All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
In a particularly thoughtful article the ZMan considers the spectacle going on in a Manhattan courtroom where Donald Trump is being given the full treatment from a cartoonish New York City legal system that is astonishing in its corruptness.
I think it speaks well of ZMan that he recognizes the stark contrast between Trump and his enemies. Even while rejecting and even reviling Trump’s civic nationalism ZMan points out the stark superiority of the man versus his odious enemies.
A good read.
“Conservative” is now a term of derision. People in the dissident right use it as a swear word. I guess the replacement term for the people who resist the progressives is now simply “the right.”
Well, whatever you call them and whatever they believe in, they are a mess. Organizationally, their leadership is nominally the Republican party and that’s as laughably absurd as anything imaginable. That would be like an organization of sheep electing a wolf pack as their police department.
Now, I guess you can say that Donald Trump has taken the first baby steps toward changing that situation. His candidacy has driven certain absurdly obvious RINOs out of the party. The best documented case is Liz Cheney being primaried out of her seat. But only slightly less hilarious is the ejection of Mitt Romney from his senate seat. Technically he refused to run for re-election. But despite his claim that he was afraid of assassination by rogue Bugaloo Boys the truth was that he knew he was going to be primaried out of his seat. And Trump’s presidential campaign has forced the likes of even Nikki Haley to kiss the ring in order to even remain in the party for the future.
But these truly are baby steps. What is needed is an organization that reaches from the local grassroots all the way up to state and national leaders. And it needs to be doing much more than politics. Let’s face it, politics is just influence peddling and what needs to be enacted is a way for us to band together to buy influence from the crooks we hire as the face of the party. Sure, we know they’re selling themselves to the contractors but at least let’s prevent them from being bought by the contractors who hate us. Let’s make sure that GLAAD and the other left-wing NGOs are restricted to buying influence from the Democrats.
After all, a phony like Marco Rubio can be made to act in his own best interests and mimic right-wing talking points to keep himself on the gravy train. He’s not a Liz Cheney or a Mitt Romney. He doesn’t believe in the Left’s values. In fact, he doesn’t believe in anything at all so he’s a blank slate that can be bought for the price of a pot of gold. And he’ll stay bought as long as the gold keeps coming. Mitt Romney on the other hand, belongs to the same clubs as George Bush, Bill Clinton and now Barack Obama. He’s following his social set with respect to what behaviors need to be favored and which curtailed. It’s as natural as breathing for him to hate us and force us to submit to their code of behavior.
So, what is needed is an old-fashioned political boss. Someone who doesn’t run for office but controls the politicians and makes sure they do our bidding. Maybe someone in Trump’s camp can be that boss. Maybe Junior wants that job. Maybe not. But I think we need someone to do it. The only way we make such a job attractive is by providing it with the power to get things done. And the only source of power in Washington is money. So, we’d each have to pony up cash to get a circus master that makes the carneys dance for us. And that’s definitely doable. If there are fifty million people on the right (more than that number voted for Trump) and they each donated one hundred dollars a year, that’s five billion dollars a year. You can get a lot done for five billion.
Of course, for that much money I’d expect a lot of results. At the very least I’d want the phonies from the National Review forced to act as dunk tank clowns at the CPAC closing ceremony. And I’d want the Bushes burned in effigy at the Republican National Convention. But beyond that I’d want some kind of accurate scorecard for each member of Congress and for any with a failing score I want to know the date of his upcoming primary election and who will replace him.
But seriously, what would be more important from a political boss is the backroom deals with private corporations to provide measurable progress on social issues that we favor. So, if Disney wants some tax breaks or approval of an acquisition they’ll have to quit their LGBTQ activism. And likewise, companies that take sides in the culture wars can be reined in with the correct use of a carrot or a stick. None of this is rocket science. Money talks and that’s what it would take to change the political system we live under. Hopefully there’s someone who can do the math thinking about this.
