Month: December 2023

Mirror Image

photog Current Events, Trump , ,

Recently, I had a short conversation with someone on the Left.  In New England, that’s hardly an unexpected situation.  But for me to discuss the political situation with people on the other side of the political divide is quite rare.  Basically, I don’t bother to debate the political issues with those on the Left.  It serves no useful purpose for me.  We would not be able to even agree on the definitions of the things about which we disagree.  There’s no point of contact between our world views.

But a funny thing happened.  Someone I met in town while waiting in a line asked me what I thought would happen after the November election.  We had been standing in line and we were talking about Christmas get togethers and then we mentioned the New Year and he reminded me it was an election year.  I said in a neutral way that it was going to be an ugly campaign.  He agreed but said he thought that it would provide closure.  Specifically, he asked whether I thought that things would go back to normal if Trump lost.

I answered his question with a question.  I asked, “Would things go back to normal if Trump won?”  He flinched and said, “No, of course not!”  I asked why and he said, “Because that would be intolerable.”  I replied, “You’ve just given the answer to your question.”  He seemed very surprised and then thoughtful.  He stopped talking to me and we stood in silence until his turn in the line was called.  I can’t be sure but I think I witnessed an epiphany.

The people on the Left, a lot of them anyway, think Trump is some kind of a hypnotist that has mesmerized otherwise normal people into saying and doing things that they would otherwise not do.  They think that Trump voters are acting against their own best interests and even against their own beliefs.  They figure if Trump is eliminated then Republicans will go back to voting for Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush and Liz Cheney.  We’ll cheer for illegal aliens sucking up all the federal government’s resources.  We’ll come around to accepting doctors castrating boys and neutering girls and allowing perverts to groom young children in grade school.

They blame Trump for the revolt that he spearheaded.  They either believe or pretend to believe that all the stuff like Russia-gate and the suppression of Hunter’s laptop and COVID lab leak are just rightwing conspiracy theories.  So, they either believe or just hope that once Trump leaves the scene more reasonable Republicans will take control of the party and steer us back into the calmer days of George W Bush, or better still, Mitt Romney.  Mitt is every Democrat’s favorite Republican; technically competent, ethically spineless and willing to take any amount of abuse without uttering a single word in his own defense.

But I think I impinged on this one Democrat’s reassuring bubble.  I think I revealed to him that there is a mirror image to his world view.  And that it rules out the old status quo.  The old world where Democrats and Republicans were two ends of a single spectrum of American voters is completely gone.  It’s been replaced by a landscape where close to half the population feels like they’re living through an occupation complete with gestapo and fake elections.  They may be afraid to revolt against the army of occupation but that doesn’t mean they feel any kinship with their occupiers.

I think I convinced him that November isn’t going to end anything.  It’s just the beginning of the next phase, one way or the other.

So Where Are All the Reparations?

photog Current Events

New York is jumping on California’s reparations bandwagon.  I expect there will be a bumper crop of twenty something white kids kissing the shoes of black people in New York City.  And I imagine all the fun mischief that could be extracted with the help of some makeup and various shoe contaminants.  But what really interests me is where are all the reparations?

I mean, if I’m a black Californian, I must be thinking where are my millions of dollars?  This thing has been kicking around for a long time but no money has been forthcoming.  So, what the hell is going on?  I have to assume that California is made up of at least 51% anti-black racists.  And that’s odd.  Because California is less than 50% white.  That seems to imply that there are non-white racists which I’ve been told is impossible according to the prevailing definition of racism.

So how does this get resolved?  My hope was that the Silicon Valley billionaires pool their capital and provide the reparations out of pocket.  So, I googled a few numbers and did some back of the envelope calculations (you know, engineers, right?)  And I found out some stuff.

Black population of California 2,000,000
Resources of ultra rich Californians $688,000,000,000
Cost of Reparations (per person) $10,000,000
Total cost of Reparations $20,000,000,000,000
Reparation deficit $19,312,000,000,000

Now I ballparked reparations to be what I would want if someone was going to give me a crazy lump sum.  I mean, who is going to argue he “needs” more than ten million bucks?  Well, not believably.  I defined ultra rich as having a net worth of a billion dollars or more.

But it turns out these billionaires aren’t all that rich after all.  Between the bunch of them they have less than 5% of the twenty trillion dollars needed.  They couldn’t even crack a single trillion by pooling all their wealth.  Losers!

So, California is in a sort of pickle.  They’ve yakked and yakked about these reparations but truth be told, they don’t have the cash in hand.  You know, maybe they can borrow the twenty trillion from Uncle Sam.  He’s a sucker for a sob story.  I mean he hands out trillions like they were going out of style.  I think the national debt is something north of thirty-seven trillion so twenty trillion is at least heard of.  And the Biden administration is a big fan of California.  He’s copying their energy policy.  So maybe he’ll give them a loan, that they’ll never pay back.  But then the rest of the states will want the same deal.  And based on my similarly back of the envelope calculations Washington will have to print up about $600,000,000,000,000 (six hundred trillion dollars).  Whoa!

