Mirrors which systematically distort images perform two functions. The first is to show us freaks because we want to see them. Funhouse or carnival mirrors are said to pander to the public’s sense of cruelty. People like to stare at grotesques even when it is themselves. The second purpose is political. Propagandists have long known that nothing rivets a public’s attention like monstrosities. “When you encounter a person whose nose, mouth or eyes are distorted in a way you have never encountered before, you instinctively lock on. Your gaze remains riveted, and your brain stays tuned for further information.” And if you are told it is something to be hated and feared, you will believe it until further notice. The Nazis portrayed the “Eternal Jew” as sickly and malformed; their films showed groups of Jews emerging from doors juxtaposed with rats fleeing a sewer. This made it so much easier to justify the extermination of Jews in their millions.
The Inhuman Other
Funhouse mirrors are so useful they are passed on like heirlooms, at least between one generation of spin masters and the next. After the Nazi defeat the funhouse mirror was turned around. The term for freak was no longer “Jew” but “Nazi.” Mike Godwin observed that “as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” Sooner or later people will be tempted to use the ultimate insult. But there was nothing immutable about “Nazi” as a term of hate. Man needs to see freaks and any freak will do. A lesser known version of Godwin’s adage is Stead’s Law, which asserts that discussions between any two atheists will inevitably converge on Christianity. And there is the reduction ad Klanum which suggests that anyone who disagrees with the “progressive agenda” is a secret member of the KKK. To everything there is a season, and a freak for every purpose.
There’s a time to warn of Christian militias; a time to urge the pelting of “hatemongers” like Andrew Breitbart. There’s a time to warn of the dangers of being angry with the policies of the President. We pray it’s not too late. But maybe it is. The freaks are everywhere. Even Human Rights Watch is not exempt. The wealthy patrons of that progressive NGO in Britain, described by the Times of London as “the Democratic Party in exile,” have found a snake within their garden of Eden. It has since been revealed that Marc Garlasco, the HRW’s “only military expert,” was by night ‘Flak88,’ “an obsessive contributor to internet forums on Third Reich memorabilia and an avid collector of badges and medals emblazoned with swastikas and eagles.”
A lavishly illustrated $100 book he compiled and self-published is dedicated to his grandfather, who served in the Luftwaffe. On members-only sites such as Wehrmachtawards.com he was writing comments like “VERY nice Hitler signature selection”; “That is so cool! The leather SS jacket makes my blood go cold it is so COOL!”
When you come to it, the “der ewige Juden” was such a useful image. Perhaps the term “eternal Jew” is a term just waiting to make its comeback in the polite European circles, already rapt with admiration for the Palestinian cause.
Who makes monsters? Mostly the Left: because of its huge presence in the media and the arts, the Left has traditionally manufactured the most hate-objects. They’ve done it for so long that it has become almost a birthright. The photographer Zombie has documented dozens of calls from the left, from demonstrators to celebrities, for the assassination and murder of President George W. Bush. But that’s not a crime, is it? “Threats to the president aren’t excusable now, and weren’t excusable in the past — and yet death threats against Bush at protests seem to have been routinely ignored for years (and readers who have any evidence showing that the threateners depicted below [in the Zombie post] were ever prosecuted for threatening the president, please tell me and I’ll update this essay with the new info). Why the discrepancy?”
The discrepancy is probably because the Left has long appointed itself the guardian of the freak-minting industry. It is a prerogative that is jealously guarded. Thus Glenn Reynolds could receive this insulting email calling for civility without the slightest irony. “I cannot emphasize this enough: your brand of public discourse is hurting our country. It us poison. So fuck you, you GOP utensil, and fuck your mother for bringing you forth.” Get it Glenn? So too could Ann Coulter be threatened by protesters at the University of Ottawa to prevent her from making a “hate speech.” S**t flows downhill. There is no mystery to that. It’s Leftist physics.
But the unintended consequence of uncontrolled and systematic distortion; the unforeseen effect of shipping funhouse mirrors everywhere is that sooner or later frustrated audiences put on corrective spectacles. The most sophisticated audiences eventually have a pair of corrective spectacles to suit every context. The term for this method of fixing distortions is adaptive optics. My grandfather had a simple rule of thumb for understanding the controlled news broadcasts in the last days of World War 2. Whatever the Japanese broadcasts claimed he believed the reverse. After listening to one strident description of a vast Japanese naval victory he concluded, “the IJN is no more.”
Adaptive optics works by measuring the distortions in a wavefront and compensating for them with a spatial phase modulator such as a deformable mirror or a liquid crystal array. …
An adaptive optics system tries to correct these distortions, using a wavefront sensor which takes some of the astronomical light, a deformable mirror that lies in the optical path, and a computer that receives input from the detector. The wavefront sensor measures the distortions the atmosphere has introduced on the timescale of a few milliseconds; the computer calculates the optimal mirror shape to correct the distortions and the surface of the deformable mirror is reshaped accordingly.
One might argue that the explosive growth of the blogosphere has been driven by its utility as an adaptive optical appliance through which to view the media. But it’s a hell of a way to run a railroad. Since the reality “out there” is first distorted by the media to the point where the discerning members of the public must apply a further distortion to make the image sensible, we inflict a huge signal loss on the viewer. There is no guarantee that the applied corrections don’t do more harm than good. Back in the days of the anti-Marcos underground I asked someone why he bothered to read either the government newspapers or the Communist Party propaganda sheet. He replied, “I buy it for date, my friend. It’s still good for telling me what day it is.”
A better situation would be one in which billions of independent sensors gathered an image and left the end user to process the information. The terrible memetic distortions of the 20th century are partly rooted in the ill-matched marriage between news gathering and meme-minting. The phrase the medium is the message was originally intended to convey the sense of absolute divorce between content and information. In an environment dominated by the formal medium, real information content actually declines. A point is reached where all news stories become variations of a few didactic themes. Who has not sat in an airport lobby watching the network news and briefly suspected that it was the same news with a different locale and set of actors? But perhaps the reductio is the point. Orwell believed every successful tyranny had to stamp out the ability to think by reducing information content, and ultimately by reducing the language itself into a kind of pidgin called Newspeak. A few big and simple untruths are always easier to peddle than complex reality. A person who I cannot I identify for fear of breaching Godwin’s Rule once wrote:
because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
One of the most important challenges of the 21st century will be to find some way to get at the approximate truth. The current crisis is to a large extent a crisis of information. Whether what we wish to know is the value of the liabilities of a financial system; whether carbon-driven AGW exists, whether “reforms” are affordable; or whether the Russians will comply with the proposed drawdowns in nuclear weapons information is so important that gross distortions are impossible to accept. We can live in a world with some funhouse mirrors, but we can’t live in a world where most of them are.
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“… threatners depicted below …”
I did not see any explicit depiction. Am I misreading your post ?
“… threatners depicted below …”
I did not see any explicit depiction. Am I misreading your post ?
Sorry, I have fixed the problem by indicating the context. The excerpt was a quote from Zombie and on his blog there are numerous pictures depicting calls for harming George W. Bush. So “threateners depicted below” refers to below his paragraph on his blog.
Der ewige Jude.
Der Große Lüge.
This is the bread of affliction, let all who are hungry come and eat.
Next year in Jerusalem.
“death threats against Bush at protests seem to have been routinely ignored for years”
It is precisely this which prevents me from thinking that the postmodern left are merely annoying. They have the potential to be dangerous.
What the left is really saying is that threats of violence against the center/right does not raise to the level of offense that an identical threat would against people whose politics are left of center. So much for equal protection.
The distance between this attitude and tolerating outright violence and murder directed towards your political opponents is a tenth of a baby step. Mark it well, folks.
A former friend who was left of center and then rocketed even further in that direction upon W’s election would send me all sorts of e-mails limning even the slightest rude or foolish thing done by someone from the center/right. When I finally commented that there were never any posts from him about equally or more egregious violations of human decency from the left, he would either say there were none (cherry picking the facts to prevent contradiction of the narrative), or, presented with examples, would claim that they were “nothing”, even in cases when any rational adult would conclude otherwise (outright lying).
When I realized what this meant in terms of his worldview I found that I could no longer be his friend. In essence, he had determined that his own humanity was in every way superior to mine simply on the basis of his politics. Historically, people like that have a nasty tendency to build concentration camps and populate them with political opponents.
Not “friend” material, I concluded.
Demonizing people a lot different from you is easy. The real trick is demonizing people who are quite close to you. This creates fear not so much of the “other”, but of being included in the bad guys. As far as I can tell this tactic started among the far left with Stalin in 30′s and became really popular among his Popular Front allies in the American progressive left in the 60′s. Apparently one of the worst insults among the anti-war left was to call somebody a “Martin Luther King”, that is committed to non-violence.
It may be the only way to attack the smear is to embrace it. Yes, I’m a racist. Yes, I’m a sexist. Yes, I’m homophobic.
It seems to me that Napolitano is a leftist bear of little brain who is playing with civic fire by stigmatizing white Christian males who do not stand with her and her boss (who started this) towards the pink end of the political spectrum. A disproportionate number of the professional armed forces and the national guard (now largely trained up and blooded thanks to Iraq and Afghanistan) of the United States fit this category, and many of them do not adore their president. Bringing us together? This could blow us apart. If the powers that be think that they can bait the political opposition into angry demonstrations in the street and then turn loose the regulars on them, they may be very painfully disappointed. My advice to the administration, not unkindly meant, is to tread very lightly here. They are smoking in a fireworks factory.