Something I’ve noticed lately is that the Left is feeling blue. I think they have a sense that the vast majority of people in the country have come to the realization that the Left has single-handedly ruined a whole slew of very important parts of American life. All kinds of people; poor, rich; black, white, brown; educated and uneducated; men and women. They’ve looked around and they see things like closed up stores in cities, failing school systems, homeless encampments everywhere, violence even in the rich neighborhoods and the cost of living becoming unmanageable. And they all know exactly how and who did it. The Left did it on purpose and unapologetically. And now the fingers are being pointed directly at them. And they want a hug.
I’ll read an article in the Atlantic or the New York Times and they’ll bemoan the loss of safety in the cities and they’ll wring their hands over the paradox of how making the criminal justice system easier on criminals has inexplicably made the streets mysteriously more dangerous. And they’ll finally say, “Well maybe we went too far.” And then they look for some kind of solidarity with the “good people in the middle.” They want to join hands with people who didn’t vote for Joe Biden. They’re looking for the kumbaya moment where we all share the blame for defunding the police and voting in soft on crime prosecutors and mayors. They want absolution; a do-over. Maybe they even want to leave the same bad actors in place and just let them learn from this “teachable moment.”
Of course, there are plenty of Republicans just stupid enough to rise to the bait and “reach across the aisle.” But hopefully the people themselves have become disgusted enough that we can build up a slow boil in society at large. We need enough areas to finally get wise to the futility of cooperating with the Left. States with large cities have to become sophisticated enough to make laws that can allow the state to step in when local officials create dangerous or dysfunctional conditions. They can legislate against unconstitutional gun laws, sanctuaries for illegal aliens or unhealthy treatment of children. And these states can counteract the federal laws that damage life for them. Improve the schools and eliminate propaganda from the Left, welfare reform, defunding of illegal aliens.
So, I take it as a very healthy sign that the Left is worried about the exposure they’ve received for driving the country into a ditch. And anyone who reacts to these kinds of appeals to solidarity and fellow citizenship should have his head examined and then given a good solid butt kicking for good measure.
And as far as these kinds of things happening in deep blue states like California and Oregon, I’m absolutely thrilled. I hope that nothing whatsoever is done to change the policies or alleviate the outcomes of the policies they’ve instituted. I want places like San Francisco and Portland to become just one big homeless encampment. I want every single store in places like Oakland to close up. I want the price of gasoline in Los Angeles to reach twenty dollars a gallon and brownouts to last for most of the workday. What I’d really love to see is all of Silicon Valley move to Texas and California officially go broke and go out of business. Then I’ll give them a hug.
When I was much younger, I remember wondering if there would ever be a time when the state of the art in “film” would allow a decent version of the Lord of the Rings to be made. When Ralph Bakshi’s cartoon over live action was made in 1978, I was quite surprised at how good it was. And I hoped that he would continue the project to finish the complete story. But he never did. Maybe he didn’t make enough money or maybe he got bored. And so, it would be another twenty years before anyone tried again.
Peter Jackson did a remarkable job both visually and artistically of capturing Tolkien’s story. And I think he proved that we have reached a point where regardless of the unreal or fantastic nature of the story CGI can produce a convincing visual representation of that story on the screen. And that was an important moment. For a fan of science fiction and fantasy this is the promised land.
And yet, what have we got now? For every film like Dune where the story faithfully reproduces a worthwhile piece of fiction, we get ten movies like “The Marvels” or “The Last Jedi” or “Madame Web” where the visuals are successful but the story and the acting are unwatchable.
Well, that’s reality. The cultural and societal standards are pretty awful so even if some interesting topic like the Second Age of Middle Earth (Rings of Power) or Harry Seldon’s Psychohistory (Foundation) are being filmed chances are that the result will be terrible.
