Category: Reviews

Reviews of books, movies, tv shows and other items

10JUL2018 – American Greatness Post of the Day – Not Your Father’s Supreme Court

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Jesse Merriam (link below)  says Kavanaugh is the best pick for the Right because he thinks in terms of effects on regulal Americans.  Merriam says:

“As I wrote for Real Clear Politics last week, Kavanaugh was the right pick, because the other candidates, though strong conservatives, “have thin or questionable records on the defining issue of the 2016 election—whether American sovereignty, and the forgotten American worker, will once again play a critical role in our polity.”

Brett Kavanaugh was the only one of Trump’s candidates who has repeatedly interpreted American statutory and constitutional law against the background of our national sovereignty. In case after case, Judge Kavanaugh has sought to understand our immigration law, trade regulations, and constitutional guarantees in light of how they affect average Americans.”

I don’t know much about the surety of judicial rating systems so I hope he’s right.  We have been disappointed before.  But I’ll say for now I think we’ve gotten an upgrade from Kennedy.

Not Your Father’s Supreme Court

PJ Media Has One of the Weirder Posts I’ve Seen

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Feminists Clash with Transgenders at London Pride Parade

I quote that great healer of rifts, Rodney King, “Why can’t we all just get along?”  So apparently the only place where L and T get along is in a BLT.  A group called “Get the L Out” wants lesbians to opt out of LGBTQ because they hold transgenders responsible for “Conversion Therapy and Rape Culture.”  What does it mean when even other deviant groups don’t want to include you?  Is the enemy of my enemy  just really confusing?

https://pjmedia.com/trending/lesbians-blame-transgenderism-for-conversion-therapy-and-rape-culture-at-london-pride-parade/

 

More ZMan – A Very Long Interview on Luke Ford’s Podcast

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ZMan was on a podcast with a guy named Luke Ford (link below).  It was almost three hours long!  But there was some very good information if you are looking for ZMan’s take on the way the future of a multi-racial America should be addressed.  A participant named Ecce got into a dispute with Z about what could be done about the changes taking place in America.  Ecce talked about running for elected office and some other ideas for turning around the demographic changes.  ZMan basically said that the only important action was to get the white population “woke” to the fact that they needed to vote their interests as white people in order to thrive.   The other take-away I heard from him was that he did not believe that republican democracy was going to be a workable political system in a minority-majority America.  So that was the gist of it.  He had a funny idea for helping wake people up.  He said we should leave little slips of paper in bookstore books that said “It’ alright to be white.”  Interesting idea.

So, it’s a very long podcast and I’ve given you the main ideas but it is an interesting discussion.  And the ZMan can get testy when he thinks someone isn’t saying something constructive.  My one thought is that what Trump is doing on immigration and the fight to get non-liberal judges can actually do a lot to help people on our side change conditions in America to something less unfair to the white population.  So I see the Trumpocalypse to be an outcome of white backlash against the Leftist attack.

http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=14338#comments

 

The ZMan Has a Post “The Haunting” About the Disruption of Sex Roles in Western Society

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http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=14329

ZMan talks about the present disruption that afflicts young men and women and how it has led to all the aberrant behavior we see today.  His conclusion is that the society we’ve allowed to evolve no longer functions to bring men and women together to form normal functioning families.  Well, that seems accurate. But it doesn’t go into what needs to be done.  I think it goes without saying that leaving things the way they are will only make the problem worse.  What needs to happen is for the society at large to incentivize young people to get married and raise families.  Lobby for government policies that make families affordable; school vouchers, tax deductions for dependents and a subsidy for married stay at home moms, tax benefits for companies that provide family benefits to their employees.  And on the individual front it’s necessary for all of us to start recreating traditional social organizations to provide a place for young people to meet.  If the churches and the old line fraternal organizations have been converged and destroyed it’s necessary to form new ones.  With the Supreme Court finally out of liberal hands perhaps it’s possible that the right of free association may resurface and we can again organize our personal lives to exclude the mentally ill and the disruptively abnormal.  I think we’re in a bad place but I think it will improve when we have more control over the anti-traditional forces that are continuously attacking the normal roles of men and women in a functional society.  Anyway, that’s my thought.

The Incredibles 2 – A Science Fiction & Fantasy Movie Review

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The trailer for this movie says it is fourteen years since the original Incredibles debuted.  That must be true but because at that time I had neither children nor grandchildren of an age to watch it I missed its appearance altogether.  Probably four or five years ago I read that it was probably the only Disney film of recent vintage without a truly ponderous social justice taint so I took it out and liked it.  I watched it with the grandkids and they really liked it too.  But when I saw the coming attractions for the sequel I was annoyed to find a bunch of blather about Mr. Incredible being relegated to Mr. Mom and Elasti-Girl (Mrs. Incredible) being the heroic superhero who earns the daily bread.  And so, it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I took Camera Girl and the two older grandsons to the dying local movie palace to see the film.

