When They Ain't Failing You, They're Flailing You

 Why Hollywood is FAILING - The Devil's in The DEI

As a steelworker in the 1970s, some progressive friends convinced me to attend union meetings with them because they needed the vote. At first, I voted the way I was told. Basically, they wanted to take over so they could do good. After the meeting, we would stop for pizza and beer and talk politics. I realized they were more interested in the "world revolution" than what was happening in the rolling mill.  As much as I liked my friends, I had to ask myself: Do I want them fixing my car or running my Uion? Ah, no. So I stopped voting with them and they no longer wanted me to attend the meetings.

One of my friends, Mike, was a follower of Joseph Stalin -- the infamous dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (That's the failed USSR that Vladimir Putin loves). A Soviet is, supposedly, a workers' collective. The workers collectively do what they are told. The DEI-infused Writers Guild of America qualifies. Mike took tours of the USSR and thought things were going just fine until that a-hole Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev showed up. My friend took the slogan "Forward" quite seriously. For him, it was all about the journey, not the destination.  

Not the Soviet Savior 

The far left wants to create a disciplined and committed militant core -- the vanguard of revolution. It's about grabbing power, not doing good. They will champion bizarre causes and deploy underhanded tactics because that helps them recruit passionate and unquestioning people (pseudo-intellectuals, useful idiots, and opportunists flock to the banner). They become members of an activist movement the Vanguard leads. Societal upheaval helps the Vanguard to recruit. Societal collapse helps them take power. That's a disaster for the rest of society. But it is a disaster for members of the movement as well. Regardless of the announced idealistic aims, Sociopaths -- who love to ruthlessly manipulate others -- take over that core group and will, one way or another, eliminate anyone who actually believes in "Social Justice," whatever that is.

If I may paraphrase Barak Obama, "The Arc of Progressivism bends towards shortages and famine." You can take that to the state-run bank and put it with the funny money.

Zeihanism

The Breakdown of the Republican Coalition (Trump's Fault?) || Peter Zeihan

As an aside, incumbents should declare the current horrendous budget deficit as part of their re-election campaign expenses.

As for Peter's screed, yeah. I don't know. The anti-Trump crowd is looking a little bonkers -- and that includes almost all of DC. The "outsider" candidate usually has an advantage. When Democrat Progressives are out of power they run as visionaries, painting a bright picture of the future -- which is best not examined too closely because everyone has a different vision of the future. For a Republican, it helps to be a governor who will bring common sense to running an out-of-control Washington when run by visionaries who are mucking up the present. No more gas ranges for you!  It's probably worth five points in each case (I should mention I don't know what I'm talking about).

The Donald ran as an outsider who became an insider (standing on the stage with Dr. Fauci was enough). He's since been re-outsided. In fact, the establishment would cast him into eternal perdition if they could (and are still trying). Recently, I joked that Democrats want convicts to vote and Republicans want to elect one President.

The Democrats were also the cool party. It really had nothing to do with their candidates and everything to do with their control of culture. Lately, it seems Nurse Ratchet has taken over their nanny state and Hollywood sermons are falling flat. Could be a long-term problem for them if Conservative anti-woke becomes the next fad. They can say Trump wants to control access to abortion but they want to control everything else -- and is forcing an "abortion choice" really out of the question? (They used to argue abortion saved money on Welfare and cut down on crime and, anyway, 90 percent of humanity is excess baggage on Spaceship Earth and is best disposed of. Don't worry, Gaia will sort them out.) 

I think Peter's confusing Business with Wall Street. Wall Street will support Biden (a trillion dollars buys a lot of love) but small to medium-sized businesses are thrown into chaos by the massive expansion of the regulatory state. Trump will give them the good stuff without a lot of the bad.

The Military and national-security-minded voters have every reason to go with Trump. The Obama faction made a lot of left-leaning appointments (the CIA director voted for a Stalinist as his third-party choice) and leaked their political hackery to progressive journalists (Traitor Trump!).  This coalition could be an inch wide and an Inch deep but quite loud (or, if you prefer, outspoken).