But the only good thing I can say is that the potential exists for a rogue force like Elon Musk to come along and fund an independent studio to produce some exciting projects. So, eventually we will get good movies. Eventually the profit motive will succeed. Who knows we may be forced to watch Chinese or Hungarian movies in subtitles but it will come. So, patience, patience.
And what might make a good project? Well, based on what we know would sell, how about space opera that is a lot more interesting than the Star Wars universe? How about a project to film the Lensman series? A few updates to the technology might be needed and the chronology might need to be tweaked but then the story would be easily turned into a series of films. It has likeable heroes, awful villains, interesting aliens and plenty of space battles. And best of all, not a girl boss in sight. Just classic square-jawed heroes saving the day and rescuing the damsel in distress. I would guess that the Lensman saga would be easily as popular as Star Wars and in fact more so.
Now another popular film idea would be the Heinlein juveniles. There are several good candidates. As a first choice I’d go with, “Have Spacesuit Will Travel.” It has all the requisite ingredients for a good young adult movie; human interest, suspense, adventure, pathos, humor and the resolution of a coming-of-age story. As a second choice I’d recommend, “The Star Beast.”
It’s an interesting thing to reflect that a really satisfactory movie version of a Heinlein book has never been done. The only one he ever had a hand in was Destination Moon. And while technically there were interesting aspects to the production as a movie it was pretty cut and dry; more of a primer on rocket flight than work of fiction. In terms of popularity, I guess Starship Troopers is the best of those produced, even though the director made it in the spirit of a mockery of the underlying philosophy of the book. A faithful portrayal of Starship Troopers would be an amazing idea for a movie.
And rounding off my picks for Heinlein would be, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.” I think this story would make an excellent film too. I’d especially enjoy seeing the rail gun attack on Earth on the big screen. And I think the friendship between Manny and the artificial intelligence Mike would work great on the screen.
I’ll have to think of some other classic sf&f books that would make good movies. If you can think of any you’d like to see made, leave them in the comments.
The summer doldrums have officially begun. Until Labor Day the only interesting news will consist of Donald Trump being prosecuted, persecuted or whatever the Left wants to call their absurd gestapo action in multiple jurisdictions. So, we’ll have to interest ourselves in “other things” until then.
And that is what I’m scratching my head over. Book reviews, movies, television, plays. Science, music, religion. I’ll have to widen my net to capture things that normal humans interest themselves in. And that’s all to the good.
This weekend we will be hosting some of the Minions. Their parents will pull up to the top of the driveway, toss them out of the vehicle in duffel bags, hit the horn and speed away into the night hoping for the best. Camera Girl has cooked mass quantities of pasta sauce, meatballs and sausage and thereafter imperial tons of spaghetti will be cooked and consumed.
She has procured from various local libraries DVD’s featuring questionable cartoon characters from a selection of eras ranging all the way back to the 1970s. I have begged for a boycott on any further screenings of Scooby Doo and his associates. The answer I received was noncommittal.
The pool will be “opened” this weekend but I expect that for the first week or two the water will be suboptimal. Specifically, it will be opaque and green. I tried to sell Camera Girl on a trip to the regional zoo. She shot this idea down claiming kids don’t like zoos. Hmmm. Maybe she’s right. Maybe we’ll go the reptile zoo instead. I know kids like reptiles.
We’ll probably have a baseball catch one of the days but I’m hoping we can get in some time at the pool table. I think a good sense of geometry and dynamics is useful for any growing boy. Plus, it’s been pretty warm for the last few days and the basement tends to be cooler.
It’s time to find out if the Minions are already slaves to their electronic devices. As far as I know these younger descendants aren’t yet tethered to smartphone entertainment devices. But I’d also like to cut back on the television time too. I’ll make it the long weekend objective to try and bridge the multigenerational gap using non-electronic media. I might even introduce them to the concept of human speech as a means of communication and entertainment. I might even (shudder!) bring down a book from the shelf and read aloud. Hopefully it won’t have the local constabulary at my doorstep demanding equal time for whatever woke PBS kid’s series is currently topical; Gender Fluid Jenny or Fern Affirmed or whoever.