The distorted mirror could also be called the “smoking mirror”.
According to one version of the Mesoamerican legend, Tezcatlipoca (an evil god) defeated Quetzalcoatl (a good god) through the “smoking mirror”. Quetzalcoatl was handsome but when he saw himself in the “smoking mirror”, he saw himself as ugly and was then defeated.
A similar “smoking mirror” causes anorexia in young women who are well proportioned or even skinny, and yet they always see themselves as fat.
Evil can use our self-consciousness against us. Evil can use our desire to be ethical as a weapon against us. Evil can use our sense of shame against us. Evil can use our desire to promote the greater good against us. Evil can use our hope against us. As soon as one thinks that betrayal cannot happen in one’s life, it happens.
The “smoking mirror” exists within our midst. Only the “smoking mirror” itself would say that it does not exist.
Anybody who talks of Nazis or Klansmen would do well to read their original literature. Nazis and Klansmen were talkative. (Some still are.) Many Klan ideas were socialist or at the very least Croly-style progressive – white socialist but still socialist. Although Nazi and Klan identification with socialist ideas should not be used to discredit socialism, those who use such labels to discredit others ought to carefully consider what ideological similarities and differences they have with those they vilify.
Until quite recently mirrors were magical things. In the natural world people could only seem themselves reflected in ponds or other still liquids. The Mirror of Galadriel was exactly that: water poured into a basin.
Even after mirrors were manufactured from polished metal surfaces the aura of the occult remained. It was bad luck to break a mirror, maybe because there was “someone there”. Vampires were demi-beings which lacked a certain something and consequently their doppelganger did not appear in a looking-glass, which by the way, was a portal into an alternate universe in Lewis Carrol’s mathematical world.
There is still a term for the fear of looking into mirrors: ‘eisoptrophobia’. And there are probably people who, as they get older, dread looking into the mirror, half-hoping that if they don’t look, they won’t age. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the Fairest One of All?” Dorian Gray could only see his real self in the mirror. And so we find from literature and superstitution that many people believe, even though they know it’s foolish, that there exists a connection between the representation and the thing, between the Man and the Man in the Mirror.
At the root of every totalitarianism’s desire to manipulate history is partly the primitive superstition in the magic of mirrors. By managing the image, they manage reality. By controlling the narrative, they control the story. By controlling the news, they make history.
But they don’t. It is men, not men’s press releases that ultimate count in this world. Tolkien with his customary perceptiveness understood that real mirrors do not show us what we wish to see. They show us “things that were, and things that are, things that yet may be”, and that is not always to our liking.
Well do we wish to look?
@no more uro, #4 I had an experience similar to yours. A friend who, I learned later, was raised by red diaper babies came utterly unglued when confronted with a nation that would not only elect George W. Bush as President, but support him in Middle Eastern military adventures in response to 9/11.
On multiple occasions, he told me that he would rather see my family on the East Coast perish in terrorist attacks than see America invade an Arab country. He came back from a vacation in the Midwest convinced that Midwesterners do “not fully experience humanity” because they “work hard and live in a place without mountains”.
I have known many bigots in my life. But that one really took the cake. As you say, not friend material.
The Democrats and their media minions are spreading Damnable lies about the Tea Parties. When they uncorked the old racist whine to toss at millions of ordinary Americans, I had to wonder: what is their polling like coming out of African American Communities? Is there low voter moral there? Has 98 percent support slipped to 87? Are 20 percent threatening to vote Republican? Are 70 percent saying they will not vote at all? Of course the Democrats cannot create jobs. But they are quite good at creating and channeling resentments (while destroying jobs).
And now the Feds have done these raids on some “Christian” militias in the Midwest. After a week of spreading lies about their opposition I have to wonder: Do they want us to believe what Holder says and the New York Times reports? Or are we suppose to assume it is part of an ongoing lie meant to smear their opposition?
Personally, I am not inclined to believe in conspiracies. I suspect fire to go with all this smoke that surrounds these raids. The “militias” may well have armed up and studied bomb making. And I doubt the left Democrats have corrupted the FBI and bent it to their will.
Still, if we are suppose to believe the accusations are a frame-up — a more intense from of the slanders directed at the Tea Parties — won’t that serve a purpose? The purpose of intimidating the leaders of the administration’s most effective opposition? After all, it could happen to them, too. When the Speaker of the House and the Leader of the Senate and the President of the United States unite to lie about a group, it could well be for a sinister purpose.
Speaking of big lies, today one has to wonder what O meant by his speech to the troops in Afghanistan. Some on the right have praised his intentions. . . but how do we know what they are? Maybe he sees funding bills with bipartisan support in the future, laden with slush for his favorites? At the very least?
Some on the right have praised his intentions. . . but how do we know what they are?
A transparent system is one in which there are multiple collateral sources of information such that there is no serious doubt about what the meaning of “is” is. Over the last year and a half the question of what “is” is has come up too infrequently for comfort. What is going on with Israel? What are America’s intentions in Iran? What is really in the Health Care “reform” bill? What will immigration “reform” contain? Even some the President’s own supporters have found that what they thought was true turned out not to be.
Ultimately the answer from the administration about his intentions will be to “trust the President”. That’s all very well. But the mere fact that a resort to trust is required means that some things have to be taken on faith. They are not manifestly obvious. It’s not obvious that healthcare will “save” any money; nor is it completely clear that we are headed for a world “free of nuclear weapons” rather than one infested by them.
This is a systemic problem. It is not necessarily peculiar to President Obama, though perhaps it finds its fullest expression in him. The long term solution must also be systemic. A government of “laws not men” suggests the analogue “an information of verifiable systems, not trust”. As long as we have to keep asking, “what’s up Doc?” then things are not as they should be.
Neil #9 and no mo more uro#4 – I have had pretty much the same dismaying experience this week,but not with friends and acquaintances, but on Open Salon. I post there for the literary exposure, more than to get into political discussion (since I save that for my mil-blog)I do have friends and fans, and there ARE some conservative/libertarian/independents there. But the few times I have commented on my Tea Party experience – it just got incredibly vicious and ugly, and this week was the absolute worst. (Sample comment thread here: not my own OS blog, but that of another blogger there, who was innocent and hopeful enough to think she could explain a few things about conservatives generally) – http://open.salon.com/blog/kldykmanaolcom/2010/03/26/the_misconception_of_my_conservative_views
This all hit a new degree of hatefulness after the 20th, with the vile accusations from the Dems of racism, white Klan robes, violence and threats and spitting, oh my. The worst part is the media commenters who are repeating it whole, without a question or a doubt. I’ve hit a limit now: I no longer want to try and reason or argue with any of them. There’s no point, and I’m tired and disgusted.
A while ago, I thought that various bloggers who talked about a cold civil war were exaggerating – but now I fear they were understating the situation. The leaders of the House and Senate, and this administration are prepping a frame up of the political opposition, and elements of the major news media and the lefty intellectual classes are all going along with it.
W, I believe Zombie may be a her, not a him, Otherwise Z would probably have difficulty using certain feminist-issue booths for cover locations during photo-journalistic Zombietime forays into Weirdsville, USA. But I could be wrong.
W
“The long term solution must also be systemic. A government of “laws not men” suggests the analogue “an information of verifiable systems, not trust”. As long as we have to keep asking, “what’s up Doc?” then things are not as they should be.”
One of the major sins that the American citizens commited is the fact that very few were interested over the last fifty to sixty years to even ask or if they did took the easiest answer (for them) or just accepted what ever the majority believed or touted.
To our everlasting shame the American population of our past and present, were and are responsible in many, many ways for the peril of our Republic today.
We believed what they showed us in the mirrors.
Papa Ray
I had a revealing experience many years ago. I came upon my Irish setter pup staring at a full length back of a door bedroom mirror, rigid as stone. He could see there was something looking back at him, but since there was no smell, his primary sense, all his instincts told him there was nothing there. Yet clearly there was. I think there are a lot of people like my long gone but never forgotten Irish setter pup; they see reflections and believe there is something there, not realizing the reflection is them.
TO A LOOKING GLASS
Reflections of an empty room
A curtain moving in the breeze
A passing figure briefly seen
It cares not all for what it sees
The heirloom hanging in the hall
Reflects the living, not the dead
Who are still there, beneath the new
Who will in time have in their stead
The newer still, the living shades
Mere visitors, a constant frieze
The mirror hangs there, silent, still
Not caring all for what it sees
SGT Mom
“but now I fear they were understating the situation. The leaders of the House and Senate, and this administration are prepping a frame up of the political opposition, and elements of the major news media and the lefty intellectual classes are all going along with it.”
I think you see the dangers approaching clearly.
Alinsky’s rules will be fully in play. I suggest all conservatives read them and start playing by them as much as our moral standing will handle.
They are going to use shame, misdirection, fear, lies and in the end force against any and all of their perceived enemies.
They control the Feds, the FBI, The ATF, the Justice Dept, Homeland Security and hundreds of departments in between.
Like I have said hundreds if not thousands of times, Prepare yourselves and your families.
Papa Ray
The media’s distortions into a few narratives aren’t driven by Orwellian things but by the media business model.
The only reliable, day-in and day-out, bill-paying audience is soap opera women.
Everything is edited so as not to lose the attention of these women, lest they tune away.
The left just took advantage of what was already there.
Blogs don’t have any business model to worry about and are quite unlike the media, even the leftist ones.
In 17 above I forgot one Fed that they control. Perhaps the most dangerous one of them all.