Oh, yeah, and it's the economy.

Singaporean Joke Fest!

Thanks to the internet, Cancel Culture has gone global, as New Yorker Jocelyn Chia discovered to her dismay. A mild quip about the divorce between Malaysia and Singapore (after the British left sixty years ago) got her in trouble. She writes:

On June 5, the Comedy Cellar posted a clip from a show I had done in which I depicted Malaysia as the ex who broke up with Singapore—the country I grew up in—and Singapore was now having a "glow-up".

The clip was performing very well, but when I posted the same one on my social media on Tuesday morning, things started to take a nasty turn.

I first saw someone sharing my clip in an Instagram story—the words were in Malay which I didn't understand, but ended with a "wow!" Funnily enough, thinking it was a compliment, I reposted the story. However as negative story shares and comments rapidly piled up, I soon realized that "wow!" had not been meant as a compliment.

Next time, use Google Translate. No word on whether divorced people were offended.

I was in elementary school in the Midwest when the "divorce" happened. Lee Kuan Yew became Prime Minister of Singapore, an ethnic Chinese bastion with a Muslim Malay minority, a sizeable population from the Indian subcontinent, and a residue of Anglos. He ran the place -- it's fair to say he ran it -- from 1959 to 1990. He took "spare the rod, spoil the child" seriously: caning was a punishment. It functioned like a family firm with the patriarch using a firm hand -- near as I could tell from the far side of the World.

Singapore Inc. thrived and was often cited as a model for America by advocates of an "Industrial Policy" that picks economic "winners and losers" from the comfortable confines of D.C. office blocks and Ivy League campuses. Even as a kid, comparing a mid-sized city (less than two million inhabitants at the time) to a continent-sized nation didn't make much sense. At the time, Mayor Richard Daley's Chicago was called "the City that Works" (corruption greased the development skids), but no one suggested running the USA like Chicago -- until the Obama administration. Under Biden, it's Chicago all the way down.

This is not to knock Singapore. Long ago I spent a few weeks there and really liked it.

Malaysia took a different turn. The Malays were the majority but considered themselves an economic minority. In the 1970s, they launched the Bumiputera movement, an affirmative action program for the native Malays. Apparently, the better-off Bumis have learned to game the system.

I once had an extended conversation with an important figure in that movement. I stood in the Malaysian Business and Tourism office in Bangkok in 1981 when a nervous official came over and asked if I was an American. I said I was and he invited me to meet a fellow who had taken over his office for the occasion. Curious as to whether I would be arrested or offered some honor, I agreed.

He was an older fellow and introduced himself as a minor functionary when the anxious behavior of the local staff said otherwise. He wanted to know the attitude of ordinary Americans toward security in Southeast Asia, and I was the closest ordinary American. You see, "Cambodia Year Zero" became "Cambodia, population Zero" a few years earlier. The Vietnamese invaded and knocked over the skull racks. Refugees flooded into Thailand. The Cambodian communists were so bad that the Vietnamese communist looked good. It ended with a powerful army of veteran warriors poised near Thailand. When I headed for Asia, a friend asked me how far Bangkok was from the border. I said, "It's a two-day drive -- by tank."

During the conversation, I told my interlocutor that ordinary Americans don't care about Southeast Asian security. They tend to hear the "Americans go home" message and like the idea. That applies to the rest of the World too, except for Canada, Mexico, and Caribean vacation spots. As for Europe, well, if we leave they'll start fighting each other again and drag us into it so we stay. However, Americans will help their friends, so be friendly.

In return for my Geopolitical insights, I received a ticket to a luncheon in honor of Mahathir bin Mohamad, the new Malaysian Prime Minister -- destined to become a force in Malaysian politics for decades to come. It was free food, so I went.

