Month: May 2022

David Brooks Begs Democrats to Stop Being Democrats or Else Trump Will Win in 2024

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David Brooks the premier Never Trumper who left the Republicans to rejoin his real friends on the Left, is now warning the Democrats that in order to avoid disaster in 2024 they will have to pretend to be Republicans.  At least until after Election Day.

“We all make mistakes; the question is, do we learn from them? Over the past couple of years people on the left side of the political and cultural spectrum have made their share. These have contributed to the Democrats’ extremely bleak political prospects going into the midterms. Far worse, it is now quite plausible that Donald Trump could win re-election in 2024.”

Notice how the real danger is that Donald Trump could get back in the White House.

Now he gives his pals the benefit of his vast knowledge of conservative lore that he still has from his years as a fake conservative.  He gives them a laundry list of progressive talking points that have made them radioactive with the American voters.

“If we’re going to prevent that kind of catastrophe, it might be a good idea to learn a few relevant lessons:

  • It is possible to overstimulate the economy.
  • Law and order is not just a racist dog whistle.
  • Don’t politicize everything.
  • Border security is not just a Republican talking point.
  • “People of color” is not a thing.
  • Deficits do matter.
  • The New Deal happened once.

Year after year Democrats imagine that if they can hand people checks and benefits, they will be rewarded with votes, allowing them to build a dominant majority coalition. It’s not that simple. I enthusiastically supported many of these policies, but we live in an age in which culture, values and identity issues drive politics at least as much as policy.”

But if you look at that list, it’s the whole Democrat campaign platform.  If you take away all of those things all they have left is graft and corruption without even a fig leaf.

“The Democrats’ largest problem is this: We are living in an age of fear, insecurity and disorder on an array of fronts. The Republicans have traditionally been known as the party of toughness and order. Democrats are going to have to find a posture that is tough on disorder, and tough on the causes of disorder.”

This is hilarious.  Here is Brooks trying to tell his Democrat friends that everything about them is causing the electorate to run screaming to the Republicans.  And not just Independents.  Whole chunks of the Democrat coalition are peeling off.  Hispanics, black men, Asians, Jews, even suburban women are splintering off from the Democrat vote in significant numbers.  And so, since Brooks isn’t a Republican any more, he’s looking to shore up the only side left open to him.

But of course, they can’t pay heed to his warning.  He’s asking them to give up their religion.  And so, November will be a powerful experience.  Well maybe David Brooks can get a job at Reason Magazine.

Improving My Mind

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Watching Joe Biden turn into a mumbling moron with stuffed artichokes for brains has reminded me that for us older folks it’s use it or lose it.  So, I’ve initiated a cultural renaissance right here in Dunwich.  I’ve got three very different reading projects going on.  They are:

 

  1. Northmen: The Viking Saga, AD 793-1241, by John Haywood
  2. The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Oriented Deliberation in View of the Dogmatic Problem of Hereditary Sin, by Søren Kierkegaard
  3. The Bounty Trilogy: The Complete Series: Mutiny on the Bounty, Men Against the Sea & Pitcairn’s Island, by James Norman Hall (Author), Charles Nordhoff (Author)

The Kierkegaard book on “Anxiety” is the most questionable project.  I took some courses in philosophy as an undergraduate and found them to be highly annoying.  They seem to spend so much time and effort splitting hairs that by the end, all of the audience has walked away in boredom.  And they employ so much specialized jargon that the notes for the vocabulary sometimes outweighs the text itself.  But I want to give this guy the benefit of the doubt.  He claims he wants to make philosophy more about what we need to do as human beings and less about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.  I figure the least I can do is slog through the argument.

The Bounty trilogy is just a book I’ve always meant to read and now have finally gotten around to.  And so far, it’s a good one.  I’m finding that the 1930’s Charles Laughton movie is pretty close to the text.  It’s an exciting adventure story that has the added advantage of having actually happened.  It is a fictionalized account but it is based on the documents left by the protagonists and by their descendants.  Other than the myriad of parts of a sailing ship that I don’t know the names of the book is a fast read.  I’ll have a review of this when I finish.

The Northmen book is something I’ve been interested in learning more about for a while.  I was writing a sci-fi/ fantasy story that used Valhalla as a plot element and I just kept running into aspects of Norse mythology and history that I wasn’t up on.  This book looked to be a way to fill in some gaps and also provide me with some information I’ve always been interested in.  The Scandinavians had a very large impact on several different aspects of European and by extension world history.  I feel like I should know a lot more about their origins before I start introducing them and their culture into my stories.  I’ve just gotten started with the book but already I’ve learned a bit about the origins of the Goths, Burgundians and Vandals that I didn’t already know.

As I said yesterday, our whole lives shouldn’t be railing against the progs.  As the ZMan says, a negative identity does not provide a basis for a viable society.  We must pursue the actions and goals that have intrinsic value.  If we are claiming that the Left is trying to destroy our way of life by denying us the opportunity to do things that we value then shouldn’t we be doing everything we can to do these things?  Otherwise, it’s all just cant and posturing.