Now I don’t think anyone has much experience with that kind of deficit spending but I’m gonna guess that wheel barrels of hundred-dollar bills wouldn’t begin to describe what kind of hyperinflation we’d be looking at.  Even Zimbabwe would be impressed at that kind of fiscal insanity.

Someone might say, well, maybe we can cut it down to one million dollars apiece.  That would cut the whole thing down to 60 trillion dollars.  Sure, we’d still be relegating the United States to banditry and possibly cannibalism just to stay alive.  But how can someone in California survive on a one-time cash settlement of one million dollars?  It’s laughably insufficient.  In four or five years many of these folks would be looking for another reparation.  And then where would we be?

No, it’s six hundred trillion or nothing as far as I can tell.  So, I hope they get their act together in California and get this show on the road.  They only know for a fact that Biden will be in office for another year and so he’ll need that pen of his to write the executive order to authorize the $600,000,000,000,000 check he’ll have to cut for this worthy project.

Come on Joe.  Better hurry up.  Printing all those bills is gonna take a while.  November is almost here.

A Sanity Check on the Revolution

photog Current Events ,

As another presidential election day approaches people are once again wondering if things can get better.  Will Trump be disqualified from running?  Will he win?  If he wins, can he accomplish any of the radical reforms that are desperately needed?

Of course, there’s no agreement on what will happen.  Opinions are all over the place.  But it’s my contention that nothing meaningful will happen until change begins to occur outside of Washington.  Wahington is so corrupt and power is so diffused between the various branches and agencies of government that turning the ship of state is a glacial process.

I think the change has to occur in state capitols and in private organizations.  And a little of that has begun.  I guess the clearest signs are in Florida where a Republican governor and legislature have begun to effect meaningful change in school and colleges.  Or look in Texas where their Republican politicians have taken steps to confront illegal aliens flooding across their border.

These are important steps; necessary steps.  But they are not enough.  The next step is for private organizations; for-profit and not-for-profit corporations to begin providing the choices that make up the alternative to the Woke Matrix that we’re all embedded in.  We need stores willing to sell us books and movies that don’t adhere to the precepts of the new orthodoxy.  We need a social media that allows free speech.    We need organizations to take the place of the Boy Scouts and the other captured social groups.

And even in these things the very first steps have been taken.  Elon Musk has challenged the government and the woke capitalist hierarchy by allowing relatively free speech on X.  That actually is huge.  Companies like the Babylon Bee and the Daily Wire have begun making entertainment that crosses all the lines that the Left has drawn.  Now none of these companies are any threat to Disney or even the smallest entertainment company but they are a beginning and a beacon for anyone else who would like to provide much needed choices for people on the Right.

And someone like Tucker Carlson is another trailblazer.   He is stepping into the space left open when Fox News allowed itself to be bitch-slapped into submission by Washington’s stooges.  He is willing to say what he actually thinks about the banana republic tactics of the Justice Department and the other organs of the Deep State.  And there is a small cadre of other reporters on the Right (and the Center-Left) who have the guts to speak out when thugs in our own government use gestapo tactics on Americans in high places and low.

But all these cases are embryonic; they’re just tiny buds and shoots of the forest of alternative services and businesses that are needed.  We need private schools and state vouchers to make them competitive.  We need entrepreneurs with deep pockets to emulate what Elon Musk has done.  They need to cater to the 30% – 50% of the country that are sick of Dylan Mulvaney and LGBTQ Snow White and Drag Queen Groomers and everything else that the current Federal/Educational/Commercial-Complex is pushing.

So, my sanity check says that right now the revolution is almost impossible to detect.  But you just barely can.  And believe it or not that is enough to keep me on board.  The body has a pulse.  Breathing is irregular but ongoing.  There are efforts to resist the madness and where they are pushed, they show results.  A bunch of states have banned trans-surgeries and puberty blocking drugs on children.  That’s huge!  And it happened because a few people at the state level spoke up and said it was wrong.  And now that example is giving other people courage to challenge the AMA and other professional organizations that knuckle under to fringe activist groups.  Lawsuits are being brought that will punish doctors and other professionals that are doing irreparable harm to children and even adults.

Things are beginning.  But all of it is so tiny in relation to the size and power of the opposition that it is daunting.  But what I believe is most lacking is a powerful charismatic leader to organize the disparate efforts in all the fields that, put together, could provide an identity and a unity to the Americans who are shunned and demonized by the present regime.  Who will step forward and make that happen?  That’s the next step.