The Socratic Method

photog Current Events, photog's Corner , ,

We all live in a world filled with human imperfection.  There has never been a time or place where the people have figured out a permanent arrangement for living together without eventually war and oppression destroying human happiness.  Maybe the currently prophesized Super Artificial Intelligence will be able to construct this perfect society and keep it working indefinitely.  Or maybe it’ll just be HAL 9000 creating a termite hive with us as the worker drones and itself as the Queen (or King if HAL is so inclined).

But I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for this Metallic Messiah.  I doubt the possibility that the powers that be would let this new master to be unbiased and allow the little people to get a fair shake.  It’s already been shown that he who pays the bills gets to write the algorithm.

So, I don’t expect a fair shake from the digital gods.  But that doesn’t mean they won’t be put in charge.  I guess the Chinese are in the lead in implementing their social credit system and there’s no reason to believe that this country will be different.  And here’s the kicker.  The young people already believe in this thing.  I was told this weekend that, “If you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear from the digital gods.”

Now, this was a chilling statement.  And I provided a counterstatement.  I said, “Yes but, who gets to decide what is wrong and what if the definition of what is wrong can be changed by other people?”  Then even if you’ve followed the rules, you can still be considered a criminal for your past actions.

I threw that out there and I think it made an impression.  I further explained that freedom of speech and even freedom of thought were becoming less and less protected and that the loss of these things was very difficult to accept for people who took them for granted.  And that was because we have always enjoyed their benefits.

Now I did say that everybody needed to decide these things for himself but I said I thought it was a good idea for any thoughtful person to test some of the slogans being tossed around by those in charge of schools and governments to see if they were consistent with a free way of life or if they were a way for government to take away people’s freedom.  I also told him to listen and think about things going on around him but to not reveal to just anyone what he really thought.   I hope I was persuasive.

This is becoming a more difficult world to navigate for the younger generations.  That line about having nothing to hide if you haven’t done anything wrong was expressed by the head of the WEF, Klaus Martin Schwab.  This is the guy who wants us to own nothing, heat our homes with windmills and eat bugs.  The fact that he is being echoed by impressionable young people is beyond worrisome.  It’s frightening.

What it’s told me is that it’s important for us to reach out to the young everywhere we can and provide them with some counterprogramming to the propaganda that the Left fills their heads with in school.  And I think it’s not that hard to do.  Be calm and friendly and bring up real life counterexamples to the platitudes from the Left.  It’s relatively easy to do and it lays down seeds in their minds that can sprout at another time when some new occurrence triggers it.  I think the main trick is not to be the angry dogmatist ranting against some present idea.  Instead use the Socratic approach and demonstrate the weaknesses in these ideas and that will be enough to start the ball rolling in their minds.

But I wish it wasn’t called the Socratic method.  I never trusted that guy.  He hung around boys a little too much.

MSNBC Journalistic Integrity

photog Current Events ,

In the midst of the marathon pummeling that I currently am engulfed in I have Easter completely free from work.  It stands out as an oasis of joy within a desert of unpleasantness.  Truly this is like the eye of the hurricane providing a short window of peace inside a maelstrom of aggravation and weariness.  Death by a thousand paper cuts awaits me next week and I refuse to think ahead to it on Sunday.  I will bask in the glow of family solidarity and face the music afterwards.  So let it be written, so shall it be done.

I watched the unfolding of the farce that was the Ronna Romney McDaniel NBC hiring and firing.  I’ve read the hilarious reactions of the MSNBC parrots squawking and shrieking about an “election denier” sharing their sacred “airspace.”  And I can’t decide who is more ridiculous, the people who pretend that anyone can be phonier than the MSNBC freakshow or the suits at NBC who thought that McDaniel could be paraded around as a legitimate spokesperson of the new right.

Words fail me.  I tend to believe that the whole episode was a set-up to allow MSNBC to virtue signal at full power and that there was never an intent to employ McDaniel.  I guess the only question is whether she was in on the gag from the start.  Either way it fun to watch these people wind themselves up to whirling dervish speed.

Probably my favorite bit was this:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/03/30/david_brooks_on_ronna_mcdaniel_to_be_on_our_air_you_have_to_have_some_commitment_to_the_truth_above_partisanship.html

Now I was trying to remember what this show reminded me of and then it came to me,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELXX6hZjCeY

Basically, it is the same vibe but without the honesty and intelligence that Blaine Edwards and Antoine Merriweather bring to public television.

Now look at the other side of this farce.  How exactly does McDaniel represent the Right?  The only answer is that she’s the latest avatar of the John McCain, Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney school of Republican misrepresentation.  Hell, she’s even Mitt Romney’s niece!  So, I guess Uni-Party still feels that the old playbook never gets old and never stops working.  Well, they’re wrong.  No one with a single living brain cell believes that anymore.  Now that still leaves millions of Republican voters as fans of Ronna but effectively, they’re Democrat voters and we have to stop worrying about what they do.

