Author: photog

Michael Anton Reviews Glenn Ellmers’s “The Narrow Passage”

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I just read Michael Anton’s review of Glenn Elmer’s book “The Narrow Passage.”  The book is an attempt to identify the origins and reasons for the degeneration of Western society that currently is described as “woke culture.”

I won’t attempt to paraphrase his paraphrase of Elmer’s argument but it will be enough to say that Elmer’s thesis is that woke culture is the result of the same tendency that destroyed fifth century Athens.  Basically the elites of that time and place rejected religion based on the rational arguments of the philosophers and the moral relativism that replaced religion proved too nihilistic to sustain a healthy society.  Now this is my cheap and dirty version of Anton’s essay but it gives you the idea.

And truthfully it sounds about right.  When you displace God in a community’s life what’s left is pretty awful.  Anton’s review looks at all of the historical precedents for this theory from Plato to the Straussians.  But the overarching concept is pretty clear.  Pushing God out leads to the woke mindset.  Sometimes not directly but eventually as everything normal and decent is questioned and rejected for the sake of freedom.

Interesting essay.  I’m tempted to read the book but we’ll have to see.  There’s so much to do.  Time’s short.

Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 05JUN2024 – Clown World Headline

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https://x.com/ArthurinCali/status/1798371419270898166

Meanwhile, institutional media such as The Washington Post continues to try and curry favor with the administration by putting out headlines like, “Biden seeks to cast Trump as would-be authoritarian.” Really? The same Biden & Co. that disregards SCOTUS decisions, abdicates their duty to defend our nation’s borders, has his political opposition charged and convicted by sycophant allies in multiple US states? A Hollywood screenplay couldn’t be written this good as a political thriller.

Do the Right Thing

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The Washington Post lost $77 million last year.  Now the paper’s owner Jeff Bezos spends $77 million on having his bald head waxed every month so the amount of money is almost inconsequential.  But the fact that they lost half of their subscription base was just too embarrassing and so Bezos brought in a hatchet man as publisher and now he has given the paper’s first female executive editor; Sally Buzbee the boot.

Well, the newsroom is very unhappy.  And what is there number one worry?  Loss of diversity!

  • “I don’t think she deserved to go out this way,” the first staffer told me, noting that in conversations with their colleagues, people “don’t feel good about the fact that the first female executive editor of The Washington Post got a one paragraph goodbye note at 8:30 p.m. on a Sunday, and that she’s being replaced by more white men we don’t know.”

 

  • “Everyone was pretty shocked with your email last night,” one reporter said at the meeting, according to a source present. The reporter suggested that “the most cynical interpretation sort of feels like you chose two of your buddies to come in and help run the Post, and we now have four white men running three newsrooms,” and expressed surprise at this development given Lewis’s prior commitments to diversity.

 

  • Later in the meeting, another reporter asked Lewis whether “any women or people of color were interviewed and seriously considered for either of these positions,” a question that prompted applause.

Unfortunately, their boss is a little more concerned with the lack of readers wanting to read the written product produced by this much vaunted diversity:

  • At one point Lewis was asked whether he was intentionally bringing in people who come from a different culture than the Post. “We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore,” Lewis said. “So, I’ve had to take decisive, urgent action to set us on a different path, sourcing talent that I have worked with that are the best of the best.”

 

  • “Don’t we need our brilliant social journalists and service journalists as embedded in our core product to make sure that people are actually reading the thing that’s out at the center of the mission of the Washington Post?” one staffer asked, to which Lewis replied, “You haven’t done it. I’ve listened to the platitudes. Honestly, it’s just not happening.”

 

  • “The fact that Will Lewis keeps going to his network rather than plucking Washington Post leadership implies that he finds everyone lacking, and I think that’s kind of the most disturbing thing,” a second staffer told me.

 

So, the Washington Post is no longer selling something people want to buy, threatening the jobs of everyone working there and all the drones working there care is that the people being sent in to save their jobs are white men!

It might almost make you wonder if maybe this fixation on race and gender clouds their judgement in terms of their writing.

I guess there’s some hope in the fact that the publisher they brought in openly tells his employees that they are failing at their jobs and things have to change.  Of course, what he probably really has to do is lower his costs by reducing his staff to an absolute minimum and pay them as little as possible.  He’s probably thinking he can buy an AI that will write, “Orange Man bad” for a small fraction of what he pays his Ivy League diversity hires.

The truth is that the whole news business has been upended by the impact of Google on the advertising model and also the ubiquity of news and opinion across the internet threatens the very existence of the print news industry.  Well, some of them will make it.  Apparently, the New York Times has stabilized their subscriptions by adding digital accounts successfully so it can be done.  But maybe there’s no place for another New York Times.  Maybe the Washington Post will have to go.  As I said, Jeff Bezos can pay to keep open or close down the Washington Post without changing his profit statement even a single percent.  But what will be interesting is how the delicate snowflakes react to the news that diversity doesn’t pay the bills or give the owner a reason to keep the place going in the absence of profits.

