Tag: antifa

How Much Weirder Will It Get?

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We are living in a time that, with respect to weirdness, rivals anything in living memory.  We have whole areas of the country that are not only tolerating but actually abetting a violent insurrection on their own soil.  We have the intelligentsia and the various other elite groupings of the country almost monolithically backing an attempt to unseat a legitimately elected President of the United States by illegal actions of the Justice Department and Intelligence agencies of the Federal government.  And finally, we have a bioweapon unleashed by the Chinese and allowed by the Democrat controlled states to disrupt the life and economy of the country right before a presidential election.  All that’s missing is an eruption of walking dead stalking the countryside in search of fresh brains or a flying saucer invasion or an infestation of elephant sized giant ants in the sewers of Portland Oregon.  Scratch that last one.  No one would notice or care if Portland was wiped out by giant ants.  It would be an improvement.

There is a theory that right after the election is decided the rioting will stop and even the COVID hysteria will end.  Depending on the theorist this will or won’t depend on who wins.  Some speculate that if President Trump wins that the rebellion will continue and maybe even increase.  Others say that it ends no matter who wins.

I’m not sure who’s right.  I do know that the radicals have become completely unhinged.  I’m not sure they will disappear if the Democrats take over.  In fact, I think they will become the shock troops to reinforce whatever unconstitutional actions the Democrats proclaim.  If the President wins, he may be faced with this unending street violence into the foreseeable future.  Up till now he has barely intervened in places like Portland and Seattle.  But after the election it doesn’t seem possible that the status quo can continue.  And I’m sure the President wants to end this chaotic disruption of the peace.

So, this is what I think will be after the election.  If the President is re-elected, he has to crush the rebellion.  The correct way this should happen is for the FBI to gather up the ringleaders and prosecute them and those that funded and organized them.  If William Barr is slow to do this then he will have to be replaced.  And it seems we will know almost immediately if this will be necessary.  Barr has failed to prosecute the conspirators of the Coup against the President.  If after the President is re-elected Barr fails to act then he must be immediately dismissed and replaced with someone willing to clean out the Justice Department from top to bottom.  And this new Attorney General will also need to crush Antifa and BLM completely.  And I judge that this can be accomplished, if not easily, then at least after some diligence.

But if Biden wins the White House then the red states are going to have to take action against these groups inside their cities.  Places like Austin, Texas and Atlanta, Georgia will need to be cleaned out by the state governments.  This will be made all the more difficult by the interference that the Justice Department and its components like the FBI will perpetrate in support of the terrorists.  And I further believe that once the federal government is in friendly hands, these terrorist groups will unleash chaos on an even grander scale.  They will issue out of the cities and terrorize the suburbs and countryside.  It may be that this will be the spark that finally starts a counterrevolution.  But it will be mess.

These are my guesses as to what awaits us after the election.  Obviously, I prefer that a second Trump Administration will be the instrument of destruction for the Antifa and BLM vermin.  But either way, I think it is long past time that these anarchists are dragged away and put in prison where they truly belong.  Let’s hope that our leaders have the backbone to get it done.

Jason Whitlock over at OutKick Speaks the Hard Truth About Antifa and BLM

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Jason Whitlock is a black sports writer.  He’s gone on his own after working for FoxNews and I think ESPN.  He says what he thinks and doesn’t care about sacred cows of any color.  He’s saved me a buch of time talking about the debate and what was covered up about the riots.  Jason has some good insights.  And he’s unafraid of the outrage he causes.  Good for him.

Chris Wallace, American Media Fiddle During Debate As BLM, Antifa Burn Our Country

 

 

 

29SEP2020 – First Presidential Debate – A Review

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The first thing that should be said is that even though Chris Wallace is a lefty creep, he is probably going to be the least offensive of the moderators we can expect during the rest of the debates.  The ones going forward will probably be women from NPR and CNN that will whine and screech about every woman’s issue imaginable.

The format was supposed to be six segments with sometimes more than one question in each segment.  Each candidate was supposed to get two minutes without interruption to answer the question.  Well that didn’t happen.  The President interrupted early and he interrupted often.  But to be fair the lies that Biden was telling deserved to be refuted.  And several of the topics were slanted obviously against the President.