Well, my fears were unnecessary.  The movie is good.  By the necessity of a sequel being somewhat derivative by its very nature Incredibles 2 may not rate as highly by some measures and to some audiences.  I found it extremely enjoyable.  Aside from any measures of technical or visual excellence the story line is meager as expected for this genre but acceptable, the main characters retain their original charm and the interactions between the family members defines the heart of the movie.  It is a celebration of the traditional nuclear family.  Mr. Incredible is a 1950s Dad.  Elasti-Girl could be Donna Reed and the kids are the usual bundle of sibling rivalry, growing pains and mischief but whenever the chips are down the family pulls together to save the day and each other.

I’ll keep this short.  If you have kids or grandkids bring them to this movie.  And if you don’t, then go see it yourself.  You’ll have a good time.  My personal favorite scene in the movie is Mr. Incredible coming to terms with his kid’s “new math” homework.  His anguished cry of, “Why would they change math?”, brought back such memories of exactly the same scene in my home that I probably laughed out loud in the theater like an idiot.  Maybe there is still some hope for Disney.  I mean I doubt it, but at least they didn’t alter the characters.  They’re still who they were and still a lot of fun.

Valentine Pontifex – Volume Three of the Majipoor Cycle by Robert Silverberg – A Science Fiction-Fantasy  Book Review

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This review is for both the final volume and also an overall review of the series.  I got started reading this series a while ago because of an on-line discussion I had on Orion’s Cold Fire (OCF) with Tom about whether there were any stories that could be considered science fiction and also fantasy.  Tom pointed to the Majipoor Cycle and piqued my curiosity enough that I picked up the books.  For the curious my reviews of the two earlier volumes are here and here.  If you don’t want any spoilers then put this aside until you’ve read those reviews (and possibly the books) and then decide if you want to risk this review.  Otherwise here we go.

The Majipoor books have been a fairly unique experience.  They combine a relatively straight forward adventure tale with a world-building framework that tries to encapsulate approximately ten thousand years of the colonization of a new world by a number of cooperating intelligent alien species.  And Silverberg is an idiosyncratic writer with a style that came of age in the 1960s.  This combines to create a very complex and sometimes meandering tale.

In the third book, Valentine Pontifex, the eponymous protagonist of the first book, Lord Valentine, is re-established as the principal ruler of Majipoor and is preparing for a triumphal tour of the far-flung cities of his realm when premonitions of disaster begin intruding on his mind.  In Majipoor dreams are regarded as legitimate warnings from the reigning spiritual powers, the King of Dreams and the Lady of the Isle.  Under this cloud Valentine and his friends and advisors begin the ill-fated Processional and unsurprisingly a long series of disasters occur.  Valentine identifies these cataclysms with a karmic reaction to the original conquest of Majipoor and attempts to expiate this original sin through diplomacy and love.  The tension between his actions and the situation on the ground makes up the action of the story.

Valentine Pontifex is, as I mentioned, a very complicated and meandering story line.  There are close to a dozen threads weaving through the book with their own characters, locations and subplots, some more important to the main narrative and some less so.  And Silverberg provides a veritable Tolkienian plethora of Majipoorian names.  There is a veritable blizzard of names; names of cities, regions, rivers, forests, animals, trees, fruit, cereal crops, food dishes, wines, medicines and people.  Also Valentine’s character is of a contemplative and judicious nature so that he agonizes a good deal about the conflicting needs of the various parties involved.  Luckily some of the other characters are less conflicted and help to push the action forward.

Another aspect of the story and the Majipoor series in general is the metaphorical nature of the story.  To my mind, Majipoor is a metaphor for the English colonization of the United States.  The aboriginal inhabitants of Majipoor, the Shapeshifters, defeated and relegated to life on an inhospitable reservation, are a stand in for the Native Americans.  The other species brought to Majipoor by the humans equate to the other nationalities and races that have immigrated to the United States.  To be honest, I am not a big fan of this kind of representation.  All too often this kind of metaphorical story telling is just a chance to bash this country and curry favor with the social justice apparatchiks.  And Valentine does have a certain amount of the Jimmy Carter syndrome in his make-up.  There is even a subplot that involves humans hunting and harvesting an intelligent water dwelling species that is the equivalent of whales.

Looking at all these detrimental story elements, you would be unsurprised if I gave Valentine Pontifex and the Majipoor cycle in general a failing grade.  I’m going to instead provide an opinion that combines warning with guarded approval.

My first statement will be the warning.  Majipoor is not for those who are looking for fast-paced adventure and classic fantasy ala Middle Earth.  It is not that.  And if you absolutely are not in the mood to hear about the rights of the dispossessed aborigines skip this story.  And lastly, if you have a very strong aversion to human/lizard-man romances then absolutely skip the second volume Majipoor Chronicles.  As mentioned in my review of that book, this was a weakness of Silverberg living through the Crazy Years of the 1960s.  For them sex was something they had to inject into any scenario.

