Month: April 2018

09APR2018 – Quote of the Day

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When I was grade school kid every English teacher made you read Jack London’s “To Build a Fire.”  But unlike most of the stuff given to us that story spoke to me.  And after a lifetime of doing stupid things it’s all the more resonant.

 

Following at the man’s heels was a big native dog. It was a wolf dog, gray-coated and not noticeably different from its brother, the wild wolf. The animal was worried by the great cold. It knew that this was no time for traveling. Its own feeling was closer to the truth than the man’s judgment. In reality, it was not merely colder than 50 below zero; it was colder than 60 below, than 70 below. It was 75 below zero. Because the freezing point is 32 above zero, it meant that there were 107 degrees of frost.The dog did not know anything about temperatures. Possibly in its brain there was no understanding of a condition of very cold, such as was in the man’s brain. But the animal sensed the danger. Its fear made it question eagerly every movement of the man as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter somewhere and build a fire. The dog had learned about fire, and it wanted fire. Otherwise, it would dig itself into the snow and find shelter from the cold air.

 

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Trump vs the Diamond and Silk Embargo

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Dramatis Personae:  President Trump – (PT); Jeff Sessions (JS); Mark Zuckerberg (MZ); Larry Page – (LP); Lynnette “Diamond” Hardaway – (LDH);  Rochelle “Silk” Richardson – (RSR);

 

Scene 1 – White House West Wing, Monday 8 am.  Inside the Oval Office President Trump is at his desk and his receptionist is speaking over the intercom

PT – What is it Patty, you know I don’t like to be disturbed while reading Orion’s Cold Fire at breakfast.  I find his blend of good natured Trump ribbing and incisive political analysis is just the thing to start my day off great.

(voice over intercom) – I’m sorry Mr. President but I’ve got Diamond and Silk on the line and they’re very upset.

PT – Put them through Patty, I’ll set this straight right now.

LDH – Are you there President Donald Trump?

PT – I am Diamond.

RSR – Hello President Donald Trump.

PT – Hello Silk.  It is so good to hear from both of you.

LDH – Well we wish it was a happier occasion Mr. President but we are calling to ask for your help.

PT – What has gotten you two upset?

RSR – Mr. President, it’s that Facebook nerd, that Zuckerberg.  He’s rippin us off.

LDH – Yeah, he shut down our site.  And that other weasel Larry Page from Google shut down our YouTubes on “The Viewers View.”  We are losing substantial coin.

PT – Diamond and Silk, this is an outrage.  Why would they do this?

RSR – They said that we are “Unsafe to Community” and that the shutdown is irrevocable.

LDH – Mr. President we know they are doing this to get at you.  Please help us.

PT – Diamond and Silk, do not worry.  This outrage will not stand.

RSR – Thank you Mr. President, you truly are the greatest President.

PT – Yes, Silk I truly am.  Now, I’ll be in touch with news very soon.  And don’t worry.  The full power of the United States government and all its employees will be working on nothing else but this problem until it is solved.

LDH & RSR – Thanks you President Trump. (hang up).

PT – (President Trump hits a button on his phone and starts to talk) – Sessions get up here right now.  And don’t give me any of that crap about cleaning out the FBI.  A snail would cover more ground than you have.

 

Scene 2 – Later that same day.  White House audio-visual studio.  President Trump is standing in front of two teleconferencing screens with images of Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page visible.  Jeff Sessions standing to the side.

PT – Zuckerberg, Page, I want to know why you two idiots are harassing those two women.  Surely you internet geniuses have better things to do than persecute a couple of African American sisters from North Carolina.

MZ – Donald, the suspension is irrevocable.  An algorithm made the decision and as you know computers are never wrong. (disappears from the screen)

LP – Donald, the kind of hate speech that they employ is too hurtful to ever appear on YouTube.  We cannot be swayed.  Have a googley good day. (also breaks the connection).

PT – (mumbling under his breath) Donald, huh.

JS – How would you like to proceed Mr. President.

PT – Get the warrants and set up the live stream for 8pm tonight.

 

Scene 3 – 8pm that night.  White House audio-visual studio.  President Trump is sitting behind a desk.  Television equipment is set up.

PT – Hello everyone on the World Wide Web I interrupt your porn viewing for a very important message.  Earlier this evening agents of the Justice Department, the honest ones that is, under a court order shut down Facebook, Twitter and Google.  An investigation concluded that they were in violation of anti-discrimination against women and African Americans.  Of course, they were also discriminating against millions of straight white men too but, of course, that’s legal.

After signing off on a consent decree these companies will be re-opened.  And to make sure things don’t get off on the wrong foot I’ve had the Justice Department make some changes to their Boards of Directors. I’ve reduced their other members and added Diamond, Silk and James Damore to each of the boards.  We anticipate no more problems going forward.  Okay, that’s all.  You can go back to your porn you losers.

 

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More Kevin Williamson!