Democrats threaten companies hit hard by health care bill Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Democrats-threaten-companies-hit-hard-by-health-care-bill-89347127.html#ixzz0jcU3fvRs
This is just the start.
Papa Ray
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”-Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, KJV
As the ancients gazed onto a polished piece of metal to dimly perceive their reflections, darkly (and to figuratively find the truth), so to we dimly gaze into the nether world of the internet and try to perceive the truth of the people that live inside our computers.
Truth. What is truth? Can myths be truer than reality? Truthier? What about the “truthers”? Are they truthful?
As one Soviet apparatchnik was alleged to say about the truth, “I’m not worried about the future, it’s the past that keeps changing.”
Also I note how my high school son’s history teacher has them reading Zinn’s “A History of the American People”. More truthy revisionism to control the future by distorting the past.
So let’s face it, reality (the truth) is up for grabs.
Until and unless a strong counter narrative backed up by facts can be used again and again to undermine the Left and their revisionism (see Sgt Mom @ 13), their march through Academia, the institutions and the government will never be stopped or rolled back. There will always be enough useful idiots to accept any narrative to escape facing the unpleasant “truth”. And there are a lot more unpleasant truths out there today than yesterday.
Somebody must be working overtime.
the impudence to distort the truth so infamously
Herr Schicklgruber had discovered the Audacity of Hope.
Alexis,
The distorted mirror could also be called the “smoking mirror”
The mark of the true Insider is the ability to affect a disdain for the lie that you are feeding to lesser mortals. Like O’Brien in Nineteen Eighty-Four they claim the freedom to turn off the view screen or even tell forbidden truths about Fearless Leader. It is all a masquerade that they project, a zombie like show of autonomy within their emptiness. The Nazgul may have sat around laughing at the little orcs who were scared of the Boss but they only existed as distorded images in his smoky mirror.
BTW wretchard, Zombie the photojournalist is neither a He nor a She. Zombie is properly addressed as the Undead It.
During the Clinton years the nation was afflicted according to the Press and Janet Reno with a plague of right wing militias. They never seemed to show the capacity to take over a corner pool hall let alone threaten the government. Several did manage to get themselves killed, possibly under circumstances in which a more professional approach would have avoided much bloodshed, and the loosely associated team of McVeigh and Nichols finally emerged as the Central Casting examples of a the threat that Janet Napolitano now stays awake at night worrying about.
We spent the following dozen years building a domestic law enforcement system to identify such people. Nothing that I am saying here is a criticism of real law enforcement efforts to identify real threats. My criticism is with a political distortion, a fun house mirror, that misidentifies the nature of the threats and which by misallocating resources puts us all at risk.
All the evidence is that being a frustrated underachieving and socially isolated person filled with rage is something that makes it unlikely that you will be become part of some larger conspiracy. Even modestly more functional people acting out fantasies of being in an invisible army would find the cases like McVeigh hard to associate with.
Such conduct has no real ideological content, putting a box of right or left wing around such people does little good. The points they string together could come from Larouche or Chomsky and they would not know for sure themselves. Perhaps now such people simple get stuck where McVeigh started, in Internet addiction and cyber hacking.
What is interesting to me is how the threat from the militias disappeared when George Bush became President, even though they hated him almost as much as Clinton. Clinton scared them for what they thought he did but Bush, through his father, fit with all the worst conspiracy theories of the fringe about a Preppy Tri-lateral alliance of global wealth and power. If this thread stays open long enough someone will respond to me by talking about the Illuminati.
What the ebb and flow of the concern about militias and domestic terrorism from the right tells us is very little about the nature of the threat and much about the nature of the regime.
As a final note the tragic effects of a political interference in a law enforcement situation does not only have to result in the deaths of white right wing conspiracy theorists. In 1985 the Philadelphia Police Department dropped an explosive on the dwelling occupied by the Move Organization resulting in the deaths of 11 people including 5 children. A retired police officer who had participated in the subsequent investigation assured me that it was a case of simple murder by Mayor Wilson Goode.
Post-ultimately, earlier I read the Times (UK) article about Human Rights Watch and took note of this passage,
What we have here is an organization that takes money from Human Rights abusers to investigate abuses in places with fewer abuses. This is like a Public Health Inspector who took money from a slumlord to restrict themselves to inspecting housing conditions in Beverly Hills.
The organization was founded as Helsinki Watch and has outlived its remit. This is much worse than the March of Dimes that reinvented itself after polio was conquered as a useful charity that had discovered an incurable condition. Human Rights Watch simply has surrendered to the abusers.
There are serious organizations working to expose human rights abuses. My suggestion would be to begin by supporting the people at Freedom House.
Wretchard: “As long as we have to keep asking, “what’s up Doc?” then things are not as they should be.”
And when was that mythical age of trust and faith in government, Wretchard? Ronald Reagan’s era of raised taxes (4X), sucking up to Saddam, gun control (Brady Bill), bombings and retreat in Beirut, Wedtech, cozing up to Marcos, and Iran-Contra? I liked George W. Bush’s intentions, but confess I blew a gasket when reading about 363 tons of cash flown into Iraq and never accounted for:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/10/iraq_billions200710
And that was before the Wall St. Bailouts! Of course, if I read you correctly, you’re referring not to a golden past but to some future state of trust and faith in government, a state that can be achieved through better information and democratic-feedback systems. Perhaps, but I remain skeptical, for the more bandwidth, the less an intelligible signal. I fear the body of your post, the evidence you marshal of new techniques of disinformation, militates against your hopes.
E Nigma
“Also I note how my high school son’s history teacher has them reading Zinn’s “A History of the American People”. More truthy revisionism to control the future by distorting the past.”
May I suggest this book:
The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History
To counter some of the pap they teach our children and it is a very entertaining and well written guide to our history.
Papa Ray
People see the Other as they wish to and they see in the mirror what they wish to. There is a set of photographs that they showed us down at FLETC, among other similar sets, that had been on display in the New York City Police’s Central Booking Unit at the Tombs. The subject reportedly was brought in for one of her numerous arrests and pointed at the images and said with pride “That’s Me.” The Instructor was a retired Southern Police Chief and a Minister. When I asked him in horror “How could she?” he looked grave and answered, “You must understand that she only sees herself as the girl in the first photograph. That is who she sees when she looks in the mirror.” The first photograph was taken when she was 22 years old and the last was taken a few weeks before her death at age 36.
To be blogged under the title “The Girl in the Mirror.”
Oh, Papa Ray, we have had some long talks about that subject. The teacher himself has compromised his credibility with some of his other inane rantings. Not a few parents have had long “talks” with him.
The school year is almost over, and most of this is going to wash of my son like water off a duck’s back. It is just disturbing that this sort of thing happens all the time.
Zinn’s book COULD be used as a valuable tool to allow the young to understand how malleable history can be. History can have many “interpretations”, yet who is to say what the truth really is? And when I have heard Matt Damon champion Zinn, I know truly what a useless tool he really is.
Herodotus was once called “the father of history”, yet a few latter day classical historians (of his era) called him “the father of lies”. Both statements may be broadly true.
This summer I may try to get him to read Paul Johnson’s “Modern Times”.
to Papa Ray, regarding your post @19 about Congressman Henry WAXMAN
WillieWax is clearly abusing his authority. If the companies he’s summoned roll over and do the submissive bit, they shouldn’t be surprised if this becomes the pattern until the collapse.
These legislative peckerheads have turned into a pack of petty tyrants. They cannot be satisfied except by having their asses… oops, I mean, their RINGS kissed by any hapless subject on whom they set their piggy little eyes.
These people are the schoolyard bullies of their generation, pimps who beat their women to force them to continue plying their trade, the Arnold Judas Quislings. Their joy and their lust finds its ultimate joy in betraying all who trusted them, and seeing the heart-rending moment of realization of the betrayal in the victim’s eyes.
(Sorry, there’s a knock at the door… Hold on a minute…)
Um, there are some guys in black uniforms here telling me I have to go with them. Uh, I’ll try to get back to you…
Walt, speaking of animals seeing things in mirrors and the Left, the Left today reminds me of a feral peacock that used to hang around my house. The (literal) bird-brain would walk past our French doors, see his reflection in the glass, and think another bird was trying to horn in on his territory. The peacock would puff himself up, make all sorts of displays to scare off the “other” bird, but that blasted other bird would do the same thing! Eventually, the peacock would get mad enough to start pecking at his reflection in the window. I kept worrying he would break the glass. Eventually a raccoon ate him.
But Leftists are so much the same when they look at conservatives and complain about bigotry, intolerance, violence, stupidity, prudishness, etc.. Leftists don’t actually see conservatives, they see their own reflection and hate it. All the charges seem to be projections of their own personality. Conservatives are racists? Yet it’s Liberals who insist the government discriminate, and who elect and lionize former Klansmen. Conservatives are intolerant of cultural differences, but it’s Liberals who hound private organizations that refuse not to merely accept but actively promote Liberal culture. Conservatives are religious nuts who ignore science, but Liberals are the ones who believe in AGW. Conservatives are misogynists, but Liberals elected Ted Kennedy, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bill Clinton…
Well, the list could go on and the particulars are well known here at BC.
Indeed. If I may be so indulgent – Hello Kyber.
So nobody saw the video of the Black Congressman being spit upon?
Nobody saw the Browning pistol signs?
So nobody saw the many many other manifestations of violence against elected officials?
