Author: photog

06JUN2024 – If This Goes On

photog Current Events, Trump ,

Another D-Day, another milestone that has lost its connection to the current day reality.  Imagine if Joe Biden wanted a draft to fight the Russians or the Chinese.  Would the Zoomers show up?  No.  They’d walk away.  Every particle of pride and patriotism has been vacuum-sublimated right out of them.  D-Day is just a subject for a first-person shooter video game.  Dying for their country or for freedom doesn’t have any meaning.  Now they’ll protest for climate change or against oil or to save the Palestinians.  They’ll block streets or occupy the Registrar’s Office or riot if they think the city or state will let them.  But if someone has a gun and is likely to fire it, they don’t want any part of that.

WE live in a different world.  The government has perfected a formula for controlling the populace through perpetual crisis.  COVID or bank failure or economic meltdown or border crisis or race war or terrorist attack or overseas war or, or, or.  They’ve got a crisis du jour to keep the people scared and docile.

So, the only question at this point is:

Can this go on forever?

They’re bankrupting us and making it impossible for us to live a middle-class life.  They insult and threaten us with ever more repressive infringements on our rights.  They lie to us about everything they say.  And now it’s clear they want to replace us with third world serfs that will work for nothing.

Unfortunately, I think the answer is that it can go on forever.  What they’ve done is replaced independent-minded free Americans with impoverished third-world peasants who will do anything not to have to go back to hell.  It would take an army of people determined to resist impoverishment and with an organized and well-thought-out plan of action that could push back the federal government in a wealthy state with enough resources and liberty-minded citizens to push back the feds and make them go home to Washington.

I’d like to believe that such an organization will appear.  But I’m very doubtful that it will.  There have been some individual actions in places like Florida and Texas that gives me glimmers of hope.  But there’s a big difference between that and an army of people united in an effort to free themselves from the tyranny of the managerial state.  I hate to harken back to the great man model but it always seems to come back to it.  All of these ideas come back to someone with money, power and guts organizing the effort and providing the energy needed to organize the effort and keep it going for years.

And of course, the federal government won’t be doing nothing while this “revolt” is taking place.  They’ll be playing hardball including imprisoning anyone they can.  It will begin to resemble a war and there will be plenty of casualties.  And that is the biggest reason why I hesitate to think anything will be accomplished.  Will even a great man risk prison or worse for himself and his family?  Donald Trump is giving us a taste of what that will be like.  Will his example inspire imitators or act as a cautionary tale to warn them off?

What do you think?

What Will Come of the Resistance to the Leftist Federal Government?

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

photog Book Reviews, Current Events, Reviews ,

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

photog ArthurinCali, Current Events, Guest Contributors , ,

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

photog Current Events , , ,

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

photog Guest Contributors, pie

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.