Tag: MAGA

Fascism, Populism, Nationalism, MAGA, Trump

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“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”  What’s in a name?  Well, it’s the start of trying to define what we are talking about.  And what we are talking about is the movement that Donald Trump has conjured out of thin air.  He has breathed life into the Right after the establishment Republicans had managed to beat it and its proponents into the ground over the course of the last sixty-five years.

Why he did it?  I wonder how many people actually have the answer to that question.  Maybe even Trump doesn’t really know why.  How he did it is clearer.  Trump is a salesman or more accurately he’s a huckster, a flim-flam man.  He sells snake oil.  And because of that training he could see that the Republicans and the Democrats were conning us.  And because they weren’t conning us out of our pocket money but out of our freedoms and our descendants’ well-being, he decided to expose them.  And the results were tremendous.  He has pole-axed every fake conservative that has faced him.  Think of Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney if you need examples of his victims.  These men were the most respected conservative leaders of their time.  Now they’re laughing stocks and walking/talking memes for what a fake conservative looks like.

So, does Trump have a political philosophy?  If he does, it’s very pragmatic.  I think he looks at himself as our business agent.  He’s trying to cut the best deal for the American people that he can.  And I don’t think he cares whether he treats the rest of the world fairly.  He’s a cutthroat dealer and screwing over the other guy is just part of that trade.  But he’s also experienced.  He knows that China has some very strong cards and that he has to be realistic when bargaining with powerful and savvy adversaries.  He may be pro-Israel but he realizes that making a good deal with Iran is in America’s interest.  He has no desire to fight anymore middle eastern wars.  The same with Ukraine.  Tying himself to that slaughterhouse is a mistake.  Enabling some kind of deal is the smart play.

But there is some part of me that hopes he’s also doing all this because in some sense, no matter how vague the link is, he thinks of himself as one of us.  Maybe not a regular guy.  Maybe a prince to our paupers but still a fellow American.  Someone who could sit down at a table with one of us and eat a McDonald’s Big Mac and talk about what it was like to be a New Yorker growing up in the sixties and seventies when the city was a train wreck but the working class people living there still had a popular culture that was quintessentially American; the melting pot and egalitarianism and neighborhoods where the people actually knew who their neighbors were.  These were the people who built his hotels and skyscrapers and casinos.  Mob-connected construction bosses, ironworkers, masons and laborers.  Actual people who also happen to be Americans.

So is Trump a populist, a nationalist or a fascist?  No, he’s just Trump.  But he is an American and he’s doing something that no one else would.  He’s giving us a last chance to get our country back.  I hope he succeeds.

H.O.P.E.

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Elon Musk is all over the place.  Everywhere you look he’s involved in any number of important and cutting-edge endeavors.  And this is in addition to his business ventures.  He runs a space company (SpaceX), a satellite communications company (Starlink), an electric car manufacturer (Tesla) and whatever X is.

Most recently Musk has volunteered to assist the nascent Trump administration in taking a chain saw to the federal bureaucracy (the imaginary D.O.G.E. or Department of Government Efficiency).  And considering that Musk fired about 80% of the employees of Twitter to make X less unprofitable, it makes sense that he might be supremely qualified to pare back the Washington payroll.  And based on the favorable results of Argentina’s experiment with government reduction I wholeheartedly endorse Trump employing Musk, Ramaswami and any other tech bros who want to help us get the national debt under control.  Amen.

But if Elon Musk really is a very smart guy who understands how automation and other technology breakthroughs can be integrated into a livable world order then that would be a much more worthwhile contribution to the mess, we’re currently in.  As things currently stand the last fifty years of computer advancement have revolutionized the efficiency of the workplace.  Programs like a world processor and a spreadsheet have allowed on person to do the work that previously required whole departments.  The secretarial pool is a thing of the past.  Even the technical departments have been pared way back because a pc on every desk means that a computation department is unneeded.  At most you need a couple of IT nerds who troubleshoot network issues.  And in the factories, machinists have been replaced by CNC machines.  Well, let’s say they’ve been replaced ten to one with a CNC technician.  And so on and so forth.  Even engineers and scientists have seen the handwriting on the wall.  AI will begin to make them redundant too.  And supposedly it will replace authors, musicians and other kinds of artists.  And finally, AI is supposed to eventually replace software coders too.

If you’re a tech entrepreneur you are probably saying to yourself, “Duh!  That’s what’s supposed to happen.  That’s efficiency and progress.”  And from your point of view, you’re right.  Better, cheaper, faster.  But if you’re a human being and the parent of human beings you’re saying to yourself, “Then what the hell do we do?”