Do you all really believe that all the recent violence (Pentagon shooting, Holacaust Museum Shooting, what about the nut Popalawski in Pittsburgh who said “This was a symbolic killing. Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg’s book”
and the Unitarian church in where was it Tennessee? Why are you all so Obsessed with the elected president? You use words like Traitor, Marxist, Muslim or you use racial epithets… YOU merely lost an election, we HAVE them periodically in Democracies
Where is your outrage for the Iraq war which President Bush refused to pay for, HOW do you fight a war with OUT having anybody pay for it????
thanks for playing
It’s not just the Left that will ultimately drive the dynamic, though they are the preponderant offenders. Ultimately something else is at stake when the center can’t hold. Every dispute that crosses a certain line should fear the boundary where things no longer become a question of who’s right or wrong and the only question becomes “who’s side are you on?” That’s a content-free question, which hinges upon only one thing: choice.
I remember walking into a meeting of largely Jesuit-educated students that followed nights of pitched street fights in Manila in the January of 1970. They had gathered to form a “third way” student movement. It was in a way a congress of defeat. They were aware that the Left was forcing the pace against an authoritarian government. The question was how to respond.
The house was divided into two camps. One side wished to restore “civility” to the debate. The other wished to get off the fence and lead the coming storm, but lead it right. Naturally a veil was drawn over the future then. Which of them could foresee that the crash would would still take 2 years to happen and fourteen more after that to resolve itself?
I’ve often wondered what I would say if I could be transported by Time Machine back to that meeting on Padre Faura street. Who would understand a message from the future? There are times when I think that history is a platform on which you do your bit and affect your little corner of the woods. But what happens overall is an emergent event which is beyond human control, almost beyond human comprehension.
What scares me is that some people may actually think they can determine what happens. They can’t. The terrible law of unintended consequences always has the last laugh. The script never comes off the way it’s written. Decisions turn out to be important, but for reasons you never expected. We are free to act. And so are others. Ironically all I could say, if I could go back to the past is, “be your best; and hang on.”
The raids against “Christian militias” is right out of the Clinton/Reno playbook. Same exact thing. Hopefully we won’t be treated to eighty plus children being barbecued by the Federal Government again. But once again the power of the Federal Government is on the move against citizen groups it deems a ‘threat’. The ‘threat’ is needed to fit the narrative. And the narrative is needed to discredit the Tea Party movement, just like Clinton needed it to discredit the growth of talk radio. The Tea Party movement is a threat to the Democrats like no other. Ordinary folks who had quietly stood on the political sidelines are quiet no more. The great sleeping giant of American politics is stirring from its slumber. If allowed to awaken this giant will first take over the Republican Party and then overwhelm the Democrats at the ballot box. That is why the Tea Partiers must be mocked, derided, and painted as (fill in the blank) in order to make those still standing on the sidelines pause and rethink their impulse to join the movement. It is why the Dems and their media allies are so intent on painting these ordinary citizens as racist, violence, extreme, you name it. Over 10,000 folks showed up in the middle of the Nevada desert on windy Saturday morning to take part in a Tea Party event. 10,000+ On their own dime. You don’t think that raised more that a few worried liberal eyebrows? The 9/12 march on Washington was estimated at 1-2 million. There is growing voter anger out there and the Administration knows it and will try ever trick in the book in the hopes of deflecting/defusing it. Sort of a weird coincident don’t you think that the raids in the Midwest happened the same day that all those folks gathered in the Nevada desert to express their anger at the direction of the country and willingness to do something about it?
side story – early Sunday morning I had to go into work to meet one of our contractors who had been called in to fix a piece of critical electrical equipment that was in alarm and in need of repair. After fixing the equipment he told me out-of-the-blue that while he was gassing up his truck on the way in he heard three different people at the gas station talk about the health care bill. “In favor, or against?” I asked. “All of them were against it,” was the response. He is too, and he’s a union boy. And this is California. Everyone I know is pissed off. My sense of it is that the Democrats are going to receive a sever spanking at the ballot box come November.
“All of them were against it”
YIKES they ALREADY have health care!!!
The same 80 children who were being molested by that creature?
Oh, the xtian milita that planned to kill police officers and THEM mine the funeral areas to kill more police officers>?
Just like the anti choice zealots?? who bomb clinics and then set bombs off to kill first responders???
thanks for playing
Following the exposure of Marc Garlasco’s hobbies and his demise at HRW, I’ve been interested to read about his background at the Pentagon. The Wikipedia (yes, I know) entry on his time at the Pentagon is very impressive. I’m curious as to how much of it is true. How many of these claims can be substantiated? I have no way of verifying such information, but I was hoping that Richard or one of his correspondents might be able to.
““All of them were against it”
YIKES they ALREADY have health care!!!”
Yep, they already have health care, and they would like to keep it just the way it is!
But they will have to deal with the coming rationing, just like the rest of us.
That’s their concern, and it is certainly a valid one.
There’s the old saw about a democracy being two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch. To avoid that fate, you can’t simply do what 51% of the public wants, you have to do what 90% can live with. In a functional democratic polity the right thing to do may not be anyone’s preferred solution, but it has to be almost no one’s intolerable solution.
I mentioned before my notion that the great value of the civic (meaning voluntary, or “you should”) sphere is that it can provide a great buffer to addressing the difficult questions without forcing bitter confrontations – we can disagree about civic issues without needing to shoot one another. The government sphere (the mandatory one – “you must”) has no such flexibility, either you obey or you rebel, and rebels either overthrow the government or are hanged by it.
To put it in the terms Wretchard just used, the civic sphere asks questions about what’s right and wrong, but the government sphere just wants to know what side you’re on (loyal citizen or seditious criminal). The great triumph, and stupidity, of the Progressive Left has been to co-opt most of the civic sphere into the government sphere. We have to find a way to reverse that, or this kabuiki theatre of fabricated hate speech will eventually became the real thing.
After reading Noam Chomsky back in the 1990’s, I became concerned that he was trying to import the Spanish Civil War into the United States.
Now, it feels as though trying to stop this horrible progression is like the scene from the Three Penny Opera where all the pleas in the world won’t stop the beggar’s march.
We should be saying YOU to the terrorists who attacked us. We should be saying YOU to those who scream “Death to America”. We should be saying YOU to those who celebrate genocidal attacks against our people. Yet, we have a political environment where this is not happening.
Who is the enemy? Ahmadinejad, al-Qaeda, and the Saudis who fund al-Qaeda? Or have Americans become convinced that all of our enemies are domestic and not foreign?
Perhaps the real “smoking mirror” is the propaganda of those who saw the September 11 attacks as a detour from the civil war they had been planning all along. Perhaps the real “smoking mirror” is how the Westboro Baptist Church and its counterparts on the Left have decided that the American people are the real enemy.
It isn’t about Bush. It isn’t about Obama. It’s about the American people and where ordinary Americans seek to lead our country. If our elected leaders aren’t leading, it is incumbent upon the rest of us to make constructive suggestions, make alternative plans, show real leadership, and most of all work to preserve our liberty and our national power.
Any man who paints a halo upon himself and casts himself as an angel coming out of the heavens to save America should expect half of the electorate to believe him and the other half of the electorate to see him as a fallen angel. That’s life. It’s also why depicting any politician with a halo is so utterly dangerous for any working democracy. We elect human beings to the Presidency, not gods. We elect people with flaws and imperfect judgments even in the best of times. Even George Washington wasn’t perfect!
Those who want to “bring Americans together” could start by setting a good example.
Health care is already rationed, if you have insurance or are wealthy you can get health care (don’t say going to the emergency room is health care it clearly is not,and we all pay for those uninsured souls) if you don’t then you are rationed
As for physican shortages, I could wait to see my doctor a week or more for my mundane matters, but 30 million Americans with out health care NOW will be able to get it
and if WE have to wait a little longer to see our GP, well E Pluribus Unum…
It’s not that there will be rationing as there already is rationing
I keep thinking about the man in the mirror, mostly I keep thinking about the vitriol I read here, a lot of folks complaing because they lost an election and a Black man with a funny name is now their president.
So tell me, you many erudite bloggers,as I see this meme time and time again
what liberties have you lost?
Guns? nope now YOU can carry in National Parks
Wiretapping? No Obama has reinstated the legal necessity for Subpoenas
What about the rights you wish to take away?
Abortion? well they are still available, but NO thanks to the republicans who tantalized you all about making an end to it and NOT doing so, it’s not like they did not have the votes
Privatization: You got that (SEE Blackwater)
thanks for playing
so what? what right have you lost?
#13 Sgt Mom . . .
I’ve given up trying to convince liberals/progressives/obama supporters of anything. Their brains have turned to concrete.
What keeps me sane is that reality cannot be denied. Some of the people I know will be faced with economic collapse. Others may escape, but they will have to deal with the consequences of their blockheadedness.
There is no escape from history, and it may not bring one what one expected.
Someone made a long list of Obama’s
mirrors and put a small corrective lens at the bottom of each.
The Complete List of Obama Statement Expiration Dates
Very interesting, many I didn’t know about, or perhaps elected to forget.
Papa Ray
wretchard,
There seems to be a limitation in Tocque. When I submit the troll it can evade the block by simply altering its name. The feature needs to be linked to the users IP, which will probably change with dynamic addressing, and the associated email address. It would give some pleasure to know that a purely disruptive and deliberately offensive person is reduced to shouting their vitriol at a screen but without being heard. The purely masturbatory nature of their personality is thereby made clear. The bad news is that they still get to consume bandwidth and tie up PJM’s resources. Also the troll still shows in my email.