The questions that I remember were about:

  • The Supreme Court Pick
  • COVID
  • The Economy
  • Black Voters
  • Law and Order
  • President Trump’s Tax Returns
  • Climate Change
  • The President’s Ending of Anti-American Indoctrination in the American Government Offices
  • Mail-In Ballots

I would say that the President got the best of the arguments about The Supreme Court Pick, Black Voters, Law and Order, Tax Returns, Climate Change, Anti-American Indoctrination and Mail-In Ballots.  But that leaves COVID and the Economy that weren’t as clear cut.  Biden hammered away at COVID with all he had.  President Trump made his case but that round was more like a tie.  And since that’s a very important issue that needs to be improved on in the next debate.  On the economy both Biden and Wallace exaggerated the economic situation at the end of the Obama administration.  And Biden downplayed how well the economy has recovered after the initial COVID shutdown.  I want to give the President a slight edge on the Economy segment.  So overall I’ll say President Trump won the debate.  And above and beyond the stated topics, the President was able to raise the question of the culpability of Obama and Biden in the Russia-gate scandal and he hammered Biden on Hunter Biden’s activities in the Ukraine and China.

On a personal note I find it nauseating that the moderators still slant the whole proceeding clearly to the Left.  It’s good to see the President stood up for himself and zinged Biden left and right.  Some of my favorite moments were:

  • When Biden said the President was unintelligent and President Trump came back and said that Biden was at the bottom of his class in college and lately couldn’t even remember the name of the town, he was in.
  • When Biden criticized President Trump’s large rallies, the President mocked him saying the Biden rallies typically had about three people attending because no one wanted to attend something so boring.

So, to sum up what I saw:

  • Biden has to be credited with not being brain dead.  Whether chemically enhanced or just reinvigorated he only looked frail not demented.
  • The President vigorously defended himself on all fronts and jabbed Biden on all his weak points.
  • The moderators are going to be nakedly biased for Biden in their questions and their attitudes.
  • The President is going to have to come up with a more coherent COVID story that attacks the Dems for their linkage to China, their ineffective handling of protecting the elderly in the states they govern and the damage their extended lockdowns are doing to people and the economy.

Guest Contributor – The Fat Man – Antifa, Sci Fi, The Bomb, Consumerism and The Death of Innovation – Part 3

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Some Evidence

Some case studies of innovation begin with a scientific advance such as the identification of the photoelectric effect or other quantum phenomenon and traces its application to an invention dependent on that advance such as the laser. Other descriptions are more ethnographic, observing an industrial ecosystem, then focusing in on its niche like the Connecticut River Valley manufacturing industry of the 18th century and its development of interchangeable gun parts. More quantitative accounts begin with economic dynamics by measuring the role of capital, labor and then try to show excess growth attributed to changes in technology processes or investment.

All of these approaches seek to account for growth not related to easily measurable factors by looking at newly discovered insights or newly introduced technologies that confer some advantage to an offering competing in a market. Many of these accounts are useful in documenting the precedent conditions to productive change. They have been reduced to a list in many papers and articles on innovation and economic growth. They include access to basic research and related intellectual property, capital, talent, geographic or virtual proximity and so on. Other less concrete factors are also named such as entrepreneurism, leadership or vision. This body of literature is rapidly growing but the more that is written about innovation and the greater the attempts to reduce it to an economic model, the further the goal seems to move. The sudden drop in the total factor productivity in the US after the 1970s seems less understood the more that is written about it. Commentators, whether economist or philosophers, business leaders or politicians, have moved from qualitative analysis to social pleading yet offer no reliable, let alone predictable, hypothesis.

To some, the loss of American vitality is seen as an emergency, a surrendering or dissipation of the most valuable trend in human history. The loss of a cultural and economic heritage that transformed the world from a brutal place to a prosperous one. To others the change was the inevitable correction as resources were redistributed by political systems evolving away from their imperial structures of exploitation. Why do some students and proponents of innovation see it as somehow related to culture? Why do discussions of innovation seem to invite political explanations? At any level of analysis, it would seem innovation has almost nothing to do with politics and philosophy, rather a question of science, economics, and commerce. It is true that politics influence and at times determines investment in science and seek to manage economies, if not specific markets, but does that mean we can find the source of innovation in political processes?

The issue of what changed that precipitated the reduction in growth of the US economy and, apparently, innovation has a stock list of suspects. Government regulation is a commonly cited culprit. In the case of nuclear energy this seems irrefutable. Corporatism is another clear candidate. Anyone who carefully analyzes big company structures and processes, from their silo functions to their anti-competitive strategies and general slow-footedness knows that the landscape of a shrinking number of large companies dominating legacy industries can only be poison to innovation. It is hard to consider these and other familiar hypotheses that purport to account for the decrease in innovation, such as failed schools, family breakdown and the loss of faith, without turning away from the question in despair, even horror.