They stuck me at a table full of correspondents from major Western media organizations (The Wall Street Journal and such). They were curious about why I was with them. I told of my happenstance encounter at the tourism office. Turns out he was Mahathir's guy (actually, it sounded the other way around), they all wanted to talk to him, but he wasn't giving interviews. It was a "pearls before swine" moment for them -- me being the swine.

The good news: I ate my fill. Mahathir was asked about the ethnic and racial divisions in Malaysia and he said we'd know it's solved when everyone starts marrying everyone else. I can't say he remained so open-minded going forward. Often politicians need those divisions.

Well, as is so often the case, it's a good joke if you know the history.

The Dastardly Motive behind the Russian Coup Attempt.

This whole coup attempt was staged by Putin to divert the world's attention from the January Sixth Insurrectionist window-breaking incident at the Capitol in D.C., as well as the many crimes of Donald Trump. Putin, who is not known as the forgiving type, graciously pardoned everyone involved in the "Militarized March on Moscow," just to make Joe Biden and the Democrats appear petty and vindictive in their pursuit of justice. If he can forgive the downing of high-tech spyplanes and attack helicopters, the Dems can forgive a few broken windows. It is Russian interference in our Judicial System, plain and simple.

Indiana Jones and the National Socialists

 

Indiana Jones 5 is DOOMED, claims Nerdrotic.

I like that he refers to the Nazis as the National Socialists throughout his presentation (I'm one of the people who watch him without subscribing). For decades I've referred to the Nazis as the National Socialists. Socialists would tell me the Nazis weren't true socialists and I'd point out that they claimed to be the true socialists and millions of Germans believed the National Socialists were the True Socialists. So it's a bit like Russian Roulette with no empty chambers.

The Inditments should have been Leaked

The Trump indictments about mishandling classified material should have been classified as Ultra top-secret and then leaked to the New York Times. The source would remain anonymous. This person is not authorized to mishandle these top-secret documents about mishandling top-secret documents. You see, the undercover source leaked the documents to an undercover reporter who was under the same cover and in the same bed. As part of the resulting brouhaha, dotGov throws a big investigation to find the culprit who's not authorized to mishandle the classified material about mishandling classified material. The years-long investigation will go nowhere because why would it. Meanwhile, the New York Times will editorialize about how Trump mishandled documents he had previously declassified and kept locked up.

Of course, some secrets should be kept secret. For instance, the secret that Joe Biden is corrupt. This is purely a "need to know," and only the people actually paying the bribes (and enabling officials and journalists) need to know. So when President Trump's Ultra top-secret phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky -- where Biden's corruption was touched on -- was leaked by someone not authorized to leak it, Trump was impeached. Obviously, Trump had no "need to know" of Biden's corruption. In any case, it was the best five-million Ukraine ever spent.  It's pay to play -- with HIMARS.

When Biden announced his Presidential bid not long after Trump took office, I said it was meant to keep corruption indictments at bay.  In 2017 even the mainstream media was reporting on his corruption as Vice President. Declaring his candidacy as the Democratic Party hopeful was a way to shut them up and get the "respected media" to actively suppress a story that would cast the entire Democratic party in a bad light. So I don't think Dr. Jill will allow Biden to gracefully bow out after one term and give up this anti-indictment superpower.

Don't change your mind, change your sex

Andrew Sullivan, who I've read off-and-on since he was at the New Republic magazine, asks: Is this "The Greatest Scandal In Gay Rights History? How journalists - yes, journalists - want to shut down reporting on child transition."

Discussing one program, he notes:

More than a third of the kids pushed onto the trans track had autism, sometimes severe. Others were victims of domestic abuse...No questions about other aspects of a child’s mental health were considered if the kid was identifying as the opposite sex.

It's the fall of 1968. I'm in a ramshackle college bar in a midwestern mill town nursing a Stroh's 3.2 beer -- a legal drink for 18-year-olds. A new girl (I'm unaware how new)  occupies the neighboring stool. I say, "hi." She says, "hi."