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Boy, this guy really must need a job.  He’s still getting his friends (and enemies) to talk about him.  Jonah Goldberg expends enormous eloquence and even some unexpected candor quoting Michael Anton’s verdict that the Right must adopt the same rules as the Left or suffer defeat.  But he still refuses to acknowledge its necessity.

The Z-Man will have none of it and his analogy of the Marquis of Queensbury boxer getting in the ring with the Lord Humongous wielding a nail studded club is extremely vivid and persuasive.

I wonder if anyone (including myself) would be this interested if I got fired.  What a big baby.

 

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08APR2018 – Quote of the Day

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I copied this from the public domain Project Gutenberg website but the translation that I know it from is by Howard Thayer Kingsbury and of course from Jose Ferrer’s tour de force in the 1950 Hollywood film version.  I’ll ignore Steve Martin’s Roxanne as too awful to consider.  I have to take the time to watch Gérard Depardieu’s 1990 version someday.

 

CYRANO DE BERGERAC

A Play in Five Acts by Edmond Rostand (Translated from the French by Gladys Thomas and Mary F. Guillemard)

Scene 5.II

THE DUKE (pausing, while she goes up): Ay, true,–I envy him. Look you, when life is brimful of success –Though the past hold no action foul–one feels A thousand self-disgusts, of which the sum Is not remorse, but a dim, vague unrest; And, as one mounts the steps of worldly fame, The Duke’s furred mantles trail within their folds A sound of dead illusions, vain regrets, A rustle–scarce a whisper–like as when, Mounting the terrace steps, by your mourning robe Sweeps in its train the dying autumn leaves.

 

 

Interacting in the Brave New World – Part I

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Perhaps no other aspect of the dissolution of the United States saddens me as much as knowing that the idea of honest and open relations between most citizens of this country is no longer a possibility.  Even as recently as the 1980s it seemed reasonable to believe that the great majority of Americans agreed on what was right and wrong and how we all should live.  I doubt the idea could even be expressed in a form that a majority of people would agree on.  In an earlier post I stated that we are demonstrably more than one nation occupying one state.  In reality it is even more complex than that.  There is no consensus even on either side of the left/right divide.  We are splintered into a multitude of identity groups, ideologies and political interest groups.  And just because two groups have a common enemy does not necessarily mean they can cooperate.  So, a calculus has to be applied when evaluating what you tell someone on the outside.

Now, I’m making this up as I go along so realize that I am dealing in generalizations and attempting to use simple logic to find some kind of framework for navigating a hazardous world.  Begin with the worst case first.  How do you deal with those that you perceive to be the most ideologically abhorrent and most dangerous to you.  An important example would be someone above you in the hierarchy of the company you work for who openly espouses a social justice viewpoint.  Obviously, you cannot openly express your true views on almost any subject.  It is even unsure whether you can merely refrain from saying anything contradictory of this person’s dogma.  Depending on circumstances, the only realistic way to continue on at the company would be to fain agreement on many of these ideological topics.  This is one of the most horrible realities of the modern leftist corporations.  They have begun mixing in progressive loyalty tests with their corporate culture.  The most blatant is the endless repeating of the “Diversity is our strength,” mantra.  Another is the mainstreaming of the LGBTQ rainbow imagery.  Many of the young people are forced to festoon their cubicles with this newspeak sloganism and agitprop.  I fully expect to eventually see a magnet on a filing cabinet that declares “I Love Big Brother” (or actually, I   ♥  Big Brother!)

If you want to advance in the hierarchy of one of these SJW converged corporations you will assuredly have to burn some incense to Caesar.  And even if you do it will be hard to compete with actual SJWs in the moonbattery department.  You will have to depend on actual talent and initiative and that is a poor substitute for ideological fervor.  Maybe the better idea is finding a company that isn’t run by the insane.  Or even starting a company of your own.

So there’s the worst case, selling your immortal soul for a career.  That was easy!  Next time we’ll talk about how you talk to a prospective wife.

Embedded

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For better or worse, the word matrix is now inextricably tied to The Wachowski (Brothers?!) ground-breaking motion picture of the same name.  The idea that the world is a computer-generated illusion used to keep human electric storage cells quiescent has become a metaphor for all the illusions that society fabricates to control human behavior.

I need to use the word for one of its other meanings.  Merriam Webster lists definition 3a for matrix as:

the natural material (such as soil or rock) in which something (such as a fossil or crystal) is embedded.

This is akin to what I intend to use it for.

 

The world we live in and the United States of America more specifically is the matrix in which we find ourselves embedded.  It’s as if we had been fish swimming around happily in a lake and all of a sudden, the lake begins to freeze.  What formerly was our medium of movement and breathing and where all the good things of life were found suddenly begins to contract and become cold, viscous, difficult to move in and eventually becomes our prison and our grave.