I think I’ll start the weekend with a seminar on geographic and demographic topics in Middle Earth. I’ll skip Beleriand at this time. The Silmarillion is too depressing for the young ones. I’ll highlight various topics with video presentations from Peter Jackson’s motion pictures. I’ll start with the Numenorean kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor and use this as a jumping off point on the branches of the royal family. Of course, there could be extra points for anyone who can specifically identify how many generations separate Elrond and his multi-great nephew Aragorn.
Well, let’s see if I can freehand a map of Middle Earth. As me old gaffer always said, “You’re nowt but a ninnyhammer, photog!”
Hollywood seems incapable of making anything original and all the sequels and reboots they make suck mightily. So, I have decided to step into the breach and provide the ultimate in sequel mashup awfulness.
Movie Treatment: Cosmic-Horror-Palooza
Rick Deckard is at home with his wife Rachael having breakfast before he heads off to work as head school crossing guard at the Philip K Dick Elementary School in Portland Oregon. Rachael is pregnant with their first child and asks Rick to bring her some sweet gherkin pickles on his way home. She chastises him briefly because this is the third time he’s forgotten. He absorbs the abuse kisses her on the forehead and heads out the door while absently loading .45 shells into his revolver.
When he reaches the security office, he notices on the various video surveillance screens that a protest has set up shop in the intersection adjacent to the northwest corner of the school. A mostly crossdressing mob of activists with signs that say REPLICANT-PHOBIA IS HATE were chanting and marching in one of the crosswalks. This would not be an easy day.
Suddenly an energy bolt blazed across the screen and struck one of the extremely plus-sized blonds-wigged transwomen in spandex and left a visibly gaping hole through his body before collapsing onto the asphalt. Several other energy bolts followed in quick succession wreaking havoc with the chant as deep bellows and hoarse screams erupted from the targeted activists.
Deckard bolted for the door and sprinted toward the crime scene. As he approached, he could see that the attack was coming from a tree located fifty yards from the corner. He approached warily, shielding himself from view with the side of the building and ending up very close to the base of the tree. Peering carefully around the corner of the building he could see a shimmering patch of foliage that was the source of the deadly beams. As he watched he could make out what looked like a humanoid form and aiming for the head he unloaded with his .45.
The shimmering patch fell to the ground and Deckard ran over to it. What he saw there startled him. A man shaped creature lay on the ground but the inhuman head had insectoid mandibles. The .45 slugs hadn’t done the head any good but Deckard added a couple more through the cranium just to be sure. Looking around on the ground he found a long rod with a blinking light at one end and what probably was a trigger near the other end. Picking it up and sighting through the blinking light device he aimed at the tree and pushed the trigger. A bright red bolt drilled a two-inch round hole precisely through the 36 inches of the tree trunk and elicited a respectful whistle from the impressed former blade runner.
Looking into the foreground he could see a shimmering area about twenty feet down the sidewalk. Suddenly four of the humanoid creatures approached with their right arms raised in the universal sign of respect for a successful warrior’s victory. They came bearing a large blue lawn dart which one of their comrades had claimed as his trophy over a human in a 1968 Cincinnati Ohio suburb.
But before they could bestow this trophy on Deckard, other creatures poured out of the dimensional portal that the four earlier beings had opened. These creatures were decidedly unlike the first ones. They were about eight feet tall with extremely elongated heads with two sets of jaws, one inside of the other. They had long claws on the feet and hands and a long, pointed tail. Deckard instinctively knew that the saliva dripping from the creatures’ jaws was molecular acid and that this wouldn’t end well.
About twenty of the creatures attacked the four earlier visitors and an enormous battle ensued. The bug-jawed warriors put up a hell of a fight with their energy weapons and the lawn dart but there were just too many of the xenomorphs (Deckard somehow sensed this was what these other creatures should be called). Seeing that the battle would soon be over Deckard called his office and ordered his team to lock down the school and call the authorities. Then he sprinted over to the protest site to warn them away.