Perhaps it is better to start with a more direct examination of innovation in the past versus today. For example, the slowing of progress in individual transportation in the last fifty years. Why don’t cars fly? It is harder to make a car fly than roll so innovation today won’t look like innovation a century ago. This is the low hanging fruit explanation, flying is harder, but what does that mean? Well, making a car fly is not an incremental change from progressively making cars roll faster and more efficiently. In fact, making a car fly may not be an innovation at all. Innovation is not the invention of new things for their own sake. Innovation solves replication problems. What replication problem does a flying car solve? How much faster does individual transportation need to move over the earth’s surface than a mile a minute? And, for that matter, how much faster than a mile a second does flight need to achieve? The low hanging fruit explanation does seem to touch on something useful, but not in the ordinary sense of the barrier of increasing complexity. It also points to the question of need.

Commentators point to aging American cities with their 19th century subways and mid-20th century skyscrapers as evidence of our decline. (We might observe, as an aside, that no one ever complains about the age of buildings in Rome or Paris) They point to slower travel times, increasing real energy costs and shortening life expectancies in the same breath to demonstrate the drop in the pace of innovation. These seem alarming symptoms of our loss of progress. But are they really? How high does a building need to rise? How often should they be replaced? How many millions should a city accommodate? Subways certainly age, need to be maintained and improved, but should a civilization’s innovative energies be focused on subways? Surely this is not a problem of complexity, nor was the decision to abandon supersonic transport. These are choices that have little to do with innovation as normally discussed.

It is clear that in the postwar period, in different forms in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and the rest of the developed world, much of these societies’ productive energy was focused on “social progress”. Some would call much of it, the changing role of women, concern for the environment, other post-imperial transitions like industrial nationalization and the rise of the welfare state, social engineering that at least in name might be considered innovation. These large reallocations of resources and dislocations of existing social structures undoubtedly had equally large effects on the focus of our productive energies, if not to derail them. For much of the industrial world social progress represented a deliberate regression away from the culture of Manhattan Projects and moon shots. Social progress led not to building more advanced cities but housing projects for the poor, which, in turn, led many to leave cities altogether. In America, the suburban “innovation”, born of the federal interstate highway program, made things cheaper, more convenient at first, and increased standards of living substantially for at least two decades. But it did not just increase the marginal quality of upper middle-class family existence by eventually sending most women into the workforce and expanded the average size of a suburban house and the number of cars in their driveways.  Living standards per capita measured in occupied square feet, miles driven, cost per student, ballooned in the 1970’s and 1980’s until even lower middle-class families living outside of cities occupied larger houses, drove further and spent more per student on education, even consumed more calories, than their counterparts in any other society. Was this not productive change?

Many would say no. Those social and economic changes may have been desired after the two wars and the prospect of global extinction, but they did not yield what innovation always does. Doing more with less, rather the opposite. Reallocation and baby booms might be products of innovation, but they do not bring it about. But the social and material changes in family structure and standards of living do suggest an answer to our question of why building and subway construction have not advanced. They didn’t need to, certainly not with the suburbanization of society and the massive expansion car culture.

There are parallels of this redirection of innovation in energy, in air transportation, even in medicine. A central concept to the development of new medical therapies is the idea of “unmet need”. Still at the dawn of the 20th century most people in the world died of gastric perforation. This mortality was directly tied to waterborne infections and contaminants so the unmet medical need for gastric disease was very high in the year 1900. Epidemiology showed not just mortality, but morbidity, other suffering than death such as poor nourishment, pain, and loss of work, were also caused by digestive disease. At first, slowly through the improvement of urban waste management and water treatment, and then more quickly after World War II through development of a series of pharmacotherapies such as antibiotics, then H-2 antagonists, PPI’s and finally triple antibiotic therapies, the medical unmet need for upper gastric disorders has largely been addressed.

This does not mean that no one suffers an upset stomach anymore. Prosperity and the overabundance of calories ensure that people still need digestive therapies. But as a public health priority, upper digestive disease has fallen from top to bottom. This is reflected in the demand for infrastructure professionals and new upper digestive pharmacotherapies that address digestive disease. Public engineering in the first half of the 20th century in America was a leading professional undertaking as the nation built its cities to postwar capacity. Those same H-2 antagonists and PPIs were the world’s largest selling and most lucrative drugs to treat aging patients born while H. Pylori, a water born pathogen, was prevalent. Today large-scale hydro-engineering projects occur at a small fraction of their former frequency and the gross sales of gastric pharmacotherapies and the innovative creation of new ones are comparatively tiny and few.