Or here’s another analogy.  Living in the present progressive plagued world can be compared to pollution.  When it first begins it’s hardly noticeable and is ignored because the source of the pollution is a luxury that we enjoy and the pollution doesn’t seem to be worth the trouble of addressing it yet.  Most of the time the air would be fine and only around sources of the pollution would it be noticeable.  But as these sources become more common, eventually the poison begins to degrade the quality of life and finally becomes deadly.  Taken to its awful conclusion the only way to survive extremely high concentrations of air pollutants would be to breath only filtered and purified air.  People would be forced to live in pressure vessels that could exclude the poisonous exterior atmosphere.  And even if the people come to their senses and take steps to eliminate the sources of the pollution it would take a very long time for conditions to return to normal.

So, we are embedded in this hostile environment.  We can think about how we can restore the former condition and even begin to put them into practice but the situation on the ground is that for the foreseeable future it is necessary to take drastic measures just to survive in the present environment.  In the analogy of air pollution, it is necessary to artificially separate people from the toxic environment in order to survive.  For us that means separating all the absolutely critical life functions (religion, child rearing, family life and time with friends) from the toxic environment.  So be it.

What that means to me is that depending on the Republicans or Donald Trump or the Supreme Court to rescue us from the worsening situation is misguided.  When confronted with a potentially lethal environment the only reasonable course of action is to build a shelter to survive it.  You have to protect your children from the toxic culture.  Home-schooling or a religious school (as long as it’s actually religious), restrictions on television and other entertainment, healthy activities, screening friends and their parents for unhealthy individuals, spending time with your children and talking to them about the things in the world that aren’t good for them.  All these things play a part.  An enormous part of your life has to be separated from the matrix in which you find yourself and this outside world has to be duplicated as a healthy version.  All of these things are complicated and expensive both in time and money.  And each one could be the subject of a post (or a hundred books).  Rod Dreher’s book “The Benedict Option” is a good source book for ideas.  But first of all come to terms with the fact that it has to be done.  So be it.  Make the best of it.

 

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What Will the Right Wing Look Like in a Year?

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Who survives the great purge on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and who does not?  It’s an interesting question.  If being banished from YouTube is the end of your career then I guess the ranks will be significantly thinned next year.  Apparently, the powers that be want to go this way.  It will be interesting to see if anyone steps into the breech with a platform that functions enough like YouTube to provide a revenue stream to those dispossessed from the mainstream sites.  As demonstrated by the YouTube shooter, some people can make a living (of some sort) from YouTube popularity alone.  I myself, not having a presence on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, am currently outside the influence of the conventional social media networks.  But there are quite a few people who earn a living off of the advertising that a YouTube site generates.  Will these people simply disappear or will they attempt to self-monetize via paid subscriptions or some other mechanism?  This is a pretty important question.  People talk a lot about building new platforms for the right but actually getting one up and running is much easier said than done.  Being forced to do it will be a painful and difficult ordeal.  But if anyone does make the transition it will be an important beachhead that will provide that person a significant advantage.  If he can make the service available to others it will be a virtual monopoly since I doubt a second conservative social media entrepreneur will spring up to challenge it.

Or maybe YouTube once put outside the reach of conservatives will be bypassed as a concept.  After all, podcasts and website-based subscriptions are easy enough to do.  No one has to use the YouTube model.  Personally, I like the idea of a podcast type arrangement.  I don’t currently do anything behind a paywall but I actually think it’s the arrangement that makes the most sense.  If you have something of value people will be willing to pay something for it.  The negotiations will of course be how much.  I have in the past subscribed to a few of these.  But I am very interested to see which way all this goes.  In some ways, it seems the folks at YouTube and Twitter may be making a big mistake.  If they do force the Right to become self-sufficient on their own platforms it might actually strengthen them and remove the leverage the Left currently has and uses against the Right to great effect.

I really feel the Right Wing has been very ineffective up until now exploiting the power of the internet commercially.  It’s shocking how little has been done to challenge the media monopoly the old media enjoys even over the internet.  Basically, a handful of sites make up the bulk of right wing opinion.  Hopefully this will improve in the next few years and we can hope to see less reliance on Fox News and Drudge.  Even Real Clear Politics seems to have way too much left wing editorial positioning and not enough interesting voices from the Right.  American Greatness is good but voices from even farther to the Right should be included to capture the range of ideas that need to be considered.

 

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Do I Have to Have an Opinion on Kevin Williamson?

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The Right-Wing is awash in Kevin Williamson opinion.

 

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2018/04/a-negative-asset.html

 

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2018/04/what-he-said.html

 

http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=13425

 

“Schaedenfreude,” “Christian condolence,” “there but for the grace of God,” “I told you so,” “a cautionary tale.” I guess I’m not sure what I think.  Probably a little of each.  But it really doesn’t matter what I think about Kevin and his troubles.  But what I think would be interesting would be an interview by someone farther out on the right side of the spectrum who could explore how he thinks this fits in with his ideas about the just desserts for the dirt people.  I wonder if some intrepid blogger might call him up and find out if his recent experience may have impacted his feeling about the great unwashed.  That would interest me.

 

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