Unfortunately, the activists had repurposed the event into a day of rage against transphobic energy-beam wielding haters and they had begun turning over cars and torching them. They had formed a kind of funeral pyre for their fallen comrades but it hadn’t really done a thorough job of consuming their bodies so a very questionable pile of remains remained. Seeing Deckard running toward them carrying the energy weapon they assumed he was the killer and they charged toward him. He stopped and looked around. Behind him the remaining ten or so xenomorphs were coming up quickly in his direction. With the two groups converging on his position imminently, he did what any clear-thinking individual would do. He ran sideways and hoped for the best.
And that worked extraordinarily well for him. But much less well for the angry mob that suddenly intersected with the xenomorphs. It turns out xenomorphs are not transphobic. In fact, it turns out they’re transphilic. In fact, I think they even enjoyed eating the wigs. It wasn’t pretty.
Deckard took the opportunity to sneak over to an entrance to the school and punch in the entry code and head for the security office. When he arrived, his crew updated him on the current state of the “battle.” The xenomorphs were somewhat leisurely feasting on the four warriors and the fifty some-odd rioters. Deckard tried in his mind to come up with a strategy to hold off the xenomorphs until Space Marine troops could be summoned. But nothing occurred to him. He did remember that he had to get those gherkins for Rachael but that didn’t really seem to improve the situation.
But then a very odd thing happened on the screen. One of the corpses of the warriors suddenly stood up and metamorphosed into something that was a combination of the xenomorph and a rioter. It looked like a xenomorph wearing a yellow wig. But it grew to five times the size of one of the xenomorphs and began eating the other xenomorphs. And each time it ate one of them it got bigger. The xenomorphs never ran away and kept fighting but one by one they were swallowed by the shape-shifting creature. At one point a xenomorph managed to rip an arm off the shapeshifter and throw it to the ground. The arm sprouted six spider like legs, a mouth full of teeth at the shoulder and proceeded to attack the xenomorph. Within half an hour the battle was over and the shapeshifter and the walking biting arm coalesced into an amorphous mass of protoplasm. After a short time, the blob flowed over to the school and covered it in a layer of pulsing goo.
Deckard watched in horror as all the doors began to slowly ooze rivulets of the creature. He sent his crew to the doors and they used CO2 fire extinguishers to freeze the jelly as it attempted to enter the building. Things were looking quite bleak as the extinguishers one by one were emptied of their frozen contents. But suddenly the ooze retreated from the doors and the creature flowed off onto the nearby street and reformed into the shape of a yellow wigged transwoman complete with alarmingly overstretched spandex body suit. The creature was apparently asleep. As Deckard watched the sleeping form evaporated completely. At that point he saw that there was a similarly sized shape on the ground about ten feet from where the sleeping creature had been.
Gathering his courage Deckard walked out of the building and approached the shape on the ground. When he got near it, he saw that it was what looked like a giant seed pod. And as he watched it burst open and slowly a living being pushed its way out. When it had exited the pod, it was seen to be an identical blond wigged transwoman; spandex and all. Deckard stood his ground, pointed the energy weapon at the creature and asked it to explain what had just happened.
The creature adjusted its costume, scratched at its beard and explained that its species sent spores throughout space that land on planets and produce seed pods that mimic other life forms and then replace them with their own individuals. And slowly they replace all individuals of the local dominant species and thus take over that world. However, because of all the various different cell types that were present in this individual’s new body, life on Earth was just too painful for it to continue and it begged Deckard to finish it off as a mercy killing. And Deckard promptly obliged it using the alien energy rod. At that point the creature evaporated into the air (except for the spandex suit and wig).