Today the Innertubes ran like molasses so that I thought that our creditors in Asia might have decided to repossess the two Dixie™ cups and a string.
To be blogged under the title “Freedom Of and From Speech.”
TomDem55: Haven’t they revised your marching orders yet? The damn thing has passed; you don’t need to troll anymore.
BTW, what payoff did they promise you? Higher spot on the rationing ladder?
“Who is the enemy? Ahmadinejad, al-Qaeda, and the Saudis who fund al-Qaeda? Or have Americans become convinced that all of our enemies are domestic and not foreign?”
This question brings Uncle Joe to mind. So intent was he on purging his own Party and state, that Hitler looked like an ally to him. ‘Course he beat him and everyone else in the end.
Happy days.
Greetings troll TrDem55.
So, instead of picking up Koresh when he was in town, you preferred Clinton’s way?
When you see TomDem55 troll abatement procedures are advised.
TomDem: This is the Big Leagues. You are not good enough to play here.
One of the most important challenges of the 21st century will be to find some way to get at the approximate truth. The current crisis is to a large extent a crisis of information.
We receive this timely analysis on the same day that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting proudly announces that $10,000,000 more or less will be devoted creating “local journalism centers”. They are concerned that the MSM is losing strength through losing dollars, and wish to “help”. NPR and PBS stations in each region will collaborate on covering key issues, including immigration, agribusiness, the economy and health care. They will jointly hire about 50 multimedia journalists.
In other words, the same folks who sell you cars (GM, Chrysler), insurance (AIG), mortgage-backed securities (Fannie and Freddie), and now “health insurance” (and student loans on the side), will now be purveying “news” through five of these regional journalism centers.
I guess the corporate media is for real now. But what sort of corrective sensors will be most appropriate? My own experience with NPR and PBS is in the glaring LACK of coverage which they habitually apply to subjects of keen interest to me. How to correct their transmissions for the black holes of lacunae which they bombard us with?
President and CEO Paula Kerger said the initiative will help public stations adapt to changes driven by the Internet. She noted public participation in the news, by posting stories and pictures on Twitter, Facebook and blogs, has increased dramatically. “The bottom line is this: In an era of crowd sourcing, journalism must rebuild itself from the bottom up,” she said.
Is this flattery? Is CPB taking after Pajamas Media, with intent to undo the terrible harm to the body politic perpetrated by same?
Insufficiently Sensitive,
(CPB) proudly announces that $10,000,000 (…) will be devoted (to) creating “local journalism centers”
During WW-II the Democratic Congress snapped at FDR and insisted that the Office of War Information (OWI) curtail its domestic activities. The USIA and Department of State are prohibited from distributing domestically, except I believe for academic research, materials produced to influence opinion overseas. It is not only unconstitutional but illegal to spend any taxpayer dollars for a partisan purpose within the United States.
For those who claim that PBS is really “an independent agency” that happens to be “owned by the American people,” I appreciate the invitation to laugh but decline to find this amusing. For those who claim that if you hold the books a certain way and count up all the tote bags and DVD sets sold they do not really depend on taxpayer support or their quasi-official status I think that shows a faith in creative accounting that should earn ample time going over the details in conversation with Ken Lay, or if you are less fortunate another guest of the government named Viper. There is no basis in even the most generous interpretation of the Commerce Clause for a public agency that competes with private agencies in the provision of journalism services.
The original justification for Public Broadcasting was that these were locally controlled educational outlets geared to assist the public schools. All the educational and Civic functions once served by Public Broadcasting can now be delivered by cable services, such as The Learning Channel, The History Channel and C-Span, without violating the Constitution. Since the switch to digital broadcasting PBS television does not even provide it’s services to people who do not have access to cable.
The CPB system, especially the radio arm NPR, provides generous incomes to Establishment leftists. They are spared having to compete in the marketplace and produce their content for the tiny minority who are their social and ideological peers. Our Lords and Ladies think they can use tell us what is good for us. It is now a cossetted Middle Class Rip Off.
To be blogged under the title “The Royal Gazette.”
The law of Unintended consequences or in my world – Leeroy Jenkins is always a planning factor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeroy_Jenkins
Want to get inside or force their OODA inject a Leeroy Jenkins.
Steve Forbes is worried about the free flow of information and the Chevez-lite types advising/working for the FCC.
For the Left to triumph the internet as we know it will be crushed.
Ham radio?
Efforts to fix the administration’s woes by massaging the message ignore the fundamental problem. Money, like energy, can run out. A burgeoning spending program built on top of a shrinking base of taxpayers is like an aircraft in energy-losing turns without the thrust to keep it up. It just keeps losing altitude. And the pilots are still surprised.
The President announces a big program. No bounce. The President announces an even bigger program. The nose struggles up and promptly falls again. The administration’s poll numbers are dropping steadily. And the solution each time is to dump more energy. Still the nose drops. Axelrod has forgotten the Thresher.
It was a nuclear attack sub of the newest type that sank on a test dive in 1963 and the theory goes that a series of relatively minor accidents created an unpredictable cascade of events which led to her loss. Essentially there was an accidental shutdown of her reactor when she needed the power most. Without that big nuke to turn the props to drive her to the surface she sank until she imploded.
The fundamental reason why messaging won’t save a disastrous public policy based on deficit spending is it’s like fixing the flooding by painting over the gauges while shutting down the reactors and opening the sea-valves. Reality wins in the end, phrasemongering notwithstanding.
W & Company:
The Internet and specifically the development of blogs has the potential to change civilization every bit as dramatically as Gutenberg’s introduction of movable type printing revolutionized thinking among the population of Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries.
In the 14th century, Christianity played an overwhelmingly important role in daily life for most Europeans. It was the cornerstone and framework for the entire culture.
With most of the population illiterate and the expense of books making them nearly impossible for most people to have access to the Bible or literature, the corrupt Catholic church of the pre-reformation period had sole access to the word of God.
They were the legal and moral gatekeepers for nearly the entire society. This stranglehold on important information, saving ones soul, helped insure obedience to the church, and from the outside looking in, how could the average merchant, craftsman, farmer, serf, or even most nobles begin to frame an argument against a church ruling or a clergyman when no one except the clergy had access to the most important document and guiding philosophy of the civilization. What the church or a particular priest commanded was nearly as good as, or often was the law in much of pre-renaissance Europe. To disobey was to invite charges of blasphemy and witchcraft followed by excommunication, imprisonment, torture, banishment, or death.
In modern parlance, it would be as if the average citizen was not allowed access to law books and the legal code. (We’re almost at this point now with our Leviathan legal code that is so complicated that even the head of the I.R.S. will not fill out his own taxes) When a government official, police officer, or lawyer tells the average citizen what they must do to comply with the law and would have no way of knowing if this was really true or just a government approved bully’s whim presented as the law.
The widespread use of the mechanical, movable type press took information of the utmost importance out the hands of the few and into the hands of the multitude, resulting in widespread revolution, the renaissance, the reformation, and it’s accompanying Thirty Years’ War.
As many here have pointed out, it is exceedingly difficult for totalitarians to maintain control without restricting information tightly.
The blogsphere in particular is a threat to any centralized power that wishes to control the masses by directing or redirecting what the masses focus upon. Again, as others have said before, the statists want to frame the discussions at a minimum.
With the main stream media increasingly a laughingstock among many, and the blogsphere continuing to allow independent information, ideas, interpretations and rapid communication at low cost, with easy access to the masses, the grip of the oppressive and corrupt legal and moral gatekeepers is once again slipping. As we tip-toe along the edge of an economic abyss, I’m afraid things are trending toward upheaval on a scale not seen since the Thirty Years’ War.
I wish I had a good suggestion about how to eliminate much of the distortion introduced by politicians and their toads, the MSM, but aside from corresponding and supporting the blogsphere, I haven’t a clue about how to proceed. Like many who comment here, I think a bright light shined on government and crony capitalism would send many of the diseased roaches scurrying for cover and allow us to salvage what is left of western civilization, but we’re rapidly running out of time.
They will try to shut it down before they lose control.
The question is, when?
Freudian Projection explains a great deal about the Left.
They have, would, and will use disinformation, intimidation, and violence in the same situation. Therefore, they assume that all others will too.
One of the troll’s comments reminded me of a post I read on another blog.
I won’t quote it verbatim, but the post was something like:
“With the passage of the healthcare bill, what freedom(s) have you lost?”
The answer:
“The freedom of personal property. If the government can require me to spend money on goods or services I do not desire, and fine or imprison me for failure to comply, then the U.S. Constitution is dead or so twisted from the founders original intent as to have no meaning.”
If conservatives ever regain control of both houses of Congress and the presidency, and are in a humorous and pedagogical mood they should pass laws requiring everyone over the age of 18 to:
1)Purchase a battle rifle in a military caliber with related magazines, load bearing equipment, cleaning quipment, and 1000 rounds of ammunition, all from a government approved list of manufacturers.
2)Purchase a large print King James Bible, in English (why that particular holy book? Because the bureaucrats say so!), again from a government approved manufacturer.
3)Repurchase 1 & 2 each year or face a stiff fine and possible imprisonment for failure to pay the fine.
Some folks may not choose to use either the rifle or the Bible, but what the Hell! It’s a wise investment and may be useful. It would be foolish to not have a fallback plan for when things go wrong. Everyone must be covered! Everyone has a right to bear arms and freedom of religion. It says so in the Constitution! Who are average citizens to decide they don’t need a combat rifle or a Bible. The fools can’t be left to decide on their own!
