The Aftermath Part 7

This particular screed has no discernable flow and is more a compilation of various thoughts and observations that have accumulated since my last post. If there is a way of tying it all together, I shall endeavor to do so. But, dear reader, I caution you, this may not come to pass. It’s that disjointed.

 

Irony of Ironies

A Peloton moves into the White House. Now how did this come about? Wasn’t this exercise bike, or rather the accompanying commercial that drew the ire of the cancel culture snowflakes, supposed to be the very symbol of the patriarchy? Wasn’t the Democrat party supposed to be against such things? So, what strange twist of fate occurred to allow the current administration to escape any sort of scrutiny over such a decision?

The Logan Act. Lieutenant General Michael Fynn has been tied to this throwback law from a bygone era. It was supposedly the impetus for his prosecution, along with purportedly lying to FBI agents during their “investigation” into Trump/Russia collusion. Now that the dust has settled, we find out that there was nothing going on. No collusion, no Logan Act violation, and no lies told to FBI agents. Contrast that with the fact that we now know John Kerry and several Obama/Biden surrogates were in fact holding secret talks with the Iranians during the Trump administration. Now if that doesn’t fit the very definition of a Logan Act violation, then what does?

Security for me but not for thee. In the aftermath of the 6 January riot on Capitol Hill, it was amazing how fast the political class found ways to erect barriers and bring in all sorts of security (courtesy of the National Guard) to keep themselves safe. I’m not going to dignify what happened as an insurrection, because it was not even close. The phrases they used were nothing more than a foolhardy attempt to control the language and burn it into our brains that what they thought was what all of us should have been thinking as well. As far as they were concerned, the wall at our southern border wasn’t just an eyesore, it was a symbol of racism, xenophobia, and hatred. But they were more than comfortable with the idea of placing barriers between themselves and the people they’re supposed to represent.

Bernie’s mittens. That shot of Senator Sanders sitting there huddled up against the elements will become one of the most iconic images of any inauguration in this country’s history. What made the whole thing really newsworthy was the fact that the mittens he was wearing were made by one of his constituents who could no longer see her way through remaining in business because of a high tax burden. The same sort of tax burden that the good Senator and others like him would just love to foist on the rest of us. When they tell you that they only intend to soak the rich, expect the trickle-down theory to find its way into taxation as well. The one bright spot out of this entire story is that the Vermont Teddy Bear Company rode to the rescue and will be partnering with Ms. Ellis to manufacture her mittens. Think Bernie is going to give them a tax break for their selfless act?

Trump vs Cuomo. Here we have a tale of two chief executives. Both New Yorkers (up until a year or so ago for Donald Trump) with a penchant for being loud, obnoxious, thin skinned bullies with an eye for the ladies. Or is that really the case? In Donald trump, we know we have someone who has an ego as large as one of his hotels and a habit of bending the truth at times to suit his purposes. In Andrew Cuomo we have a similar character who was caught in multiple intentional misstatements concerning his disastrous policy to stick COVID positive patients back into nursing homes and extended care facilities. These weren’t fact checkers who brought this up (as they were in the case of Trump), these were his own comments that came back to haunt him, yet he repeatedly denied that had been the case. With Trump’s impeachment, it had been a phone call with the President of Ukraine supposedly conditioning aid to that beleaguered country on an investigation of Hunter Biden and his ties to a corrupt oligarch. A Senate report, published in the fall of 2020, validated those concerns and President Zelensky of Ukraine is still adamant that nothing untoward happened during that phone call. Governor Cuomo’s aides were caught trying to tie availability of the COVID vaccine to county health officials giving the good governor their blessings and support during the pending investigations into the nursing home debacle, as well as his sexual harassment issues. Speaking of issues, at last count, there are nine women who have come forward to accuse him of inappropriate behavior. It’s ironic that there are folks who want to delete the scene with Donald Trump from the Home Alone sequel, but very little mention has been made about Andrew Cuomo returning his Emmy. At the beginning of the Trump Administration, it was self-dealing and the emoluments clause of the Constitution. The lawsuits claiming as much went nowhere. With Governor Cuomo, we’re now finding out that he gave family members and his friends special treatment when it came to COVID testing, despite there being a greater need of state resources for those who were the most at risk. Self-dealing and cronyism indeed.