And that is what the big brain guys should be thinking about.  People like Jeff Bezos have been perfecting a way to eliminate ninety percent of the humans who sell us stuff.  And then they want to whittle down that last ten percent forever.  Instead, what we need is a plan to keep one hundred percent of Americans gainfully and happily employed.  If you’re a libertarian you’ll say that competition is a good thing and allowing Amazon to bankrupt every retail seller except Walmart is a good thing that brings down the price of goods and helps everyone.

I disagree.  Machines are more efficient and cheaper to use than humans.  That’s proven.  But we are human beings.  If the machines aren’t benefitting us then they are the enemy.  And we should fight back against them.  In a sense, that’s what this recent election was about.  The people who have been made obsolete by automation and globalization and efficiency voted to throw out of office the people who represent the people who make, run and own the machines.  They want Donald Trump to turn back the clock and bring back a world where they could work in a factory that made cars or toasters or pencils and make enough money to raise a family.

Well, he can try and he can do a lot of things that will tilt the playing field in favor of those that have been left behind.  But in the long run efficiency will triumph.  So instead of a Department of Government Efficiency I think Trump and Musk and Ramaswami would be better off inventing a Human Optimization Planning Effort (HOPE).  And they could use the existing monopoly laws to force people like Bezos to design their processes and systems to accommodate a new parameter; human happiness.  If they don’t, then one day the forgotten men may come visiting the tech lords.  And they may be armed with the proverbial pitch forks and torches.  And despite what we saw in “Terminator,” my money is on the peasants.

The Power of No

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It never occurred to me that maybe the anti-McCarthy coup might actually have a chance to succeed but what if they did dig their heels in for a few weeks?  Maybe the rest of the House Republicans might start wondering if maybe there were a few more candidates that almost everyone could easily agree on.

It’s so pleasant to dream about what might happen if our elected “leaders” somehow developed backbone and started acting like leaders.  Of course, in reality most of them are either completely useless or worse.  They vary from hacks and grifters to actual sociopaths.  But maybe there are a few that want to do the right thing.  And if they show some resolve and take advantage of a rare situation where the actions of a few can impact a whole institution like the present situation in the House, then maybe something unexpected and positive might result.

Just for the sake of argument, suppose after a couple of weeks of yelling at each other behind closed doors, it occurs to some of the more moderate representatives that a more productive way of solving this problem would be asking each member to provide a list of names that they absolutely would refuse to vote for.  Taking everybody’s lists, they could then add up the negatives and disqualify anyone who had more than four no-votes against it.  Whoever is left would constitute a pool of names that had the potential to be approved.  Then after a couple of test ballots using that pool of names as the source, they could pretty quickly come up with the four or five names with the largest support and begin to do some horse trading to see who could become the Speaker.

Obviously, my idea would require that most of the Republican House members were reasonable human beings.  And we already know that’s not true.  I suspect at least half of them are nitwits.  But I’m sure that the more intelligent members of the group could persuade their more cognitively challenged brothers and sisters to follow some simple instructions.  Surely there are three or four Republican representatives who are both competent and haven’t sold their souls to Mephistopheles yet.  Jim Jordan is one name that has come up often.  Maybe there are some others.

The point is the MAGA wing of the party has found a silver lining to the 2022 mid-term meltdown.  Their 20-member coalition can wreck the Uniparty’s party.  Short of the GOP establishment letting a Democrat become Speaker, their backs are to the wall.  And if they did elect a Dem then the whole charade would be exposed and the Uniparty would be truly unmasked for all to see.  And from my point of view that would be almost as good as Jordan getting the Speaker’s gavel.

Now, this is all nonsense.  None of this will happen.  McCarthy will whine and hector the dissidents and they will be threatened by the donors who paid for their campaigns and eventually they’ll vote for good old Kevin.  But for just a day or two they did give me something to cheer about.  Listening to all of those politicians screeching apoplectically about irresponsibility and the storied history of the “People’s House” gave me a good laugh.

And who knows?  Miracles do happen.  Very rarely.  But not never.

My Early Christmas List to Santa Trump

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Indulge me today in a little game.  I know that anything could happen after November 3rd up to and including the apocalypse.  But just for the sake of this post let’s assume that when the dust clears President Trump is clearly the winner of the election and the Republicans squeak out a win in the Senate and the House.  What would be my wish list for the coming four years of the second Trump administration.  Granted that this is the rosiest of scenarios but it is far from unlikely.  So, grant me the premise.