I may choose to seek healthcare at a private practice in the U.S. or Costa Rica instead of using the overcrowded disaster that will be government-funded healthcare, but evidently I’m not smart enough to decide what health insurance I wish or don’t wish to purchase on my own.
The U.S. Constitution limits Federal government power by laying out what it is permitted to do. The fact that the horrendous Commerce Clause has been taken by black robed, addle brained, statists as license to grow the Federal government beyond all bounds imaginable to the founders does not change their original intent one whit!
Why should socialists and communists get to have all the fun telling people, at gunpoint, what they must spend their money on?
It’s a catch 22 for the left. They can not avoid becoming what they say they hate. In fact, it’s already too late. They have become intolerant, narrow-minded, bigots. They don’t know that hate can not be defeated with more hate.
I am reminded of the article I read tonight in the LA Times about John Koo. He refuses to be a mirror for the hatred from the left. He is critical but not even remotely hateful. Actually, now that I think of it, he reminds me of Wretchard.
I’ve been waiting for the outburst of racist accusations. It’s a sure sign that the left is going down, and they are beginning to realize it. If there is anything that would be more poisonous to Obama, I can’t think of it.
A President who hides behind false charges of racism is showing supreme weakness, and people can smell that. Even many supporters will be disheartened by these tactics, not because they disapprove, but because they’re smart enough to know what they signify. Or they will be, once they realize that the old playbook isn’t working anymore.
I do have a problem with the response from our side. Breitbart has it right: challenge them to provide the evidence. Many others decry the accusation, and then go on to dispute the charges, and defend the accused against them. This last is wrong, as it gives the accusers power that they don’t deserve.
Things like Colbert Kings recent column should be widely disseminated, since they will do nothing but infuriate the opposition and strengthen our resolve. But let’s not take get too hung up on responding to them, since that is an admission of respect that isn’t warranted. Everytime something like this happens the mask slips a little further, and more see what is really there. It’s not something that deserves respect.
Charges of racism are their magic bullet. In the past they’ve put the opposition on the defensive, but it looks like that strategy is just about played out. It’ll be amusing to see what they come up with once they’ve tried this many times to no avail.
Then we have the faux lamentations about the violent rhetoric that is employed by their opponents. Enough know that the Left has been guilty of this for a long time, so the story is a bit flat. But people are riled, and some appear to be losing their grip. If violent acts do occur this meme will start to gain some traction. That’s the last thing that is needed if we are to have any hope of changing the direction this Country is taking.
I see all sorts of despair on the blogs, and I can’t understand why. It’s rational to believe that we’re heading for some bad times economically, and many will be hurt. I can see reasons for pessimism there: we all sense that we’re on the verge of some trying times.
But then I see all sorts of theories that the DEMS plan to cancel the elections, and other equally unlikely scenarios. The DEMS are not going to attempt to cancel the elections, and if I’m wrong that would be a one way ticket to oblivion for the Democratic Party. Sure, there’ll be fraud, and there always is where they’re concerned.
I’m going to be “glass half full” here. The Left, and by extension the DEMS, are out in the open without their usual political cover. They’re using an old playbook with these violence and racism assertions. I don’t think it’s working very well, and I’m not sure they know that. It’ll start working IF people start taking things into their own hands.
People can see what the DEMS are doing, and many who are not normally involved in Politics are now in action. And, horror of horrors for the powers that be (of both parties), a lot of them say that they are enjoying themselves, and never realized politics could be so much fun! That attitude is a professional politicians worst nightmare.
I’m unsure why our side has so little respect for the people of this Country. If you truly believe that a second-rate community organizer and HR and NP can destroy the USA, then I don’t see why you’re so sad about it. A governing philosophy (what we’re really about) that is that shaky isn’t one to be mourned.
In fact, even with the relentless USA trashing we’ve been subjected to by our “betters”, the vast majority believe in this Country, and what it represents. I think we’ll see evidence of that in November, and the DEMS are getting the picture, if only dimly. Our people may not be as politically aware as we may wish, but they have a very good BS meter. I think that is what DEMS really fear.
The left in America is working itself up to a new FDR moment, when its enemies, Xians, the Juice, Rethuglicans, and all their other cute misspellings will be rounded up in concentration camps.
“Their joy and their lust finds its ultimate joy in betraying all who trusted them, and seeing the heart-rending moment of realization of the betrayal in the victim’s eyes.”
-posted by #26. JJRedfan
Wow!
Why did Pelosi spring to mind?
The Democrats knew weeks before the Healthcare bill passed, that it was in the bag.
Pelosi was positively radiant; botox bursting from every pore.
Obama signed the bill on March 23rd.
“Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death”
- Patrick Henry, March 23rd 1775
That’s some coincidence.
56. dtmack
The truth no longer matters when the fascists take control of key institutions, media and the general consensus.
History has taught us that much at least.
Even if one knows the truth, there comes a point where for many the truth means less than the human instinct for self-preservation.
Obama and his handlers are no longer playing by the heretofore conventional and civilized rules.
They are making them up as they go along; because they can get away with it.
Here’s my guess as to what will happen next:
The public will now be educated about the evil conservatives.
Innocent patriotic Americans clinging to their bibles and the Second Amendment will die and be painted as terrorists.
An object lesson for us all.
Resistance is futile!
Submit!
Heck, the communists have been building to this for a while now.
Leftist brainwashing in the schools, media and entertainment industries.
Full bellies for all.
Everything is O.K., except Christianity and Judaism(I reckon there’s a hint there about where this is all coming from).
Internet porn and online alternate reality computer games.
A general breakdown of all previously held concepts of morality and ethics.
It’s like all the previously free West(oh yes, this is not just the U.S.A.’s problem) is being reduced to a vast mass of malleable and compliant stupid.
Yuri Bezmenov had it exactly right:
http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/brainwashing/2007/bezmenov.htm
James Lovelock, the ‘father of the Gaia theory’ argued, in a recent interview with the Guardian, that people were too stupid to properly handle global warming and that it may be in mankind’s best interests to “put democracy on hold for a while”.
Lovelock’s plaint is classic. ‘You have to enslave people in order to save them.’ In his type we meet Dostoevky’s Grand Inquisitor again but this time in the sacerdotal robes of Gaia. Sin too returns to the stage as sin. But the deity is different.
It’s an amazing declaration full of the mysteries, esoteric assertions and unsupported arguments which would do justice to a revealed religion. Where do these standards come from? To whom are the authoritarians accountable after democracy is put on hold? And how, finally, does anyone know if someone is “fudging the data” if our betters control the mirror?
After promising to do away with accountability to an electorate we are assured that the new priesthood will behave according to the highest standards of probity. But the point of doing away with dissent, unless it were for sheer caprice, would be to eliminate accountability in the first place.
Lovelock’s logic is conspicuous by its absence. Diagram it and watch the ends of his arguments dangle into space. They are in good company in the void. Holy Ghost of Science, goddess Gaia — Holy Batman. But that would be alright if his sort did not aspire to “put democracy on hold” so that our betters, presumably including him, could save us despite ourselves. It may be objected that Lovelock is eminent. But so what? That is social proof. Half the “proofs” adduced by our so-called betters rest on the circular assumption that they are better and hence, are beyond reproach. Social proof was sovereign in the age of serfs and landlords. Apparently it is back, the same dog in a different collar. Now some people may believe they are to the manner born.
And well they might be, but then they shouldn’t mind the peasants looking more closely at the mirror and inquiring into whether they too visit the outhouse. Arguments based on trust, hope, “sin against the holy ghost of science”, Gaia and social position are altogether too redolent of the age of kings.
TOM DEM,
Forty years ago I use to go to Union Meetings with left Democrats like the crowd currently running the country. At the meeting it was all about workers rights but at the beer bar it was all about world revolution. Because you had to destroy this irredeemable country before you could save it. And the workers might have to wait a few generations for things to sort themselves out.
The problem we face is the concentration of power in Washington and the creation, by Democrats, of powerful economic cartels in Banking, Health Care, Energy production, manufacturing and so on. The Health Care Bill is the creation of a Cartel. Cap and Trade will require massive Cartels. All these are advertised as exploitative — though for the very best of reasons, of course. “We will charge some people more so we can charge others less — and save human civilization, too.” Sorry, Tom, I said “we.” I meant you.
Meanwhile, accuracy in argument is not a requirement. The Health Care Bill is not sold using “Smoke and mirrors” accounting. It is sold using smoking fraud. Five hundred billion in Medicare cuts to help pay for it, Tom?
Now Tom, after you concentrate all this power into a political class to which you belong — how can you give that power up to a bunch of racist Republicans? Is it not your duty to make sure they don’t get their hands on it? And will you do your duty?
By and large, the commentators at the Belmont Club want power “spread around.” We don’t think some political hack in the White House should decide that the government will not fund abortions this week, but maybe next week — who knows? Or that politicians who destroy 12 million jobs decide who gets the 500,000 jobs stringing extension cords between windmills.
Just a few random thoughts.
hdgreene,
Or that politicians who destroy 12 million jobs decide who gets the 500,000 jobs stringing extension cords between windmills.
That a nice Quichotic image. as depressing as the original. Maybe more, 500k Quichotes is a mighty generator of depresson field. Probably complementary with the bozon output coming from DC.
It’s an Alice in Wonderland world…
Distortions are reality and truth is a set group of ever changing facts….