Now Christopher Rufo has become interested in the trials and tribulations of the Washington Post’s attempt to return to profitability.  And he’s come up with a recommendation.  Fire Taylor Lorenz.  You may remember Taylor from the time she doxed the woman who runs Libs of TikTok.  Because of this she is a very unpopular with a pretty good part of the American public.  Rufo’s point is that if the Washington Post wants to increase its potential reader pool maybe they should eliminate the more ethically challenged staff members.  And that’s the real reason for me writing this post.  I just think it would be hilarious if they gave Taylor the boot.

Guest Contributor – pie – 05JUN2024 – Unchecked, Unbalanced

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when the judiciary has become weaponized it is the house, senate and executive branch who is responsible for the check and balance of power. and visa versa. it appears the 3 branches of government have colluded to protect each other from the checks and balance. similarly the executive branch has allowed a foreign invasion with but whimper from the other branches. biden has outright negated the highest court ruling to the unconstitutional student loan forgiveness, working around the judicial branch of government. the 3 branches of government are a union of power bent on the protection of each other. this form of government will destroy the civility of america. after the trump communist court ruling to imprison the presidential election opposition, the house should have immediately called for shuttering of the judicial system. this is a weaponized government to further remove the voice of the people. wonder if we get a check on the balance of power if obama went to jail? the weaponized authority will continue for as long as we recognize this authority. recognition is the first step to repentance and politics. no need for any action but self preservation. the first step is “no thank you, i will not recognize your authority”. if the current executive branch “biden” does not recognize the authority of the highest court in the land “judicial branch”, why should we? follow the example. in a nationally civil country this a legally arguable point. beware of authority in these times until proven friendly.

Nigel Farage Will Run for Seat in Parliament

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Now that the Tories have used their time in power to prove themselves clowns and enemies of freedom Nigel Farage has decided to give the normal people of England a better choice than the almost equally awful Labor Party.  He’ll be running as a candidate of the Reform UK party.  Farage is the father of the Brexit movement and a businessman.  And he wants to replace the Tories with something better.

It will take a while for the Reform party to gather up the disgusted former Tory voters so Labor will be in charge for the foreseeable future.  But just as with the RINOs in America you can’t make any progress until you eliminate the wolves in sheep’s clothing.  Kudos to Farage for beginning the long project that needs to happen.

FUD

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Fear, uncertainty, disinformation.  These things seem to almost define the government’s policies toward us.  Most prominent in recent years was the COVID campaign.  The use of fear and disinformation to force behavior in a population was on a previously unheard-of scale.  Most vivid was Biden’s heinous prediction that the unvaccinated would suffer a winter of severe illness and death.  Lying to their fellow citizens has now reached the ultimate stage where nothing resembling the truth is used.  Basically, we have stepped over the line and adopted the Stalinist practices described by George Orwell in his novel “1984.”  The truth has disappeared completely from the government’s communications with us.

Knowing this to be the case, it behooves each of us to become “Washington-ologists,” sort of like the Kremlinologists that the Defense Department employed to figure out Soviet nuclear strategy.  We have to parse the lies being broadcast by the government and translate them into the underlying activities that Washington is attempting to inflict upon us.

For instance, Joe Biden and his allies in the Blue States have been declaring the end of the gasoline fueled automobile.  They’ve done everything they can do to make it seem as if within five years you won’t be able to buy or use anything but a battery car.  And this produces, fear, uncertainty and doubt in the minds of the average person.  They think, “Can this be true?  Will I be forced to lose my investment in my automobile if I don’t unload it now and buy a battery car?”  And some people actually go ahead and buy a battery car and find out about the problems of buying into this unsatisfactory technology and the current lack of infrastructure to use it.

But once they’ve wasted the money they’re trapped into this choice and so Biden’s scare tactic succeeds.  Meanwhile based on how little has actually been done to provide power for these battery cars, there really isn’t any hope of this technology becoming dominant for the foreseeable future.  But using fear and intimidation it pushes forward the outcome that the Left desires.

I think that a wise strategy to implement when dealing with pronouncements from Washington is to assume that anything they try to scare you with is a lie and anything they tell you is for your own good is meant to hurt you.  If you use that algorithm, you probably won’t be too far from the truth.  Now the tricky part comes when you try to avoid doing what they want to force on you.  As you can see from the COVID vaccine example they’ll go pretty far to coerce behavior.  And the closer your life is enmeshed with the federal government (federal employee, contractor) the harder it will be to say no.  That right there shows you why staying out of their orbit might be the smartest thing you can do.  But even independent people have entanglements with the feds.  The IRS and government mandates applying to private corporations like the FDA and other regulatory agencies can make it difficult to just ignore the dictates of Washington.

But at least if you approach the disinformation coming out of Washington from a skeptical stance you increase your chances of avoiding harm.  Of course, your friends and family will claim you’re a conspiracy theorist but as we’ve seen many of those theories have turned out to be true.  So let the citizen beware.

But watching the recent Congressional hearings on the COVID debacle where Fauci claims that he never caused any problems or misled us about anything is comedic gold.  Listening to his side of it he’s never even heard of COVID!”