Is the contraction of PPI markets and the reduction of sewer treatment projects evidence of an innovation crisis or reduction in unmet need? Why has subway and high-rise construction investment fallen? In the 1920s as the New York City subway system was completed and was the envy of the world, the city had between 8 and 9 million residents that paid a billion fares per year. Those numbers are still largely the same today. Before the completion of most high-rise housing, New York City reached its steady state of population. By the 1970s and during the decades of the decline in US total factor productivity, national firms and their employees were abandoning New York City, raising vacancy rates. So why build and innovate more subways, buildings and their associated technologies? What was the unmet need? The answer is, there was none.

The only objection raised by these facts, that even the poor in the West have excessive basic resources in calories, in utilization of individual transport, spending on education and housing space, is that people are still poor and life for many is grim. But is this a problem of innovation, of productive growth? Would making energy free, as once imagined, or food free, as it nearly is in terms of minimum daily calories, make life less grim? The answer is no, with the sole exception of the extremely poor, defined by the World Bank as less than $1 dollar-a-day of income, a vanishingly small population in the US and one not attributable to jobless or homeless conditions but mental illness and drug addiction. There is no evidence that more square feet or more individual driving or more spending on education will meaningfully reduce the true unmet needs of lower income people. It may make car companies, energy companies, landlords and teacher unions richer but greater innovation in individual transportation, education, energy and food production will not reduce unmet needs in these areas because they are already so low. No amount of additional spending above the already impossibly high per student costs to simply teach a first grader to read will improve literacy rates. Even $100,000 per student per year would not improve the reading scores of the urban and rural poor. And if it did, such improvement would not be due to innovation, which we have defined as doing more with less. Rather, by reducing the scarcity of these resources, suburbanization has led to their inflated worthlessness. Cheap goods and services have led to the devaluing of them to the point of laxity. Is reflected in obesity rates, lowering test scores, falling birthrates, which for any other living system of organisms, would rise with expanding resources. That is until their own waste chokes them. This is the cradle of our heroes, The Muppets.

 

End of Part 3

Post Script

Ok, if necessity is actually the mother of innovation, lots of needs have been met in the last 100 years, but why did growth stop, the ASB becomes irrelevant and suburban consumerism take hold and become the millennial Muppet cradle sometime in the nineteen seventies? And what about Frank Sinatra? Stay tuned for Part 4.

Plans for November 3rd and the Days Following

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Nota Bene: This is a frivolous post about how I intend to celebrate Election Day this year.  I will provide myself a fig leaf to justify this childishness by also discussing the serious topic of safety from mob violence during these dangerous times.  Fair warning has been served.

If President Trump is declared the winner on Election Day or shortly thereafter, I think it is reasonable for people to anticipate that there could be some serious safety issues in certain areas of the country.  And this is not idle or far-fetched reasoning.  The Left has already mobilized small guerilla bands to lead riots and arson attacks on all the major cities that they control politically.  It is only common sense that they might unleash a spasm of violence and destruction to protest the ultimate repudiation of their political stance.

If you live or work near one of these cities, I think it would be prudent to take certain precautions that week.  First of all be sure to listen to the local news and avoid any areas that have become habitual protest locales.  Figure out what work-arounds you can use to give them a wide berth.  Make sure you don’t have any Trump or Republican messages on your car or your person.  If you work in town but live outside leave early on election night and don’t stick around for any reason.  Postpone any activities in the city until the election madness wears off.

If I were planning ahead for this situation, I would consider calling in sick if you have any doubts at all about the chance of being caught up in a riot or other form of unrest.  Basically, it’s just not worth the risk.  With the whole COVID thing going on and remote work becoming so prevalent, it wouldn’t be difficult to get a day or two out of the office.

As for myself, I’m going to camp out and watch the whole nightmare from start to finish.  It’s become something of a tradition to watch the late state returns into the morning hours and listen to the clueless talking heads trying to justify whatever surprises emerge in the results.  I’m anticipating a Republican wave for the President, the House and the Senate so I’m hoping to end the evening by listening to lefty reporters and celebrities wailing and gnashing their teeth as YouTube fills up with blue haired women screaming and hyperventilating over their rage and despair in a replay of 2016.  In fact, in a couple of weeks I intend to start working on the menu to go with the Election Night party.  I’m thinking earlier on we can go with deli sandwiches, corned beef, pastrami and roast beef.  This will of course require potato salad and some kind of soup, maybe a sausage and bean.  Later on, we’ll go with smaller items, maybe pigs in a blanket with brown mustard.  And at the end of the night I’d say some kind of ice cream course.