When the police finally showed up, they wanted to know what the hell was going on. All that remained of the battle were the few burned out cars and the spandex suite and wig. Deckard started to tell the whole story then thought better of it and just said there had been a protest that sort of got out of control and left it at that. One of the officers asked him about the energy rod and he said it was a prop for a school play. The police did a walk around and cited the school for a safety violation because of the empty fire extinguishers and Deckard had to fill out a lot of paperwork and give some of his staff a mental health week off to keep them from quitting.
He didn’t get home that night until ten thirty and when he walked in the door Rachael asked him how his day was. He said it was okay. But then she looked at him and said, “You forgot the gherkins!”
So, he turned around and headed off to the grocery store with his walking stick blinking along. She said after him, “Men are so easily distracted.”
Here in Dunwich we had our town budget meeting and the Finance Committee asked for a 10 percent increase and there was an uproar. The Bishops and the Whateleys demanded that First Selectman Cthulhu go into closed session with them and provide an itemized list of all the increases in expenditures. At the end of the session the First Selectman exited the chamber. When asked by the committee if all demands had been satisfied, he belched out a dark viscous cloud and declared, “Sure, at least until dinner anyway. I’m always hungry an hour after Whateley.”
During the next session a group of concerned Dunwichians demanded that alternative revenue raising methods be provided. Cthulhu suggested a 0.001% head tax be levied. This low rate excited many of the concerned group and they asked what details would still have to be worked out if this tax was provisionally approved. The First Selectman confided, “Well we’ll have to figure out how to decide which heads to harvest. I favor going blind fold and just biting off whatever heads come within my grasp until I’ve reached the agreed upon total. That seems fairest.” It was unanimously decided to shelve that proposal indefinitely in favor of the 10% tax increase.
Democracy in action in Dunwich is a frightening but somehow clarifying process. As opposed to other less mythic New England towns Dunwich cuts through the pretense of egalitarianism and nakedly reveals the precise power dynamic between Great Old Ones and anyone small enough to be engulfed, chewed and swallowed by their cephalopodic maws.
But to be fair, it’s not as if Americans aren’t equally at the mercy of their government. Paying taxes and not receiving services like police protection, safe drugs, secure borders and honest representation in Washington are standard operating procedure since at least the Obama administration.
Surely, no one is surprised anymore that no balanced budget is ever negotiated, approved and administered. Since Obama’s time continuing expenditure resolutions and multi-trillion-dollar omnibus boondoggles are the new normal. I wonder if it is even possible to get a balanced budget enacted. Would the administrative state just shrug it off and print more money and chalk it up to the need for “clandestine intelligence programs” above the public’s pay grade to know or even question? I have to confess I’m curious what in the world Trump will do if he gets back into the White House. It’s rather like being one of the fifth century Westen Roman emperors. You have to go through the motions of giving orders to the generals but outside your window you can see the Goths and the Vandals carrying off the last of the treasury.
This beyond reckless deficit spending will eventually lead to collapse. It has to. Really the only question I have is whether there is a plan to handle the collapse or will the rats just desert the sinking ship for greener pastures. Will the Obamas flee Martha’s Vineyard for New Zealand or Singapore?
Well, at least locally, the budget process is carefully controlled and all due respect is provided to the voters. First Selectman Cthulhu is also the ballot clerk at the budget vote. Every registered voter receives one ballot and casts it proudly. And we’re proud of our innovations in local government. By pre-printing the yes oval already filled in we have saved hundreds of dollars over the last few years in the cost of pens and markers. And that way Cthulhu doesn’t have to eat any “no” voters. That’s progress!
Over the last few months, I have been reading and listening to a bunch of physics. Particle physics and cosmology. The micro and the macro of the attempt to understand the universe. Limitless vistas of space with super clusters of galaxies and more exotic objects that stretch back to the alleged Big Bang. And inside the proton are the ephemeral quarks and gluons flashing in and out of existence in (I kid you not) a yoctosecond.