So those are all the reasons to skip Majipoor.  Now, here’s the guarded approval.  Silverberg has created a genuinely interesting universe.  His characters are engaging and genuinely recognizable humans (even the non-humans).  The story, for the most part, works within its boundaries and despite some pacing problems gets to the finish line intact.  For someone interested in a fusion of science fiction and fantasy the Majipoor books are a quirky read.  Let’s say it’s for the hard-core sf&f connoisseur.

03JUL2018 – American Greatness Post of the Day

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Michael Anton (aka Publius Decius Mus) performs a fisking of Bret Stephens’ paean to untrammeled immigration.  It goes without saying Bret doesn’t come off very well.  Can you imagine Stephens used to be considered conservative?   It’s a long article and I doubt Bret even deserves the honor of this much attention but Mr. Anton does cover the bases very thoroughly.  I would say this article  is preaching to the choir but if you are interested in just how crazy the house conservatives at the New York Times have become check out Anton’s dissection of exhibit A.

 

America Is Not the Common Property of All Mankind

“Narrative Collapse” or “And Now They Know That We Know it Too”

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As the Conservative Treehouse linked to the results of the Harvard-Harris monthly poll we find three very encouraging results.  Look at the answer percentages on these three questions:

Do you think current border security is adequate or inadequate? 61% Inadequate / 39% Adequate

Do you support or oppose building a combination of physical and electronic barriers across the U.S.-Mexico border?  60% Support / 40% Oppose

Do you think that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, known as ICE, should be disbanded or not?   31% Disbanded / 69% Not Disbanded

And this poll skews to the left with 37% Democrat, 32% Republican and 29% Independent.  Look at that number, 60% support building a wall.  That represents basically all the Republicans and all the Independents.  But if you go to the Harris Poll site and look up Harvard Harris you’ll see this headline:

“Latest Harvard-Harris Poll Finds More than 6 in 10 Registered Voters Oppose Border Wall Between U.S. and Mexico.”

But that’s the opposite result.  How can that be?  Well the poll they tout was taken back in April and preceded this one.  But wait a minute, you might say, how could 20% of the country change its mind in a month or two?  And you would be right.  That doesn’t happen.  The older poll reflects what we’ve been fed from pollsters for the last decade.  Americans want more immigration and they love those whacky, fun-loving drug runners from M13.  We can’t get enough of their idiosyncratic drive by machine gunning and intimidation of our high school children.  What’s not to love?

So how did the new headline occur?  I don’t think you’ll find a documented answer that makes sense.  I’ll give you my theory.

The narrative collapsed.

The people who put out these polls have a pretty wide latitude when it comes to selecting the participants, phrasing the questions and massaging the data they receive.  And I think they use this elasticity to produce results like the 99.9% certainty that Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.  So, I’m guessing that the difference between the April poll and the June poll was relatively large, not twenty percent but maybe five percent.  But my guess is that the real percentages in those two polls were 65% and 70%.  But you’d say, wait a minute, that’s impossible.  How could a 65% majority for the wall be turned into a 40% minority?  That’s a 25% inaccuracy.  And why then would they not just adjust the 70% to 45%.  My theory is they’ve been maintaining the same narrative that they fabricated to prop up the Obama presidency and they juiced it as hard as they could during the Clinton campaign and they held out hope that the Resistance would bring down Trump’s popularity and allow his presidency to collapse.  But the numbers keep moving farther and farther in the other direction and now they’re literally afraid of being caught cooking the books and losing their gig.  After all, other pollsters are already showing different results on these same poll questions and it must be getting a little thick for our friends at Harris and Gallup.  They don’t want to be the ones flapping in the breeze when the next Brexit or Trumpocalypse occurs.  It might mean having to get real jobs.  So the jig is up and they’ll have to start only slightly slightly tipping the scales, let’s say 5 to 10%.

And that got me thinking, what would it look like if the narrative collapsed completely?  And what would it take to cause that implosion?  My guess is that what would cause the implosion would be the success of the Trump Revolution.  Specifically, if the Republicans hold onto the House and expand their lead in the Senate and use this majority to provide President Trump with the funds to build the wall and enforce the immigration laws and the country supports this effort by re-electing him convincingly, then all of this would be enough to collapse the Narrative completely.

So this is the long answer for why those poll answers seem so different from expectations.  But there’s a short answer too.  A one-word answer.  Trump.

Ever since the primary debates he’s been telling us the Emperor’s New Clothes are fake news.  Jeb! told us that illegal immigration was love.  Trump told us it was crime.  The Media and the pollsters said Trump was part of a small, shrinking, bigoted minority.  The election showed that wasn’t so.  He keeps hammering away at the lies and evasions.  And he’s definitely winning.  And they know it.  And now they know that we know it too.