And this plan will be in effect regardless of how the election returns or the write-in ballots or the judicial shenanigans play out.  The days when I hung on the edge of my seat worrying how Ohio or Florida or Pennsylvania votes is long gone.  This is all in-the-moment skirmishing that doesn’t settle anything.  We no longer have one nation making up its mind on what it wants its future to be.  We’re just watching two diametrically opposed nations wrestling with each other in a mostly bloodless conflict.  It’s like two men fighting for control of the steering wheel of a moving vehicle.  There’s no clear way for one or the other to take control and at all times the possibility of a fatal crash is highly likely.  We seem to be waiting for one side or the other to declare an end to the charade.

But that doesn’t mean we have to wallow in misery.  Life is to be enjoyed and even in the midst of hatred and insanity we must not miss out on all the things that make it good.  Election Day is in between Halloween and Thanksgiving and I intend to celebrate both those things and even have a little fun on Election Day too.  Live blogging the event is a given.  If we win and can celebrate the despair of our enemies all the better.  If not, then splendiferous foods will have to make up for it.

So, as you can see, I like to turn a negative into an opportunity to enjoy the catastrophe that is heading our way.  But whether you celebrate the election or head to bed early to avoid the stress and strain I am completely serious about taking precautions against some kind of insurrection by the Left.  These people are very angry and a little bit desperate.  They are trying to frighten us and apparently no longer worry about niceties like the law and human decency.  So, stay way out of their way and live to see the better day that we expect to dawn on November 4th when President Trump is re-elected and his new Republican House joins the enlarged Republican Majority in actually doing some legislating for a change.  Like maybe funding the rest of the Wall and ending trade with China.

Guest Contributor – The Fat Man – Antifa, Sci Fi, The Bomb, Consumerism and The Death of Innovation – Part 1

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What does it mean when organizations like Antifa and BLM lead the national conversation but are led and populated by arrested, overfed, near-sighted, screen-addicted, basement dwellers? How can these loosely defined groups and others like them write and profess to follow manifestos built on concepts like fascism and communism, the nuclear family and non-binary identity, equality and liberty while clearly not understanding any of them. If we suppress the urge to laugh it off for a few seconds and consider what it means about our country and the West more generally, would that be useful or at least entertaining?

And finally, that our president uses these same concepts in the same contexts as these groups without pausing to at least try and clarify them, does that mean he’s actually their leader too or just the world’s greatest comic?

When you look at the endless tape of the peaceful demonstrators or if you’re lucky as I am and can simply look at the window and watch them at a distance, it is easy to be lulled into a lazy sense of voyeuristic unease. From far away the individuals in the crowds are reduced to hats and black raincoats all carrying some kind of staff and easily mistaken for at least a potential threat. Of course, when the camera pans to ground level or you even walk among them you realize they are those kids you remember from high school, if that was your terminal level of formal education, or junior college, or grad school, even a familiar post doc.  Whatever larval group of which you were a graduating member always included the kids that just weren’t ready, would never be ready, for the real world.

Our peaceful protesters are not the serious kids that just quit school to pursue real careers in crime, banking or software. I’m talking about the ones with the anachronistic long or shaved hair, over decorated skin and clothes, downward facing and backward looking. The basement dwellers, scared of life. Say what you will about Mao and Hitler, they weren’t scared of life. So how did our heroes become their self-appointed fellow travelers?

What brought our contemporary heroes out of the basement to frighten America? More interestingly, how could they frighten anyone? If you’re old enough to remember the summers of rage at the end of the 1960’s you know what real racial unrest looks like. Or anyone that has seen strike violence knows why it scares the average citizen. Those mobs were manned by the citizenry. However segregated Newark was in 1965, the city couldn’t survive with twenty percent of the population burning down buildings, and it didn’t. The Newark of 1962 was disappeared by 1975. Depopulated, de-educated, de-legitimated, poof.

But clearly our heroes didn’t, couldn’t, do that in 2020. The viral panic set the stage. It emptied out the streets like the white flight of the ‘60’s but didn’t spark the theatrical violence we see today. So, what did? Beyond the familiar slacker jobless ennui that inspired the Occupy Wall Street encampment and their occasional traffic-arbitraging self-immolations, what caused this moment? Racism? The word is its own answer. In 1968, even in Jefferson and Baltimore during the Obama years, the putative victims of racism did the rioting. Today it’s largely The Muppets.

The Muppets, hmmm, TV….is that a clue? Roger Scruton, who died in January of our anni mirabiles, took pains to remind us that it is culture, more specifically our definition of aesthetics, precisely the meaning of beauty that is the best way to understand a society. The poor man described the pain he experienced standing on a train platform while traveling in America and finding no escape from “the beat”, the deadening, soulless rhythm of western pop music. The reader can imagine how he felt about our other contemporary cultural products. Our visual arts, our architecture, the terrible things we expose and teach to our children. He no doubt finally rests in peace.

