S. government for greater intelligence sharing and warned of a resurgence in Islamic terrorist threats in Europe ahead of France hosting global sporting events in the coming year.
Let us not forget that Islam presents an existential threat to Western civilization, and always will.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Main Threat to Europe Is Resurgence in Islamic Terror Attacks, Warns French Minister Ahead Of Hosting Olympics
21st May 2023
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in War
21st May 2023
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
21st May 2023
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
21st May 2023
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
21st May 2023
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
21st May 2023
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
21st May 2023
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in BIPOC Privilege
21st May 2023
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
21st May 2023
Read it.
Lebanese militant group Hezbollah put on a show of force Sunday, extending a rare media invitation to one of its training sites in southern Lebanon, where its forces staged a simulated military exercise.
Masked fighters jumped through flaming hoops, fired from the backs of motorcycles, and blew up Israeli flags posted in the hills above and a wall simulating the one at the border between Lebanon and Israel.
The exercise came ahead of “Liberation Day,” the annual celebration of the withdrawal of Israeli forces from south Lebanon on May 25, 2000, and in the wake of a recent escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza. Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers and Hezbollah have had long-standing ties.
Wherever you go,
Whatever you do,
A Muslim waits there
To try to kill you.
Especially if
You might be a Jew.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Terrorist Hezbollah Stages ‘War Games’ for Media, Asserts Readiness to Confront Israel
21st May 2023
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
21st May 2023
Read it.
Between Matamoros, Mexico and Brownsville, Texas lies the Rio Grande river. On one side is the Matamoros migrant camp where thousands of illegal invaders prep for the invasion with the aid of American open borders non-profit groups, squatting in their own filth, fighting, shaking each other down and starting fires like those that killed 40 male migrants. Across is America.
At 160 feet wide and only 2 feet deep, the invaders have little trouble making their way across. Despite the slur ‘wetback’, little actual swimming is usually required. Past proposals to widen and deepen the river so it’s a tenth of a mile and twenty feet deep would have been fairly expensive, but was shut down by open borders advocates who claim the invaders might drown.
In one week in April, some 15,000 illegal invaders traversed the river. The media regularly features dramatic photos of migrants crossing the Rio Grande and offers sympathetic portrayals of the invaders such as the New York Times story: “Desperate Migrants on the Border: ‘I Should Just Swim Across.” The coverage often describes these invasions as “sudden” or “unexpected”.
But there’s nothing sudden or unexpected about them. They’re the work of the Coyote-in-Chief.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Coyote-in-Chief
21st May 2023
Gates of Vienna.
emerge an inevitable conflict will break out between the Socialist intersectionals and the devotees of Mohammed. The two groups of religious fanatics are utterly incompatible with each other, and only one can emerge triumphant. The best outcome would be for each side to spray AK-47 fire at the other simultaneously, leaving the field strewn with the corpses of fighters for both groups. Alas, that outcome is very unlikely. For what it’s worth, my money’s on the Muslims.
The following report concerns friction between the promoters of sexual perversion and the soldiers of Allah. The incident in question occurred at a school in the Flemish city of Genk.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Allah Frowns on LGBTQ
21st May 2023
John Hinderaker at Power Line.
It wouldn’t be if it were imposed by a private party, although there might be other problems with it. But can a government entity require its employees to assent to a series of political propositions, and to take what is effectively a loyalty oath? I don’t think so.
That’s why my organization has moved to participate in the case of Henderson v. Springfield R-12 School District, now on appeal in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, as an amicus. The Henderson case is horrifying, and yet typical of what is going on in contemporary America. Plaintiffs are school district employees who were required by the district to undergo “anti-racism” training. The district’s “training” was a series of Maoist struggle sessions.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Is DEI Training Unconstitutional?
21st May 2023
NewsBusters.
In theory, the Durham Report and the testimony of FBI whistle blowers was to be about the internal conduct of the FBI.