  • First and foremost, give Barr an ultimatum to either produce the reports of the investigations or resign. Either his staff has found crime committed by the Obama holdovers in the FBI and elsewhere or he has an explanation that covers all the outrages we have seen perpetrated over the last five years.  And regardless of whether Barr is the Attorney General or not it must be a priority to clear all the anti-Trump personnel out of the Justice Department.  Even if that depopulates the department it would be the smartest thing to do.  Reforming the FBI is an extremely important goal.  Defanging that agency would benefit everyone.  It is a weapon that can be brought to bear against any innocent American whenever political expediency calls for it.
  • Another priority is to punish those states that allowed Antifa and BLM to terrorize their citizens. What I would envision would be the feds initiating civil and criminal actions against the governors and mayors who were complicit in the protracted unrest that engulfed the lives of their citizens.  Testimony by all the individuals that feel they were harrowed and their lives disrupted and especially those that were assaulted or whose businesses were destroyed.  These are Americans who were treated like targets of a pogrom.  They were singled out based on the color of their skin.  The President should make it a point of pride to get them justice.  Those governors and mayors should be hounded out of office and prosecuted.
  • The President and Congress need to fully fund and swiftly build the Southern Wall. It is important and it is also a morale builder.  It shows the country that the government is taking their wishes seriously.  It’s what got President Trump elected in the first place.  It should not be forgotten.
  • The President needs to continue to appointing federal judges to all the circuit courts in the country as quickly as the openings occur. The power that a corrupt judiciary is able to wield is apparent from the outrageous actions of the federal judges who have hampered the President throughout his first term.  Eliminating the progressive majorities in the 9th Circuit Court and other progressive strongholds should be a priority for Republican presidents whenever the Senate is in their control.
  • The President needs to install an Attorney General who will employ the RICO statute to defund, prosecute and imprison the leadership and all guilty members of Antifa and BLM. The RICO laws were put in place to demolish the mafia.  Antifa and BLM are criminal organizations that have done incalculable harm in this country.  They need to be crushed.
  • The President needs to punish China for COVID and he needs to end the special relationship that has allowed China to monopolize American commerce for decades. China is at best an adversary.  In a lot of ways, it is our mortal enemy.  It needs to be treated as such.  And any American citizens or corporate entities that conspire with China to our detriment need to be severely punished.
  • And finally, I want him to fire Anthony Fauci. That dope has botched this COVID thing like no one could imagine.  I wouldn’t trust him to run a CVS Drug Store never mind the nation’s health.  He really is a dope.

 

Well that’s enough for this Christmas.  Of course, my first present has to happen way in advance of Christmas just to make the other presents possible.  I want a resounding election victory for the President.  So if that isn’t too much to ask, let’s start there.

Actual Essential Personnel

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Yesterday was an interesting day.  Earlier I was commenting somewhat ironically on the essential, critical, crucial nature of the work I was able to accomplish on my dining room table.  The industry I work in is considered important because the products are critical to some individuals.  But I think it’s important to consider the circumstances under which certain work is done before throwing around words like critical.  Let me elaborate.

Yesterday was a bizarre weather day in my neck of the woods.  We had rain that varied from sprinkles to torrents without any rhyme or reason as to when.  There was also a wind advisory that quoted a range of wind speeds from 20 mph to 65 mph.  When I see a range that broad, I usually take it with a grain of salt.  To me that sounds a little like someone not knowing very much but employing a CYA strategy in case things do get out of hand.

Around noon yesterday I hear a loud cracking noise and then thesound of a high voltage line grounding itself through normal unprotected materials like trees, guardrails and the road.  We got one last loud bang and then the lights went out.  Luckily, we have a large emergency generator on an automated transfer switch that cuts in after a few seconds so life went on.  But looking out the window I could see a very large old tree hanging across the road and suspended in the trees on my side of the road.  This looked like a big problem.

I called 911 and the fellow there took the information and said someone was on the way.  And he was right.  Emergency vehicles of all description showed up.  There was a fire engine, a state trooper, some non-descript pick up truck with flashers, two power company cherry pickers and a big highway vehicle with a heavy-duty bucket on a big arm.