In pacem para bellum. In peace, for war. If you want peace, prepare for war. If we want beauty, if we want wisdom, if we want a growing and enterprising society, what kind of citizens do we need? Citizens. Growing. Are our heroes citizens? Are they growing? They do somehow look familiar? Like the barricade denizens of ’68? No, no they were rich French student hippies. More like tropes from the movies or even a comic book. Yes. But not old movies or comic books, more recent, like graphic novels or The Matrix. Yes, that’s it, they all seem to be aspiring to the art direction that gussied up Keanu Reeves (I only now realized that he has that most famous of comic book actor last names). I get it, our heroes want to be real heroes. But they only know Keanu or Deckard, a few other dystopian action figures. They are graphic heroes. We might charitably call them expressionistic.

Like all contemporary culture actors, our heroes carry the contradictions of Cultural Marxism. They attack the culture, humiliate the bourgeoisie, their parents, their schools, their unemployment offices, then retreat to the basement and their protection. It’s easy to hate them, but for America it is hard to admit she created them. How did it happen, they happen?

For me, it is far more interesting to answer the question by looking at the cultural collapse they reflect. When we do, we will know what the Muppets mean and why America chose them to use to frighten itself.

Why would America want to frighten itself? It’s evident it wants to, hosting all the Devil’s Nights it has in 2020, long before Halloween in places like Portland, Brooklyn and The Loop. In the shadow of the protests the professional criminals can come out of their nests, wave guns at their rivals and redraw their maps. America suffers all this to stir herself, especially our suburban cousins that so swear by the “peaceful protests”, so long as they only burn urban America. It is said when the protests came to Portland’s burbs, the curtains were drawn. Mission accomplished, the brief, but cold snap of fear did penetrate the high-tax school zones.

But from what do we now stir?  Covid, Trump, the caliphate, financial collapse, Iraq, Afghanistan, The Towers, the Kennedys? No, these were mere media trifles, like the Beatles. But they seemed important at the time, serious, didn’t they? In sleep even a fly seems serious and we fell asleep long before the Kennedys. What are the symptoms of sleep that can tell us when we fell? And why do we sense it’s time to get up?

Let’s follow Sir Roger’s advice and take America’s vitals through whatever we can call its culture for ten seconds without laughing. We are told that American popular music was born out of traditional, gospel, anthem and transplanted light opera genres. These genres evolved into what we call R&B and Jazz, Country. The ethnic music of Southern and Eastern European immigrants mixed together with native genres in vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley. All of this seemed to gel on the Broadway of the twenties to become what we today call the American Song Book.

You could argue that the ASB did not reach the high musical standard of the opera Toscanini brought to New York and later popularized through radio broadcasts on NBC. But looking back from today’s vantage, in the context of twenty first century western pop music, it sure seems to fit the label of art.

You can make a similar case for American movies. It’s true, there was no visual equivalent to Jazz to act as a foundation for American cinema. But the originality and popularity of Chaplin and Keaton’s output, their success at creating visual conventions that became an almost universally accepted, but wordless, language convinced even arid academic critics that the movies were developing a set of aesthetics that would one day support an artform.

None of this can be said of the other plastic visual arts in America such as painting, sculpture and with the exception of Wright, architecture, all of which were mired in the outpouring of European Modernism throughout the first half of twentieth century. And while there were many interesting American poets and writers, even leading figures such as Stein, Pound and Eliot, their work was primarily grounded in European ideas and precedents.

The fiction of the American Naturalists, Norris, Crane and Dreiser, could be argued to be American originals, but theirs was at best a minor native movement that did not blossom greatly as a literary genre, but did interestingly have an impact on film. Faulkner and his “school” could also be added to this list and can be usefully tracked as we diagnose what ails America.

Another fruitful area of American creativity and certainly the most materially successful is what is today referred to as innovation. Defined simply as growth generating change, innovation is an almost perfect, if indirect, measure of American culture. To innovate a culture must have intact, functioning communities capable of supporting a network of collaborating and competing enterprises. These simultaneous conditions can only exist in places where the culture not only supports the formal rule of law, but voluntary associations such as craft clubs that create the social capital needed to invest in creating new products and services. Innovation shares these requirements with all native American artforms.

We will use these cultural creations, American music, movies, some of its literature and compare it to the advance of innovation in the twentieth century, the American Century, to understand why in the twenty first, the homeland finds itself nurturing fear through home-grown hobgoblins in the form of hand puppets.