BLM and the leftist narrative. During the summer of love last year, we were told that black people and other minorities were being attacked or killed at will by law enforcement.  Living while black or brown could literally be hazardous to your health. The legacy media was all on board with this narrative, but something interesting happened when I undertook an unrelated search for online articles on gun deaths and suicides. I came across a CNN article from 2018 that contained a very interesting surprise. Besides gun deaths by suicide and homicide, it also included data on gun deaths by legal intervention or war. The term legal intervention simply means law enforcement involved shootings. Here is the article for your perusal. Notice who the top ethnic group is, also notice who the next two are. Kind of blows the claims being made by the left out of the water.

 

The Man of System

In his work The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), philosopher Adam Smith contrasted two ways to help resolve some of the evils that society could visit upon us. The man of humanity and benevolence used reason and persuasion to achieve his ends, while the man of system imposed his plan of government on others by force, if necessary, to achieve his ends. If you guessed that the political left fits the definition of the man of system, then you’d be correct. Smith was a keen observer of human nature and saw things back then that we are now having to deal with some two hundred and sixty years later.

Hitler’s propaganda machine. Joseph Goebbels was Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda. One of the things he figured out was that in order to reach the most people, he had to use the latest cutting-edge means of communications. At the time, radio was the up-and-coming technology that had the potential to do so. He also figured out that in order to indoctrinate German children into the Nazi way, he had to get them while they were relatively young, and the younger, the better.

In the modern era, the internet and social media are by far the most ubiquitous means of communications. As a result, we’re seeing the dissemination of news in ways that have caused it to lose its objectivity. It was bad enough that the legacy media outlets, both print and broadcast, have become cheerleaders for one side, but what made things even worse was when the tech oligarchs who ran these platforms decided to choose sides as well. As with Goebbels, we’re witnessing a full court press to sway the hearts and minds of the populace by using the latest and greatest in terms of mass communication tools. More to the point is the fact that young people are getting most of their news from these tech platforms with no way of being able to filter out fact from fiction or real news from the noise.

One of the aspects of the Critical Race Theory wave sweeping across this country, has been the idea that whites are born with inherent privilege and biases. Of course, the only way to resolve this situation is to deny the very whiteness which is at the root of all this evil. Some have even suggested starting to educate white toddlers about their “shortcomings” before they grow into privileged little white supremacists. The last time I checked, babies when they are born, are pretty much blank slates. This idea has been around since the time of Aristotle and has been called “tabula rasa”, which is Latin for smooth or erased tablet. Philosopher John Locke was the individual who helped the term gain widespread popularity in a work titled Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). Again, like Herr Goebbels, the political left realizes that in order to get potential adherents to go along with their morally bankrupt and corrupt ideology, they need to imprint their venomous beliefs on our kids at the earliest age possible.

Speaking of indoctrination, the 1619 Project has been pushed as the true origin of this country’s founding, since this was when slaves imported from Africa first set foot in the new world. Problem is, Virginia wasn’t the only place where this country had its origins. There’s the Pilgrim landing in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. There’s the Dutch colony of New Netherlands in what is present day Manhattan in 1624. There’s the French presence in the Louisiana Territories in the early 1700’s. And last but not least, the Spanish presence in Florida. St Augustine, the oldest city in America, was founded in 1565 by Spaniards. That’s more than 50 years before the first slaves arrived on these shores. But one would never know any of that if the left ever got the chance to completely rewrite our country’s history.

What we’re really looking at here is an unholy trinity of cancel culture snowflakes, woketopians, and grievance industry hustlers who have decided that this is their time to shine, and they plan on riding this gravy train until it runs out of track.

 

Borders and culture

Classical western thought. This is one area that has been under continual assault for decades. It has been trashed for either its whiteness or as a symbol of the patriarchy or the bourgeoise. It doesn’t matter that these individuals were responsible for most of the growth in knowledge about the human condition. They were white, they were male, so therefore they have to go. It’s almost as if the revisionists (more like historical arsonists) want to erase certain aspects of our humanity and replace them with something that they find more acceptable. Never mind the fact that western thought promoted critical thinking skills among those who studied it. The current conventional wisdom is completely anathema to the exercising of grey matter between one’s ears. Forget seeing and understanding the world around you from a broader philosophical and historical perspective, none of that is required or desired anymore.