And all of this hyperactivity of nothingness just to make it possible for me to push on the keys of my laptop to write this post. All of those electrons and quarks following all these conflicting forces at various distances; the strong force, weak force, electro-magnetic force and gravity just so that reality can be felt and tasted. All of these incredibly complex concepts and the mathematics that tries to describe it. And the weirdness of quantum mechanics and its inherent and explicit ruling out of determinism. All of this and how far we’ve come from Galileo and Newton. And all we’ve achieved in technology.
And yet…
What are quarks made of? What are gluons made of? What happened five minutes before the Big Bang? What happens five minutes after the End of the Universe?
There is no bottom. There is no top. There is no start. There is no finish.
The human mind cannot encompass the infinite. If we find something beneath quarks, I am sure there will be something under that. And when the successor to the James Webb Space Telescope is put into service in twenty years at a cost of $100 billion or so I’m sure it will show us even further wonders that defy our ability to explain. And so will the telescope after that.
And as the man said, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” But that’s the part you have to wrap your head around. Thinking that scientists have the ultimate truth is a misnomer. All they have is the latest and greatest explanation as to how things work.
But they’ll never be able to tell you why you’re here or why you should care. Each of us has to do that all by ourselves.
It’s remarkable. Five hundred years after the Renaissance put us on the trajectory of man is the measure of all things and God is dead, we come right back to the same place. The universe isn’t a big windup toy that means nothing and will return to nothing. And after science tried to convince us that Earth is nowhere and humans are less than nothing it turns out that life is really the only thing with inherent value. And human life is the miracle that we started out with before we killed God.
The more we study life the more in awe we are of its complexity and miraculous properties. The more we study humans the more we discover about their potential.
I do not mean to disparage science. Wresting the secrets of the universe from Nature is a noble endeavor. And done with proper humility it is one of the finest works that can be achieved by the human mind. But surely by now all the best minds in the world must be aware that an infinite universe cannot be defined by finite beings. God built this nursery for us and it’s built to hold us while we grow up. I can’t imagine we’ll find the door to the nursery unlocked. At least not on this side of reality.
Regardless of who wins what in November, the path forward for people who don’t want their kids to end up as cricket eating, bottom dwellers is to start creating a future with the ingredients needed for human life. I can see the beginnings of this in places like Florida. Local leaders will have to think carefully about how to protect their citizens from Washington.
Coming in first place will be education. The public-school systems are the primary avenue for proselytizing children. In addition, the education provided has been degraded to the point where graduates are no longer qualified for higher education or even normal positions in business or trade. The voucher system that some states have come adopted is the correct solution. These bad schools need to lose their student base and end up closing. Later on a triage system can be enacted to try and reform some of the public schools that can be saved. And useful trades should be encouraged as a viable alternative to college. And the state should review any college curriculum to ensure that it has value and yank the charter of any college that attempts to charge people for learning “gender or queer studies.”
Next up is law and order. Each state must come to terms with urban areas that have abandoned their citizens into the power of a criminal element. Prosecutors are allowing those arrested for serious crimes to go free and even some police forces have abandoned their jobs and no longer arrest criminals. The states must take over these areas and clean them up and keep them that way. Firing and prosecuting district attorneys and other officials who have been criminally negligent in their duties must be performed to prevent this behavior from recurring.
Welfare reform and homelessness must also be addressed. No one should be paid for sitting around. Welfare should be reserved for widows and orphans. Everyone else works or they don’t eat. If the state becomes the employer of last resort, then let’s make sure the state gets its money’s worth. Road gangs repairing pot holes and picking up trash have some value. Small business incentives should be put in place to encourage initiative.
States should pass laws that will allow illegal aliens to be excluded from the benefits of society. They must be denied any state resources that can be withheld. Criminalizing all of the statuses that come with being an illegal alien must be pursued as a way to drive the illegals out of the state. And this should be done despite the federal government’s attempts to protect them. And most importantly the corporations that employ them must be punished as strenuously as possible to help close up this avenue of funding.