Today is Passover in which Jews say next year in Jerusalem, something the Jewish people have said for thousands of years…
and yet, the VERY Idea that Jews should live and build in “Arab East” Jerusalem is a crime, the very action is insulting and criminal to our nation’s highest leadership….
What is “Arab East Jerusalem”, it’s the area that Jordan invaded and captured in 1948, threw out it’s jewish residents and destroyed hundreds, if not one thousand, Jewish Synagogues (including the Hurva), took historic Jewish headstones from graves (to be used to build roads and latrines), this is INCLUDES the OLD city of jerusalem (western wall, Temple Mount) that Israel LIBERATED in 1967
And yet, through the looking glass the media reports will wild zeal that Jews are “occupying” ARAB EAST JERUSALEM…
Distortion reigns supreme…
The Arabs, who occupy 649/650th of the middle east (and almost completely Jew Free) demand that Israel (1/650th of the middle east and home to more ARABS than lived in all disputed areas in 1948, now numbering 20% of Israel it’sself) demand MORE from Israel such as deeming that the Jews have no rights to the OLD CIty of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount has no relation to Jews whatsoever…
Distortions…
Friends are enemies and enemies are friends…
Our president is the Carnival barker we’ve all been not waiting for….
Come see the sideshow… Jews building in Jerusalem, the crime, the offense, the insult…
Iran building a nuke? that’s the side show, Palestinians (I use that term barely holding down the bile) have created a thugocracy that would have made Capt Kirk in Star Trek – The Original Series, Episode 49: A Piece of the Action vomit…
Peace process that rewards murderers and thugs and slaps death penalty on people who BUILD homes…
Where else in the world could building apartments be a war crime?
BTW no one reports about ARAB building in Jerusalem or the West Bank, no one reports about Israel spending hundreds of millions on improving the infrastructure of the arab towns of Israel…
Yep distortions are now reality for millions across the globe…
So I will be a criminal, and last night, I wished “Next Year in Occupied Arab East Jerusalem”
Optical based astronomy has largely been hampered by the planet’s atmosphere. It’s weather and currents distort the light. Thus, so many observatories were built on high peaks to rise above much of the natural turbulence. Hubble is the ultimate high ground. There is only one Hubble. However, taking advantage of even more modern technology, astronomy has adapted the computer. Light from a faint astronomical object is reflected from a computer-controlled deformable mirror, which removes the optical distortions caused by turbulence in the earth’s atmosphere. It’s a lot cheaper than establishing and sustaining a Hubble. Millions of computers of the internet are now acting as a ‘deformable’ mirror to correct the Man Made distortions of our political atmosphere in which we breath and live.
64) DOn51,
“Millions of computers of the internet are now acting as a ‘deformable’ mirror to correct the Man Made distortions of our political atmosphere in which we breath and live.”
Or, they are strengthening the Deformation by adding another layer on.
The man I see when I look into the mirror is a tired, jaded old man who can now process the most amazing bits of news and information with complete disbelief and a WTF is going to happen next attitude.
I find that no matter what happens I am not shocked or surprised.
I expect a lie and a handful of bullshit every time and I am not ever mistaken.
All in all my opinion of Washington’s elite is they are a bunch of capering clowns able to do and say what ever strikes them at any time and they never have to pay for the damage they do. yet these same bozo’s claim a part of everything that actually does go right.
I now see that like the mandatory auto insurance I am forced to buy simply to drive my car I must now insure my ass the same mandatory way per government laws.
I expect under health care laws everything deemed unhealthy by the federal health department will be banned. All of America will come under a nation wide OSHA regulation and like the society in the Sly Stallone movie Demolition man one day I expect to joyfully sneak out and have an illegal rat burger and feel lucky.
Thanks NORM, but NOBODY answered my question
NO I don’t think Koresh was sane neither do you, and he should have been picked up when he was in town
I get no marching orders
“What IS truth?”
Indeed. Every society must have a general consensus as to what is and what is best. Otherwise ‘each goes his own way’ and you get chaos followed by dictatorship. Ben was right. We have not kept our republic and now we are losing it.
Not even conservatives have that much of a consensus any more. Even we are shot through with the rot of entitlement. I guarantee you we are on the cusp of not WW III but world wide chaos and probably a new Dark Age. We are already in Brave New World and Blade Runner-Mad Max follows.
Perhaps God has a plan. I sure hope so.
Wretchard: “Reality wins in the end”
Yes, but the big question that comes to my mind is “what comes after the collapse?”
At the office where I work this time of year I frequently get to watch a woodpecker batter himself against the glass. In fact he is doing that right now.
One of the most remarkable characteristics of the Left is how they time and again falsely accuse their opponents of doing something, and then when they get in power they do it for real.
The examples of this are many. Internationally, the Soviets announced they were acting to forestall invasions of Czecholvokia and Afghanistan when they invaded. And the parallels between the Democratic accusations leveled at the Reagan and Bush Adminstrations and what Carter, Clinton and Obama actually did are incredible.
One of the most important observations I have ever heard about the Left was David Horowitz’s statement that it really was always about THEM. The personal failings of individual leftists were projected on the country as a whole. Even before that, I had observed that the term “societal problems” really meant “Things I don’t like but do not want to be bothered with fixing myself.”
So the Left is entranced by the mirror it sees everywhere, and thinking that bird in the glass is an enemy, and correctly deducing the danger it presents, proceeds to batter itself against a barrier of its own creation.
52 AR
“With the main stream media increasingly a laughingstock among many, and the blogsphere continuing to allow independent information, ideas, interpretations and rapid communication at low cost, with easy access to the masses, the grip of the oppressive and corrupt legal and moral gatekeepers is once again slipping. As we tip-toe along the edge of an economic abyss, I’m afraid things are trending toward upheaval on a scale not seen since the Thirty Years’ War.
I wish I had a good suggestion about how to eliminate much of the distortion introduced by politicians and their toads, the MSM, but aside from corresponding and supporting the blogsphere, I haven’t a clue about how to proceed.”
I’ve given my opinion on this before. But here it is again:
The majority of Americans don’t know what is going on and the majority of those, don’t care to know. Their lives are consumed by other cares and wants.
Even most of those Americans with computers and internet access, use their computers for only social interactions such as my space, facebook, chat, movie, tv, recipes, porn and such. Blogs are not even known to them or if they are they are not interested in them. Even the educated, the “aware” younger generation is only aware if it is within what they think is important.
And they don’t think “politics” is important. Even after major things happen like the passage of the health bill. The almost standard answer is along the lines of “who cares” or “sounds like a good deal to me”.
There is a major disconnect with Americans that are under thiry some odd years with reality. What it will take to get them into the game is unknown right now but each of us trying to connect with those generations is going to be not only necessary but vital if we are to change the direction of our Republic.
If you yourself don’t get involved in your local, state and federal government in some way, nothing will change. Your voice, your presence is going to have to be there.
Their ignorance and lack of interest has to be countered and changed. For your families sake and yours.
Papa Ray
A senile old Lovelock may have a point about today’s government as the crazy young Lovelock had a point about homeostasis. Gaia may or may not be true, to some extent or other, but certainly the biosphere knows how to deal with fluctuations, it’s only been doing so for three billion years. And our current government is certainly blind, deaf, ad paralyzed, I speak as a California resident where our legislature has been just so for at least twenty years. In a crisis, could they act? In a non-crisis, are they even capable of navigating a smooth, straight road?
I recently read Marilyn Robinson’s “Puritans and Prigs,” an essay from 1996 collected in the volume “The Death of Adam.”
Short summary: Puritans are good, American, recognizing the essentially fallen condition of individuals and their institutions. Prigs are bad, utopians, conforming to the non-thinking of the latest political trend, tending to Stalinism.
One can’t help but think, over and over, in reading the essay: Priggishness is the essence of liberalism, and it is the enabling of the thuggishness of Obamism. Prigs can’t stop thinking approved group-thought; because if they did, they would have no thoughts.
You can get a free reading copy of the essay at Google Books by googling the title. An excerpt:
“But priggishness makes its presence felt. And is highly predictable because it is nothing else than a consuming loyalty to ideals and beliefs which are in general so widely shared that the spectacle of zealous adherence to them is reassuring. The prig’s formidable leverage comes from the fact that his or hers ideas, notions or habits are always fine variations on the commonplace. A prig with original ideas is a contradiction in terms, because he or she is a creature of consensus who can usually appeal to one’s better nature, if only to embarrass dissent. A prig in good form can make one ashamed to hold a conviction so lightly, and, at the same time, ashamed to hold it at all.” (p. 159-60)
Back when I was in the ministry I observed that among the flock there were certain people who appeared “better” than others. That is, they were more scrupulous about observing the practices and defending the doctrines of the church than most, and were above reproach. What I came to find as a young cleric was that given time the shell of “perfection” would eventually crack and display a horror hidden within. Yes, there were and are genuinely good people about, but they typically don’t have that hard shell of “perfection” about them.
Although the horror was hidden there was always a clue to it’s nature in the outrage expressed against certain sins of other people. If they railed against others’ perceived sexual sins, their own horror was of a sexual nature. If they railed against greed, greed was their downfall, and so on. I noticed that of myself as well, the more somebody else’s sin bothered me the more likely it was a reflection of my own secret sins, or those I longed to abandon myself to.