End of Part 1

 

Guest Contributor – The Fat Man – Antifa, Sci Fi, The Bomb, Consumerism and The Death of Innovation – Part 2

Guest Contributor – War Pig – Comments on Antifa’s Announced Disruptions in Washington D.C.

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I see where Antifa and BLM are calling for the burning of Congress and SCOTUS over replacing RBG. They should remember a little factoid, to wit:

The Third Infantry Regiment (Old Guard) is mostly known for guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and performing ceremonial duties at the White House and Arlington National Cemetery. However, they are a fully trained, fully armed and equipped infantry regiment filled with motivated hard chargers. They will have something to say about burning down Congress or SCOTUS or the White House. They are fully capable of putting down an insurrection.

It would not be wise to provoke their use as infantry. A little reminder for the fools at Antifa and BLM.

And since it is Washington, DC, posse comitatus prohibitions do not apply. Trump does not need to even invoke the insurrection act. He can just order the Old Guard to saddle up in full battle rattle and stand by.

When the American Indian Movement occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs HQ in Washington, they strutted about showing Winchesters and such and declaring they would never move until certain things were fixed to their liking. Nixon, being a clever sort did not call out the Old Guard. He just called in the Rangers to look things over. The rangers observed and allowed themselves to be seen observing. Ranger patches in full view.

Seeing that, the protesters held a quick meeting, declared “victory”, and left for home. Rangers do not play well with others. If you want to influence hearts and minds, call the Green Beret. If all you want to do is break sh*t and hurt people, call the Rangers.

This of course would be more of a job for the Old Guard than the Rangers. The Old Guard are expressly allowed to defend the capital with no martial law being declared. Since DC is a federal city most laws are a shade different there. Besides, the Rangers are currently employed elsewhere.

Guest Contributor – Charlemagne Really – Addressing the Current Situation

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With the plethora of recent, pressing subjects to write about, it’s difficult to choose just one. How does one sum up the current heated political landscape in a simple letter. How does one convey compassion and concern with the Corona, COVID-19, Wuhan or whatever it’s called outbreak and its lingering consequences?

I do not know exactly, being the mere mortal that I am. However, as Admiral David Farragut famously cried out “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead”.

Let’s start with the political landscape. Some have said this season’s election cycle is the most divisive ever. I am not sure about that claim as I haven’t been around forever. What I do know, is that politics by its own nature is divisive. It’s supposed to be. So, politics it’s not necessarily bad as some have insinuated.

Americans are witnessing a planned well financed all-out attack on its core values, principles and imperfect history upon which it stands. One of which is, “one Nation under God”. This very phrase being omitted from the oration of the Pledge of Allegiance, not once but twice, in error (sure) at the recent Democrat Convention. Perhaps it was an honest omission but I seriously doubt it. More likely, it’s an insight into their vision of the United States. A vision devoid of God and replaced with the tyranny of the state. So perhaps the new pledge will be One Nation under US (the state, their state). A frightening prospect at best.

Speaking of the DNC and Democrats….

The violence in the mostly Democrat controlled cities, large and small, continues under the guise of Social Justice protests. Nothing about the violence and rioters is about justice. Mind you, I am not talking about the protest and protesters. As long as the protests remain peaceful and are conducted in daylight, they remain legitimate. However once darkness falls it’s been painfully obvious that the peaceful protests turn into violent riots. One doesn’t participate in a peaceful protest armed to the teeth with bats, bricks, hammers, crowbars, face shields and professional grade gas masks. No, this equipment is for one reason and one reason only. To engage in violence and riot. It’s not about social justice, nor anyone who has been a victim of injustice. The weapon wielding rioters are using the excuse of social justice for BLM as an excuse to burn down, loot and plunder. And the BLM organization is more than happy to have these ill-informed and ill-intentioned rioters unleash anarchy on the streets of America.

As with most people, Black lives matter to me. I too have Black friends and co-workers. However, it is necessary to point out that the BLM organization doesn’t represent most Black lives. How do I know. Go to their web site and read. Research their founders, their history and their current ideology. Look at Chicago and the number of Black lives lost due to the murderous gangs. All one gets from the BLM organization is complete silence. They don’t care about Chicago, Portland and most recently Kenosha. They simply don’t give a hoot about any community suffering under gangs in Black neighborhoods. It doesn’t fit their agenda. Those thousands of Black lives do not matter to them. So, what does matter to them?

For one thing, it’s power. More specifically it’s political power. They are using the social justice mantra as a cover to cause division, incite violence and perpetrate a coordinated assault on America, its institutions and its people (you and me).