We start talking. She's from New York City. I ask if she's visiting relatives, one of two reasons an NYC native would turn up locally -- turnpike pile-up being the other. No, she's having medical procedures performed. "Oh?" says I, with a thoughtful pause, "what procedures are those?" I'm perplexed. My town is not known for medical tourism. She tells me she is having her sex changed from male to female and prepares for a confrontation she doesn't get.

As a Time Magazine reader back then, I knew everything that happened in the world a week after it happened. They'd informed me that sex reassignment surgery was available for those who were born one sex but were "hard-wired" for the other (with only two genders to choose from at the time). This is a rare condition, they explained, which affected maybe one in 100,000 -- whereas we now know it's half of the second grade at the local elementary school. How an otherwise credible publication could get its numbers so far off is beyond me.

Another possible explanation for the numerical disparity between then and now is "water fluoridation." The cumulative effect of all that fluoride could be fewer cavities and more gender-swapping. Naturally, the last part went unmentioned by the public health authorities to prevent undo discomfort in the rubes who simply refuse to cut down on their consumption of sugary sodas and would rather lose their teeth than rearrange their genitals.

There could be another possible, if unlikely, explanation. I once heard of a certain medical procedure where the number of operations performed in a locale was determined by the number of surgeons who perform it. Unfortunately, more people died who got the operation than among the people who remained ignorant of the cause of their suffering and took antacids instead -- death being the sometimes side-effect of the procedure. Apparently, this was not considered a sufficient reason to stop performing it.

Also, I had a friend who was a resident at the local trauma center.  He told me to avoid a certain surgeon whose blade should never be allowed to touch flesh. Everyone at the hospital knew about him but the guy still performed operations so...it's good to have a powerful union on your side. Sure, it's a delicate question, but one that needs to be asked: could the increased availability of medical specialists dedicated to the treatment of the condition account for the swelling caseload? Personally, I doubt it. Fluoridation, that's the cause.

It was the presence of a highly talented plastic surgeon, a man of my slight acquaintance, that made my town the "sex-change capital of the world." He had quasi-nude statues on the lawn in front of his office depicting the human form as GQ and the Swimsuit Edition intended (pre-body positive days). As a scruffy thirteen-year-old, I hitchhiked around town (considered safe means of travel by my peers -- which is not the same as being safe, though we had no problems). I got a ride from the doctor once. His "Truman Capote" like manner made him memorable. I knew him for a total of maybe eight-and-a-half minutes and rather liked him.

A few years later he was on a local television show to talk about prophecy, not puberty blockers. He combined the rhymes of Nostradamus (also a doctor) with the Book of Revelations to place the Second Coming at the close of the second millennium. He mentioned his own modest role in it (he was in one of the crowds, I think). With hindsight, his foresight was a bit off -- unless it was the second coming of crazy he anticipated.

He was the reason the "journeyman-lady" came to town for her transformation. Today, she'd go into the military. She was born a boy, she explained, but always had the mind of a girl. She was required to go through counseling and live as a girl for a time as she underwent hormone treatments. She seemed very much a female when I met her but the below-the-tummy "tuck" was still in her future. I thought, sure, changing your mind can be hard, but is changing everything but your mind easier? I did not try to dissuade her, though, because of what happened a couple weeks before.

I was in a different bar, one with "lounge" in the name, a classier place where the upholstery ain't held together with tape and they charge an extra nickel a drink to keep out the riff-raff. I'd spent several weeks on a summer job in a hot and loud foundry that produced missing fingers among the employees. Having worked overtime and escaped with digits intact, I felt both fortunate and flush with cash. I also found myself in the surprising position of talking to a beautiful, well-accoutered girl. She told me she was going to have a nose job because she didn't like her nose and she was finally doing something about it. This made no sense because, in her case, nature had achieved the pinnacle of nasal perfection, or so I thought.