And finally, the state must build a system of policies to promote and encourage young people to raise families. Everything must be done to provide support to young men who want to work while their wives stay home and raise children. And the law must specifically require that arrangement. It must be explicitly tailored to encourage young women to act as housewives and mothers because this arrangement is uniquely suited to provide the maximum amount of harmony and well-being for the whole family. And the state should fight for this arrangement, tooth and nail.
And all of this is just the beginning. Each state is going to have to embark on a program to counteract the harmful programs that the federal government pushes. Each state will have to review all the federal programs and refuse the money associated with those that cause harm. For instance, a state might decide to forbid the airing of television shows produced by PBS and other government propaganda mills.
And finally, a mechanism has to be instituted to provide the “big picture” planning that currently is done at the national level. Things like research and development and transportation, highway, urban and environmental planning can’t be left to the feds. Their priorities and biases won’t allow them to do a good job on these. Luckily no one state has to take over these functions. A consortium of states can team up to do this work.
It’s clear that if we don’t want to end up living in a place like California or New York we are going to have to take control of our future and pushing off in different directions from the federal government. We can’t assume that control of the federal government will be in the hands of rational people. It’s time to move on.
The Democrats have discovered they have a Biden problem. Actually, two Biden problems. The bigger problem is that his presidency is an unmitigated dumpster fire. The smaller problem, but still a large one if you can’t rest on the laurels of a successful term in office, is that he’s a creepy weirdo who lies constantly.
In 2020 Biden ran against what COVID had done to the country. All Biden had to do was sit in the bunker and blame Donald Trump for everything the Left had done in 2020. They orchestrated the Goerge Floyd riots and they used COVID to wreck the economy and hold us prisoner for two years. And then they used COVID to institute absentee ballots and drop boxes and before you knew it, we got President Biden.
Well, Biden got his four years of misery and trying to use debt spending to prop up the economy and now he’s made a hash of it and we’ve got runaway inflation. And the George Floyd riots have metastasized into a permanent breakdown of law and order.
So, the Democrats have destroyed the two things America was known for; prosperity and order. And now they have to run on that record. Oops!
But Plan B is running on Joe Biden’s likeability. Imagine being handed that assignment; of putting together that ad campaign. Even Don Draper himself would throw up his hands and run away.
Just last week the Democrats wanted to put together a satirical ad where Biden challenges Trump to debates. And even though the commercial was only fifteen seconds long they needed something like five cuts to patch together usable video of the stuttering, muttering Biden. He’s become a living embodiment of the fictional computer-generated Max Headroom with his glitching, stuttering delivery.
But it’s not just his failing speech center and other brain functions that’s the problem. If he were this normal human that was slowly descending into senility there might be a kind of sympathy for his condition, a rooting for the underdog. But Biden is not a likeable guy. He’s repellant. His various acts have been on display for decades and none of them is attractive.
Probably his defining characteristic is dishonesty. He lies about his record. He lies about his motivations. He lies about his qualifications. He lies about individual facts that are easily verifiable. Just a few days ago he claimed that when he took over in January of 2021 the inflation rate was 9%. In point of fact, it was 1.4%. And then he finished off by saying that now he had brought the rate back down to 3% which is also a lie. So, when various Democrat talking heads talk about Biden building trust with voters it’s a little hard to imagine how that would happen.
If I were the Republicans, I’d run commercials made out of nothing but video of Biden lying. Lying about COVID, lying about crime, lying about the economy, lying about the Ukraine, lying about Hunter, lying about his own political record. And then just lying about anything at random, like cannibals eating his Uncle Bosey.
Wait, I take that back. They should also make some commercials showing video of him sidling up to women and children. Fondling them, sniffing their hair and standing way too close to them when they can’t escape his clutches. And then someone can read what his daughter said about him showering with her when she was a teenager. That would be the perfect way to let the voters get to know the real Joe Biden.