The left’s lock on culture. You may have heard something about conservatives being jealous about the left having a monopoly on the culture. Frankly, I don’t see this as much of a boast, considering how this came about. When you start applying litmus or purity tests to particular fields of endeavor, such as the arts and entertainment, academia, and sports, of course you’re going to find yourself with a block of monolithic thinking. Anyone with an opposing, or just plain different view, is going to find themselves vilified and ostracized by their fellows. Even those with similar political sympathies are not immune, if they question the methods and motivations of the mob, however well justified undertaking such an action might be. In my humble opinion, yogurt cultures will wind up proving more beneficial for society than anything that leftist culture has been able to come up with.

Much has been mentioned in conservative circles about the left’s motivations being Orwellian in nature. Well, I’m going to throw another author of a dystopian future into the mix, Aldous Huxley. In his novel Brave New World, we get to see a utopian paradise, where all of the societal norms that were considered the bulwark of western civilization have been done away with. Even more sinister is the genetically engineered social hierarchy that strangely resembles a caste system. A system that I fear the elites (the left, as well as the right) would have no problem with, since they would be the ones at the top of the pecking order.

Whiteness vs anti-whiteness. The characteristics of whiteness aren’t endemic to one ethnic or social group (click on this link to see how ridiculous the entire argument is). They are the hallmarks of success. When you do away with them, you do away with any hope or chance of success for those who are trying to climb the socioeconomic ladder. What better way to bring about a permanent underclass that is dependent on government for virtually everything than to callously snatch the rug out from under these folks?

COVID and freedom. We have three vaccines available to the general public. The previous administration contracted with their manufacturers to make over 800 million doses available to the American people. That’s more than enough to inoculate every man, woman, and child in this country and Canada. Yet, the Biden Administration has been pounding the table nonstop about this pandemic and the fact that we need to still restrict our activities in order to contain this virus. Now contrast that with what’s been happening at our southern border and one comes away with a completely different set of conclusions. With President Biden’s election, it was almost as if a large welcome mat had been rolled out and a big neon sign was hung up and turned on for all to see. Forget about testing these folks making their way across the border for COVID or any other communicable diseases. Just catch ‘em, process ‘em, and release ‘em. They’re free to go anywhere they want on the taxpayers’ dime. To most of us, it would seem that any administration engaging in this sort of behavior would be irresponsible and reckless. On the other hand, if this brings about reflashes of the virus, as well as other illnesses such as tuberculosis and polio (which had all but been eliminated here), the technocrats in government could continue imposing lockdowns and other restrictions on Americans. Lastly, if we’re such a racist country, then why would these folks risk life and limb to try and come here? Wouldn’t they be better off in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or one of the social democracies in Europe?

While we’re on the subject of illegal immigration, an interesting story comes to mind, courtesy of author J.D. Vance (Hillbilly Elegy). While attending a social event some time ago, he happened to run into a hotel executive. This individual was upset over President Trump’s restrictive border policies. Why, you might ask? Because it kept his company from being able to hire cheap labor from south of the border to work at its hotels. It’s no wonder that Adam Smith gave a full-throated defense of capitalism but not the capitalists themselves. He believed that there needed to be a moral component to the free market that helped rein in the sort of behavior Mr. Vance had witnessed.

 

It’s become fairly obvious that we as a country, have become divided along sectarian lines. Those doing the dividing in my humble opinion fall into four groups: politicians, media/entertainment, academia, and business/industry. The individuals exerting influence within these organizations tend to be dismissive of human nature, but will turn around, at the drop of a hat, and try to take advantage of the baser, more seamier aspects of that same human nature for their own selfish purposes. But then again, that in itself may be part of human nature as well.

 

Well, that’s all I’ve got. Like I said earlier, no well scripted ending or loose ends tied up in a cohesive fancy verbal bow. Sorry folks, you were warned.