So, stretch your mind and learn something new.  Then figure a way to make some of it relevant to your life.

A Hint of Summer

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As I mentioned earlier Camera Girl and I went out this morning on a photographic journey to capture the flowers and other manifestations of spring.  There’s a very large elm tree, the only healthy mature elm in the whole area of the state, that was just about to bud.  And I wanted to get a shot of the skunk cabbage that are impressively large this year.  So, we went here and there and that took up the early morning.  Then we did some more prosaic things.  I needed to buy about four hundred feet of hose for the gardens.  And Camera Girl needed some cherry tomato plants for her garden.  Then we came home and I had to do some repairs to a fence.

And about halfway through my work I realized it was way too warm to wear a sweatshirt.  So, I looked up in the sky and around the yard and thought, “Summer’s coming.”

And that’s funny because last night the weather girl said there was a frost warning for the area.  New England is a strange place.  I read that there has been measurable snow in Massachusetts in every month but July.  It’s a mighty silly way to run a climate.  That much is certain.

But we’re definitely now in the warm weather and people will start trying to enjoy life.  They’ll want to have cookouts and go to sports events and head for the lakes and beaches.  And even though they’ll have their little pleasures, each time they’ll notice that things cost too much and they can’t afford to do what they did a few years ago.  And it will rankle them.

As I said recently, Joe Biden’s regime is a tawdry and third-rate effort.  Everyone in it is incompetent, nasty and pathetic.  Between now and November this is going to be reinforced by every increase in gas and food price and every crime spree and incident at the Mexican border.  By November it’ll feel like that constant dull ache you have when you have a bad tooth that needs to be pulled.

But how do you extract Joe Biden?  He’s going to be there for the next few years and we’re stuck with him.  My plan is to strike a balance.  I won’t ignore Biden because he deserves to be mocked and ridiculed for his incompetence and malfeasance.  But at the same time, we need to spend the majority of our time planning and performing the positive things that make up living.  For me that’s spending time with family and friends, working, playing and of course, annoying Camera Girl.  And those things will keep me more than busy.  But importantly, even the part where I’m blogging won’t be completely taken up reviling Biden.  He’s just not worth it.  From time to time I will wax poetic describing his many failings.  But even then, it will be to make the point that Biden is more of a symptom of our larger problems than a cause.  Any great country that allows itself to be led by anyone as stupid and dishonest as Joe Biden has already reached a crisis and must do much more than replace him to correct the dire straits it’s already in.

This week Camera Girl and I will be getting together with friends we haven’t seen in way too long because of the COVID nonsense.  We’ll go to soccer games and tennis matches that the grandsons are playing in.  We’ll work in the yard and do our spring chores.  And we’ll be hosting the first barbecues of the season.  It’s still mid-spring but it feels like summer is opening up in front of us.

So, the winter of Biden discontent is turning glorious summer and we’ll work around him.  He’s a hindrance to enjoying life but he isn’t terminal.  What we need to spend time doing is thinking of how we escape from the Leftist death trap we’re in.  Elon Musk gave us a taste of what it means to win a victory against the Left.  Other leaders need to do their parts.  DeSantis is doing his part.  It’s time for other governors and legislatures to emulate these tactics and push back against the Left.

Summer’s coming.  I’m going to get out there and live.

01MAY2022 – OCF Update – May Day Comrades!

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May Day!  That glorious day when Soviet leaders would parade fake ICBM’s down the main street of Moscow to impress the world with their ability to make fake ICBM’s.  And the music.  Just inspirational.

Today is the second beautiful day in a row and I’ll be heading out with Camera Girl to photograph Spring!   You know, renewal, rebirth, everything blooming, all that crap.  She will be my driver and native bearer.  A sort of combination of Frank Buck’s right hand man Ali and a Sherpa guide.  Her job is to watch the road and if I shout to be let out on the road, she must try and find a spot where it won’t cause a major crash.  Then she returns to pick me up after a few minutes without law enforcement intervening.  It’s a delicate dance.

Yesterday I finally attacked the poison ivy.  So far I seem to have escaped without dissolving into a puddle of festering sores and bubbling flesh.  But there’s still time.

Today Camera Girl alerted me to a war going on in the field.  For the last three years running a pair of barn swallows have taken up residence in one of the blue bird houses I put up.  And for the third year running a blue bird shows up after they’ve set up house keeping and tries to dispute their ownership.  He’s like the Occupy Wall Street of birds.  And every year they kick his butt and send him packing.  These blue birds are pathetic losers and I am ashamed that I installed these houses for them.  No wonder they’re endangered.  I’m renaming the houses barn swallow houses.  I’ll leave the government and Section 8 housing for those shiftless blue birds.

 

Here’s one of their earlier attempts to steal back the house last year.

So anyway today will be Camera Girl and I at play in the fields of the Lord.  But I’m sure to be back later to complain about something else.  Enjoy the day.