They were out there for a couple of hours without any indication that much was going on.  The fire engine and the statie left.  Eventually the highway guys started walking around and assembling some gear.  Now meanwhile the storm hadn’t abated much at all.  The wind was truly impressive as it shot horizontal rain in all directions with remarkable force.  Areas of my home that almost never even get wet were flowing rivers from time to time.  I even had to sojourn out into this mess when the sump in the lower driveway starting backing up.  Leaves in the sump that hadn’t caused any problem when normal rainfall was involved blocked the outlet line enough that about six inches of water was standing on the lower driveway and advancing to the house.  I freed the clog and that pool emptied into that six-inch pipe in an impressive way.  Luckily this was April and not February so the worst I got was wet.  But when I got inside, I was convinced that the highway guys would wait until morning to work on that tree.  After all nobody would freeze to death without power in 60 degree weather and working with chain saws on hanging trees in that wind and rain seemed foolish to me.

But about an hour later I saw the highway truck change position and the two power company bucket trucks moved over to the next two telephone poles beyond where the tree was located.  And then I could hear the chainsaws and see the trees pitching around as they took it apart.  Well those guys must know their stuff.  It took about an hour to down the tree and clear the road.  After that it took a couple of more hours for the linemen to rework the wires and restore power.  By then the wind was starting to die down.

Today I went out and checked out the aftermath.

 

Interestingly the wind didn’t crack that tree it pulled it out by the roots.  I’m not sure if that made clearing the road easier or harder.  But looking at the size and estimating the weight of the tree sections that the crew was working with in that lousy weather I have to admit I’m impressed.

So, to put an end to this post, I guess I’m just saying that there’s work and then there’s real work.  If we’re going to have a world where power flows through wires across the countryside, we’ll need some men who don’t shelter in place when things go wrong.  They go out in the wind and rain and snow and do hard work so everyone else can stay warm and safe inside.  Hopefully one day soon a lot more people will remember that and once again make it part of the way we address the world we live in.  Not everyone can do essential work from the dining room table or the local Starbuck’s.

Building on Trump’s Revolt

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Donald Trump recognized an explosion waiting for a spark.  He vocalized the outrage and despair that had built up under generations of “leaders” of both mainstream parties who disregarded the will of their constituencies and deprived them of their constitutional freedoms in the name of making a better world.  And now that we have seen what happens when the President is someone who means to work for us and not against us, I think we should be planning to arrange for the same kind of leadership in the next president and in other government positions.

As I’ve said several times before, I think President Trump needs to explicitly name his successor.  Whether he uses the office of the vice presidency as an indicator I think it is vitally important that before he finishes his second term he needs to name a successor.  Whether that will be Mike Pence or someone else, President Trump is the only man to answer that question.

But what about beyond this?  How do we expand this revolt to roll back all the harm done by the anti-constitutional assault we’ve been living under for fifty years?  It’s going to take an organization.  But how does it get built?

When the Tea Party attempted a grass roots movement it devolved into nothing but hucksterism and all that surfaced from that was Mitt Romney.  But without a grass roots movement we end up with the GOP Establishment which once again is Mitt Romney or at best Ted Cruz.  We need someone to build us a new party, something like the Tea Party but with clout and without the grifters.

Once again I hate to say it but we need Donald Trump to build us a foundation that we can flock to.  Replacing the Republican Party probably would do more damage than letting it remain.  But we need an organization that we can build that won’t be easily stolen away by the enemy.  We need someone who doesn’t need money so we can feel like our donations to it will be used for the right cause, to push our agenda among the spineless Republicans and to promote less-spineless Republicans.

I say I hate to say it because it makes me think that we have no hope without a savior with vaults full of money.  But I say it because I think it’s true.  It will take Donald Trump and any other of his class who love this country the way it was to lay a foundation for rebuilding its institutions from the ground up.  It will take lobbyists and PAC money and think tanks and community organizers to start organizing the people who have given up and direct the ones who are looking for effective actions that they can take.

We don’t want e-mails and letters hounding us for donations.  We want leadership and organizational skills and clever lawyers to fight for our rights and defend us from our enemies.  We want someone to attack our enemies using the courts and the Justice Department to stop them from harming us.  Stop Google and Twitter and Paypal and Patreon and Facebook from de-platforming us and stop Antifa from assaulting us in the streets.

So as strange as it is to say, Donald Trump can’t just retire after his terms are over and enjoy his life.  We need him to build the MAGA Foundation and turn it into the weapon we need to keep his revolt alive.  We can support it with our money and other forms of contributions but he’ll have to bring it to life.