But this is a good starting point.  As RINOs get bounced out of positions of power in the Republican hierarchy they will end up with jobs in media, academia and anywhere else where whores can settle down and whore.  The appropriate response from our side is to mock and insult these people as much as is humanly possible.  And that is what I will try to do whenever I have the time and inclination.

But right now, I have to say, that since I don’t watch PBS, I wasn’t aware that they had shifted over to a 100% gay men news team.  It’s a bold decision.  I always thought that PBS tried to maintain a 1:1 gay to lesbian ratio with respect to their pundits but apparently that has been superseded.  But I hope they eventually add a lesbian.  Capehart is obviously radiating an enormous field of gayness at such a high potential that it threatens to tear the very fabric of space-time.  In order to re-establish a balance between the feminine and masculine mojo they should hire Rachel Maddow or some other sufficiently macho woman to bring stability to the Force.

Well, enough of this.  Everyone, enjoy Easter.  I know I will.

The Daniel Penny Lesson

photog Current Events ,

Cop-bashing NYC Councilwoman Amanda Farías suddenly sees why we need the NYPD

As many as a few dozen women have been sucker punched while walking down the streets of New York City.

““Where are the men calling this out?” asks City Council Majority Leader Amanda Farías, retweeting a council Women’s Caucus’s post on the sick “sucker-punch a woman in the face” TikTok trend that urges victims to contact the NYPD.”

Now this is the same woman who said the city should, “significantly divest from police precincts” and vowed to “support “the reduction of NYPD’s operating budget and partnering alongside the community to create real solutions and justice for New Yorkers.””

And as far as men who aren’t in the NYPD but should be doing something about this?  I guess this is different from the Penny incident.  Last year, “Farias bemoaned the “lack of justice” for Jordan Neely, the violent homeless man accidentally killed when Daniel Penny stepped up to protect other straphangers.”

So Penny is going to trial for manslaughter and this dopey hypocritical woman wants to know where are all the men stepping forward to subdue psychotic street thugs who punch women for fun.

If only Farias could be one of the victims maybe that would allow her to get her head out of her butt.

Matt Walsh did a nice segment on this too.

Must See TV

photog Current Events , ,

Like Hamlet’s father’s ghost I am, “during the day confin’d to fast in fires, till the foul crimes done in my days of nature are burnt and purg’d away.”  But occasionally I am freed to roam the earth.  Today and Sunday are those days and I feel like a nocturnal creature blinking in the sun wondering what mythical land I find myself in where light and joy still exist.

But be that as it may, this paradise of freedom still exists within our own blighted reality.  So, I was unsurprised when reading today’s headlines that they were very reminiscent of those I remember from the before-time of last week when I was still a free man.  But they were slightly crazier.  Joy Reid appears to be close to the breaking point.  Now I can’t be totally sure of this because she is always at least incoherent.  Possibly to herself she seems rational but for me it’s like listening to the mutterings of a schizophrenic bag lady.  It is remarkable that NBC continues to employ her.  But that’s another issue.

In this video clip she tauntingly declares that she and her followers know what “we” mean by DEI.  She seems to be having a psychotic break.  Apparently, this knowledge of hers is supposed to be a potent talisman and we should fear it.  But instead of being afraid of her, I’m actually a little afraid for her.

I mean, sure, she’s a hateful wretch and a race baiter.  Certainly, she wishes evil against people not like her.  But she’s also a moron.  Her IQ must be somewhere around 75?  And I feel society has a responsibility to protect someone like that from her own stupidity.  Believing in things as far from reality as she does, leaves her open to fatal errors.

For instance, she believes herself to be highly intelligent.  This could lead her to try using her own judgement in a life-or-death situation.  As an example, she could judge that a pineapple was an appropriate food to swallow whole.  And if she attempts it from the relatively smooth side of the fruit, who knows, maybe she could do it.  She does have a really big mouth.  If she greased it with oil, who knows!  But what if she tries swallowing it crown first?  Those leaves are quite stiff and sharp.  I fear that it might lodge in her esophagus and finish her off.  I don’t relish watching a video clip of her on X where she is expounding on the guilt of White people or Donald Trump or Santa Claus for keeping her people down and then having to watch her trying to remove a wedged bromeliad from her oral cavity.  The whole idea disturbs me terribly.

What would make sense is if some kind of SWAT team could swoop in and rescue her from herself.  She could continue here career, such as it is.  But she could do it from the safety of a padded room in an insane asylum.  There, under the care of trained, psychiatric professionals, she could be dosed with Thorazine and swaddled in a strait jacket and allowed to rave and foam at the mouth and if necessary, soil herself, without any serious fear that she would expire of self-inflicted wounds.

And that would make me feel better.  In fact, I think I’d become a regular viewer of her show.  Especially if there were the hope that other characters could be added to the rubber room.  Maddow, Morning Joe and his bride and Chris Hayes would all be worthy additions to the room.  There could be special events.  Electro-shock therapy, firehose-hydro-therapy and maybe even a lobotomy could be added to the program to spice it up.

Now that would be must-see tv.