They masquerade as a benevolent and worthy cause while they continue to implement the downfall of this country.

I will continue to care and support my Black friends, co-workers and fellow citizens. However, I will not offer the same for an Organization which is Marxist (Socialist/Communist) and anti-freedom at its very dark sinister core.

I pray that the violence will end. And end just as quickly as it began. I pray for and will support real social justice. I pray people will see through the charade of the Organization that supposedly champions social justice. I pray for all Americans, no matter what their skin color, to live peacefully while they pursue their dreams and live their lives.

So, let us be adults and act as adults. Caring, kind, compassionate, ready to defend one another from the evils that sometimes ensnare us.

A man far better and immeasurably superior to me, said “Blessed are the peace makers for they will be called the children of God”.

What will you do?

12SEP2020 – Looking Around and Looking Ahead

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Now that Ringling Brothers’ Barnum and Bailey Circus has been forced out of business by PETA, President Trump truly is the Greatest Show on Earth.  There always seems to be another spectacle starting up as the previous act finishes.  From what I understand he has five foreign policy victories to celebrate this week.  Israel is being recognized by:

  • United Arab Emirates
  • Bahrain
  • and Kosovo

Saudi Arabia is now allowing Israeli flights to go through their airspace.  And just to keep things interesting the President brokered a deal between Serbia and Kosovo.  Already two separate nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize for the President have been sponsored by individuals who preface their remarks by declaring that they dislike President Trump but admit that he has already done more for world peace than Obama ever did either before or after his empty win of the Peace Prize was awarded to him.  Joe Biden claims that President Trump is achieving these victories by accident!

The President is crisscrossing the country to attend campaign rallies that draw huge enthusiastic crowds and of course, he is tweeting away on all the most important and even some quite trivial events.  He really does have an energy level that is hard to imagine for a man his age.

Meanwhile even Biden’s strongest advocates admit they haven’t yet figured out how they will make their candidate attractive enough to convince millennials to vote for him.  Well, they did get him out of the basement and all the way to Pennsylvania last week.

As I said it’s an amazing show.  And it should keep even jaded political junkies such as me completely engaged right up to Election Day.  Of course, there are plenty of other side shows to keep us watching.  They’re not as amusing.  The spectacle of unending rioting in Portland is not a pleasant sight but it is important.  A poll of Oregonians shows that 66% disapprove of the riots and 60% think the Mayor of Portland is doing a poor job of ending the protests.  Now if a state as blue as Oregon is unhappy with their unending riots just think what purple states like Colorado and Nevada must be thinking of their “protests.”

The ongoing COVID lockdown in the Northeast remains a good story to remind the country of what shutting down a large portion of your small business community does to economic health.  New York has lost tens of thousands of jobs and when combined with the disruptions caused by the rioting is hardly recognizable as the dynamic business and cultural center it once was.

And the remote teaching model being used in the schools in the Northeast has been a nightmare for working mothers.  Many of them are attempting to re-enter the office environment after six months but have to work around a schedule where their children are home at least three days a week.  Employers say they will accommodate these changes but problems have cropped up on all sides.

Then we have the looming specter of voter fraud through the use of mail in ballots.  The Democrats hope to drag the voting process out for weeks and possibly months.  And they have been talking up the idea that President Trump will be ejected from the White House by troops.  Oh, those Democrats love their drama.

Meanwhile Bill Barr teases us with announcements of rioters and agitators being arrested.  Sure, he arrests some of the worst actors but nothing is done to prosecute Antifa and BLM as organized crime groups using the RICO laws.  And we’re not hearing much about the Durham investigation anymore.  I guess now that his end of summer deadline is blown, we can’t expect anything to come of the effort.  I was glad to see that the feds went after that rat that murdered the Patriot Prayer guy in Portland a week ago.  But I guess it has to be something as egregious as murder on camera to get much of anything from our Justice Department.

Well, that’s a snapshot of the world around us.  It’s a madhouse in every way imaginable but we keep advancing down the road one step at a time.  My advice is don’t be surprised at anything that happens but take every news report with a big grain of salt.  As the President is fond of saying a lot of what you hear is fake news.  And regardless of the outcome in November remember that it’s up to each of us to decide how we will live our lives and who we will spend it with.  There are millions of good people out there and we can achieve an enormous amount if we don’t get discouraged and if we think clearly about what we want to accomplish.  I have spoken with many people out there and we’re learning that we aren’t alone and we aren’t at the mercy of the Woke Left.  It’s a pleasure writing this for anyone who is looking for a bit of news and a positive thought from someone on our side of the fence.  Have a good day.