Cutting Through Idealism and Realism to Enact Change

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During my Thanksgiving holiday I got into a discussion with one of my guests about the nature of American government.  The discussion arose out of a comment I made about a book I was reading.  I mentioned that the author believed that several modern conservative scholars were unbeknownst to themselves espousing moral relativism when opining about the Founding Fathers’ intent when they wrote the Declaration of Independence.  The discussion could have gotten into a relatively complicated discussion of the evidence of the Founders’ intent but was short circuited by a statement by my guest that all of these political theories were completely irrelevant because in the real world, government had nothing to do with principles or even the law but was rather a jungle of machine politicians handing out patronage to minions and enforcing the will of the powers that be.  I tried to make the point that even if human nature inevitably injects corruption into the real world having an ideal version of government as a map of what government is supposed to be is a means by which we can continuously correct the deviations that build up in our government.  Eventually the discussion broke down due to irreconcilable differences in point of view.  But it got me thinking about what is the correct way to handle practical problems in today’s political system.

After thinking about the obstacles to change it occurred to me that both honest and dishonest government presented both obstacles and opportunities for influencing government policy.  For instance, in Democrat run states, the politicians are often cynical crooks who have nevertheless learned to parrot the multicultural narrative to control the vote.  But these patchwork coalitions they represent are far from a united front.  Most of the constituencies have little in common and some are actually hostile toward each other.  This reality opens up opportunities to divide and conquer the “narrative” by appealing to the self-interests of some component of the gorgeous mosaic.  This worked clearly when a SuperPAC was able to get a Proposition to block Gay Marriage on the California ballot and minority voters provided the margin needed to pass it.

In places where Republicans are at least nominally in charge, holding these leaders’ feet to the fire is the way to go.  Never let them use fairness or kindness to allow some kind of insanity to take hold.  Where the Right has the advantage, it should maintain a stranglehold by any means necessary.  The ranks of elected officials should be scrupulously monitored for heresy and violators should be branded with an L for Leftist and cast out into the outer darkness never to return.  And it’s not only the right of the people in this area to let their leaders know what is going wrong.  It’s their duty and their best chance of keeping their environment sane.

But as far as the nuts and bolts of political life, I’ll admit that patronage and log-rolling are probably not things that can be eliminated.  Politics is a lucrative environment to swim in and honesty is even scarcer in political circles than it is in the business world.  That reality is never going to be permanently altered.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t push the politicians and judges to write their laws and decisions to serve our needs.  A crooked politician can push through a good law if he thinks his job depends on it.

And so, this brings me back to my original point.  Just because government is full of crooks it doesn’t mean we have to let them neglect the functions of government that can restrain Leftist insanity.  They can continue stealing their part from the Treasury if they will at least protect us from the people who want to steal our children’s lives and souls.

But in order to make that happen we have to be both realistic about what the people in government are really like and be idealistic in what we want our communities to be like.  Just because our mayor happens to be a degenerate doesn’t mean we will let him legalize depravity in our midst.  And equally just because a man is honest doesn’t mean he is safe as a mayor or president.  If he’s too idealistic and fears being called mean or a bigot then he can be convinced to do any horrible thing for the sake of being “fair.”  And the same goes for ourselves.  We have to be tough-minded enough to withstand the hysteria and venom that the Leftists and their allies in the Media will throw at us whenever they want to victimize us with some new social justice abomination.  But we can’t allow ourselves to become so cynical about government corruption that we give up on making government do its job.

So, is this realistic idealism or idealistic realism?  Either way works for me, as long as they can keep the perverts away from the kids.

 

 

Howie Carr breaks Down the AP Stylebook for Both Parties

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We all know how the Media describes things about the Left and Right, namely positively and negatively respectively.  Howie is not breaking any new ground here but he adds the right wing “smirk” as the newest crime of the deplorables and apparently it justifies violence.

https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/03/03/howie-carr-smirking-media-bias-against-gop-couldnt-be-clearer/

Howie Carr Wants to Know if the MAGA Hat Victim Will Get the Star Treatment Like Jussie

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Up here in New England we had a non-fake hate crime involving a MAGA hat wearing individual.  But up here he was the victim.  You’ve probably heard of the illegal immigrant from Brazil that attacked someone wearing the hat.   Howie Carr is a local reporter who loves this stuff.  He goes into loving detail and asks when will the victim be on Good Morning America like Jussie.  Now ICE is going to deport her.  Does it get better than that?

https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/02/26/howie-carr-lid-flipping-flap/

03DEC2018 – American Greatness – Post of the Day

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VDH delves into history to find examples of leaders restoring greatness to a declining civilization.  The primary example he picks is Eastern Roman emperor Justinian the Great turning around the military, cultural and religious decay of sixth century Byzantium and thereby providing the foundation for a civilization that saved Eastern and possibly all  Europe from Islam.  Interesting read.

Does ‘Make X Great Again’ Ever Happen in History?