It was that, to be sure. But without doubt the combination of the two was a decided fusillade that hit the once impenetrable fortress that was the credibility of the American mainstream media. And specifically the credibility of The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Pulitzer Prize.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Durham, the Times, a Pulitzer and Walter Duranty
20th May 2023
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
20th May 2023
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in BIPOC Privilege
20th May 2023
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
20th May 2023
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progessive Totalitarianism
20th May 2023
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
20th May 2023
Washinton Post.
The man stood in a red Make America Great Again baseball cap pointing his AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle toward the sidewalk.
An elementary school student ran home crying. Parents were terrified. Neighbors called the police. While he had not explicitly threatened people in this suburban neighborhood, just the sight of him walking near school bus stops was enough for the nearby elementary school in Anne Arundel County to delay bus drop off this week.
Ann Arundel County is in Maryland, a blue state. Further adventures in the pussification of blue-state America. In Texas, the kids would have been gathered around: “Hey, mister! Show us your gun!” And they would have been asking questions about it until the bus came.
Posted in Democrats: Party of Plundering and Blundering | Comments Off on Man With AR-15-Style Rifle By Bus Stop Says He Wasn’t Out to Terrify Kids
20th May 2023
OffGuardian.
There is so much going on we don’t know about. Like I’ve said before, we definitely have reached that critical point of being a “closed system.” The mainstream media are all in on it, so they control the flow of information. No one knows what is happening unless they literally see it or experience it.
It is fascinating how if you don’t receive reliable information about what’s going on, you really don’t know at all . . . even in your own neighbourhood. Remember the Soviets would come and carry people away in an apartment building and no one there would know, MAYBE one person, the person living next door, but that’s it. They would just disappear. And only the people who KNEW them would even know that.
There could be people all around us dying, being persecuted for this or that, and no one would know it. And then stuff happening in the next city, or in Europe…no one knows ANYTHING reliable now unless they see it with their own eyes. Once a free press is gone, we are totally blind. Very few people seem to know this or accept it if they know it.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on A Closed System
20th May 2023
Sarah Hoyt cuts to the chase.
We live longer healthy lives, and in fact my dad retired at 80, and husband has worked with 80 year olds who got bored in retirement.
What does this mean? Well, we choose our career absurdly early, and expect it to last life-long. That’s half of it. A lot of us come to not like/loathe what we loved as kids. Now, I’m not suggesting the training to be self sufficient should be later. Let the kids grow up. Just …. we probably shouldn’t going for graduate degrees before 32 or so. Because we will change. Or at least a significant subset will.
The problem of course is that our legacy educational system is still geared for people who live till sixty just about, and therefore if you don’t pursue your education early and hard and to the extreme you want to take it, people will look at you funny, which in the case of people who work for college admissions might mean you don’t get in.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Staying Alive
20th May 2023
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
20th May 2023
Read it.
In 2002, Florida adopted a phonics based reading strategy due to Charlie Crist. Scores started to rise. Other southern states started to following suit, including Mississippi long deried as the worst in the nation.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Mississippi Learning
20th May 2023
John Hinderaker at Power Line.
Time was when a politician like Patrick Henry (“Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace–but there is no peace!”) or Abraham Lincoln (“A house divided against itself cannot stand”) could quote from the Bible and assume that pretty much everyone in his audience got the reference. Those days are gone, of course. But most Americans still have at least a nodding acquaintance with the Book. Not, however, those who write and edit articles for the New York Times.
Posted in You can't make this stuff up. | Comments Off on Bible? What Bible?
20th May 2023
Read it.
Border Patrol agents in San Diego have come under fire twice in a week at the U.S.-Mexico border, including as they were aiding an injured, abandoned four-year-old boy who had been dropped over the border wall.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a statement that agents near the San Ysidro port of entry on Monday aided an injured 4-year-old who had been dropped over the primary border barrier by an illegal immigrant.
“Agents reported hearing both the impact and ricochet of gunshots off of the secondary border barrier just north of their location,” the CBP statement said.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Border Patrol Agents Come Under Fire While Rescuing Abandoned, Injured 4-Year-Old Boy