Admittedly, I come from a family where the proboscis is a prominent facial feature. My father said we had "Noble Roman Noses," even though we weren't Italian. Perhaps it was my distorted view of nasal normality that caused me to counsel her hotness against the action. She had a quite lovely nose, I said, and a simple cost/benefit analysis -- given the possible downside risks -- shows she should not undergo the procedure. She reacted with great hostility, the way wrong-headed people often do when a right-headed person tries to correct their behavior for the overall benefit of the entire society -- a society whose medical resources need to be focused on real medical problems rather than catering to the vanity of stunningly attractive, cash-flush females. In her defense, she did leave town to have the procedure performed, maybe because she wanted to wake up still a girl.

Back at the shabbier bar, a large man came over to the "journeyman lady" and gave me a stern look as he addressed her. "Time to leave." He seemed more like a bodyguard than a friend or relative. As they left I thought, given how open she was about her transition, a bodyguard might be a prudent precaution. 

A few weeks later she was in that bar again and at the center of a celebration. She was now as much of a woman as she was ever going to be. I thought of that old saying, "no matter where you go, there you are!" I wondered if that applied to bodies as well as places.  If so, her problems were by no means at an end.

Think of a War Where Only One Side Is Allowed to Fight

Media outlets keep promoting 'forest defenders' and ignoring that they shot a police officer

If the left campaigns to free an accused person, that person is likely guilty. When they are not trying to get the guilty off, they are trying to destroy the innocent (see: Sacco and Vanzetti = framed; Justice Kavanaugh = corrupt, and Joe Biden = honest). Even when I was on the left this tendency among those who claim to want a better world puzzled me. I came up with several reasons.

Recruitment: Most people would want an innocent person freed but only a potential true-believing, money-donating, self-deluding activist will campaign to free the guilty.

Delegitimizing the Justice System: The guilty person is on the "right side of history," combating an entrenched evil and therefore not just innocent but heroic. It's the other-way around for the so-called innocent person who is actually a cowardly defender of privilege.

A Display of Power: Freeing the guilty and destroying the innocent will attract supporters to the movement and discourage opponents. Also, it will strike fear in the souls of possible apostates (black conservatives, for instance).

The political left wants power above all else and believes that a highly disciplined and properly led band of activists can gain control during social chaos, hence "the worst the better" for the far left. Many would rather be a camp guard in a socialist state than a factory worker in a capitalist one.

A Rube addresses the Ruben

Here is my take on the Ruben Navarrette Jr. piece at Pajamas Media "Is Racism Hurting Obama in Middle America?" Of course "Racism" ranks with "Global Warming" and the "Evils of Capitalism" in contemporary media's TOE of what's wrong with America. I left these thoughts in the comment section.

OK, if you want to argue that the Clintons are racist, that’s one thing. But the vast majority of their voters? I don’t see it. The anecdotes you present (in a nation of 300 million) are not that persuasive. I’m sure some of it really happened. I’m also sure some of it was made-up (that happens, too). But why are you branding almost half of the Democratic party racist on the behavior of a few? Even if among those few are the candidates themselves and their highly paid, media connected and beltway dwelling operatives?

In fact before the Left Reverend Wright episode, Sen. Obama got the votes of many “white working class men.” The episode provided them with persuasive new information and many changed their minds. What do you do in those circumstances? Banish all doubt?

We should remember that most Americans do not trust “objective” media. So when the objective media portrays someone in Saintly terms and then a locked safe full of dirty laundry and a biography full of poetic license comes to light, what do they do? They decide the rest of the reporting is crap, which is a reasonable conclusion. But based on the “objective” medias prior behavior, do you suggest the media be taken at face value? Are you saying if we are not idiots and naive fools, we are racist? You pitch the guy as transcending race. He has a racist preacher and terrorist friends and corrupt money men supporters. And somehow his “typical white” grandmother or someone he met at school is their equivalent. You guys not only buy it, you sell it. Where you got your heads?

The media sells Barak Obama in a way that would make history’s most despicable used car salesman blush. No “truth in advertising” laws for you guys. You just shove your past distortions down the memory hole.