So when the media began making all kinds of false claims (exaggerations of fact, distortions and outright lies) as to the Bush Administration’s sins, what I saw was their hidden agenda revealed. All these sins of the Tea Party movement decried and condemned by the Left are nothing more than their own secret heart of hearts laid bare for the world to see. Adaptive optics indeed!
Interesting aside. Most of us are aware that the primary source of both intelligence and futurist insights come, not from HumInt, but from content analysis. Large staffs read the newspapers, magazines and now blogs to determine what is on the mind of the society in question.
From yesterday’s thread (I mean really, not only was Whiskey armed, he was given a full bandolier, lol) and again with this thread, I see ever more comment regarding the duplicity of his O’ness, his message and his messengers. Some of you who are much brighter than I could scan the net and make very reasoned observations about where the national consensus is going…I vote for our resident spook (habu), LOTM and W himself.
(I love to assign work for others)
Wretchard #60:
“It’s all very well, but there are certain circumstances – a war is a typical example – where you can’t do that.”
Anyone ever notice how the Left professes to hate war but at the same time uses it as an example of why more government authority and control is good thing?
Michael Moore says that WWII is proof that the Federal Government can indeed run universal health care. Now, there are so many thinsg wrong with that analogy that I won’t go into it..
… but have you ever heard any of us right wing warmakers ever say that WWII or any war proved we were right about some aspect of domestic policy?
Meanwhile, the Left thinks the Patriot Act is horrible, despite the fact that far greater restrictions on individuals existed in WWII, or for that matter, in the Cold War.
Political cartoons always involve distorting the face and/or head of the target – fitting your theory that if we distort the image of our target we make our message more acceptable.
Thus does distortion replace reason in public debates.
Amazingly, Political cartoons of Obama show him exactly as he is:
Wise, compasionate, presidential, cautious, bold, heroic, lawful, pleasant, honest, tasteful … a great lawgiver.
Totally different from that guy with the big ears that preceded him.
RWE, they claim that Patriot Act is horrible because 1. they were not the impetus to enact it and 2. it has this horrible word “patriot” in its title.
They are perfectly capable of coming up with something rather blood curling in substance, but they would call it something like “Human Affirmation Act”, to prove that it is noble and that it does not have any traces of jingoism.
When in my old country you saw a paper article titled “Towards Brighter Tomorrow”, you could bet that some shitty dark days are ahead.
One of the most important challenges of the 21st century will be to find some way to get at the approximate truth. The current crisis is to a large extent a crisis of information.
Thank you, wretchard, thank you, thank you, a thousand thank you’s.
I have been writing for years now that the largest single issue facing us today is that EVERY decision we make as a nation, as countrymen owing a fiduciary duty to each other…is based upon our ability to get facts that we can trust in order to come to conclusions we can support.
It makes me sad that you have come to the conclusion that the best we can hope for is “approximate truth”.
WE deserve better. We as a nation are better than that.
But our entrenched media has abandoned us as a nation. They have chosen a side and that side does not represent my interests, nor, do I believe…the interests of the vast majority of this land of ours.
We now find ourselves as permanent diagnosticians …forever chasing a malignancy of mutated facts within our body politic and trying to carve them away as they crop up.
We are long past preventative health for our system of self-governance. The Constitution has come up against a strain of leftism that is not only resistant to its healing powers, but impervious to it as well.
When telling the truth no longer matters to the other side, it has the net effect of “informational terrorism”. If someone is willing to outright lie to murder the truth, you can intercept them at times, uncover the lies at times, capture the truth at times…but eventually, they are going to get through. It’s not an “if”, but a “when”.
And, the best we can hope for…is an “approximate truth” in the end.
As well as “approximate” freedom, liberty, and unity as a nation.
It has since been revealed that Marc Garlasco, the HRW’s “only military expert,” was by night ‘Flak88,’ “an obsessive contributor to internet forums on Third Reich memorabilia ….”
The funny thing is that I’ve never seen any hint that Marc actually held any fascist or Nazi beliefs, merely that he liked to collect their memorabilia! So all bird watchers believe that they can fly?
W: “My grandfather had a simple rule of thumb for understanding the controlled news broadcasts in the last days of World War 2. Whatever the Japanese broadcasts claimed he believed the reverse.”
O’Brian: You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident… I tell you Winston that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else; not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes and in any case soon perishes; only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth.” George Orwell – 1984
“She (Julia) did not feel the abyss opening beneath her feet at the thought of lies becoming truth.” George Orwell – 1984
Papa Ray @ 71:
I have become more active in politics with the Tea Parties. Before the tea parties kicked off I kept abreast of politics and voted regularly, but didn’t otherwise participate. I’ve attended several protests in the S.F. Bay Area recently. I don’t know that it has made any difference.
I believe it likely that in areas with a more even distribution of people of opposing political views, Tea Party activities have made a significant political impact. In my Gerrymandered congressional district and the similarly Gerrymandered surrounding districts, I’m not so sure. They all seem to be stuck on progressivism, fascism, socialism, or however you choose to describe statism with a hefty dose of liberty trampling nannyism.
I’ve found the county Republican political apparatus to be nearly unapproachable. They seem to only be interested in hearing from folks who have deep pockets and are prepared to put some significant Gelt into the party’s coffers.
The county Democratic Party political apparatus is a witches brew of proudly socialist union activists, radically wacko environmentalist, militant “Peace at any cost!” pacifists and La Raza racists hucksters. If I have anything to do with them it will probably involve non-violent or not so non-violent political protest against them. They have lot’s of Gelt already, and can afford to replace their plate glass windows, repeatedly, every few months between now and November.
Why should “progressives”, socialists and communists be the only ones to get away with repeated acts of expensive vandalism to intimidate and inconvenience people who’s politics they don’t like?
Did I mention I recently read Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and have decided that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander? What “fun” politics can be when you throw out reasoned discourse and resort to sophomoric vigils and harassment of individuals whom you dislike and disagree with at their offices and homes. I guess being an unemployed engineer does have some upsides…
I leave for everyone’s consideration:
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame
CF, I think Wretchard is right, at least in this sense: approximate truth is the best that we poor, imperfect humans can hope for. Absolute truth is for God to know, not us.
That being said, approaching the truth requires the convergence of available data to allow for valid conclusions, and the data sources are more plentiful and diffuse than ever, which is what we’re discussing here. The truth, as best we can see it through a glass darkly, is coming into focus. That is why we come here to read and think and write.
The Truth itself, however, refers to what has been and always will be. It does not come and go, and some very good versions of it were written down thousands of years ago.
This we know: men are arrogant and prone to self-inflation and to retreat from God in self-destructive ways. We, all of us in the West, have done so, and our brothers on the left have been more energetic in their self-destructiveness (and destructiveness) than most. This cannot be glossed over or nullified. This is what is and always will be, regardless of what will come and go and someday will become what was.
On Sunday we did the Stations of the Cross, and one of the things that struck me was how little has really changed in the 2000 years since that reality was laid down.
Obama and his ilk will do all they can to get the mirror to say that they are the fairest of them all. They are getting more desperate as the reflection continues to be increasingly negative, but the Truth and reality can only be distorted for so long until it catches up with them. The trick will be to stay out of the range of whatever great attractor is pulling those nihilists in.
W: “Orwell believed every successful tyranny had to stamp out the ability to think…”
Yes, and Orwell figured out that totalitarian governments must lie to their people, and that when the people accept the lies of tyrannical government it is by failing to think; and that such governments have two basic approaches to effectively present their lies.
1. Orwellian Newspeak – which is simply the cleaver use of words, each of which stands in for the opposite of its meaning. “Living Constitution” is Orwellian Newspeak for “Dead Constitution” – it is a lie. “Negative Rights” is Orwellian Newspeak for God-given natural rights – you know – our sacred natural right to equality before law – our sacred natural rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness (private property honestly earned through labor).
2. Fear of lost property, liberty or life – fear of coercion and violence.
The hall of mirrors effect is a large part of why I stopped bothering to read most MSM report of the Iraq war. The reports they were putting out contained so little data, for all their invective, that there wasn’t any point. They had filtered everything down to “Some approximate number of people died on N day. Some of them were US troops, some of them were Iraqis. Therefor, the US is evil.”
I think I lost my last shred of respect for them when ABC creatively edited the IRS plane bomber’s death note, and didn’t bother to tell anyone. If they’re going to take out half of what the guy ranted about, and then lie about it, what’s the point?
W: “Orwell believed every successful tyranny had to stamp out the ability to think…”
Orwell understood that people once lied to by totalitarian government (usually through Orwellian Newspeak); if they choose not throw off the tyranny, are left with two choices in accepting the lies:
1. Intelligent Insanity – Doublethink
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously (the truth and the lie), and accepting both of them… with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth… Those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is; in general the greater the understanding the greater the delusion; the more intelligent the less sane… If human equality is to be forever averted; if the “high,” as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently; then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.” George Orwell – 1984
2. The Sanity of Stupidity – Crimestop
“Crimestop…includes the power of not grasping analogies; of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc (Socialist Principles of Oceania), and of being bored or rebelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop in short means protective stupidity… The world view of the Party imposed its self most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm because it left no residue behind; just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird… In the long run a hierarchical society was only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance.” George Orwell – 1984
maineman, I do not lament our imperfections and I am thrilled that the resources now available give us a better chance at digging the truth out of the dirt.
I’m willing to get my hands dirty and work hard for it.
What I do lament, however, is that there are those who are intent on stealing truth. On gang raping it. On subverting it at every turn.
And those folks have the entrenched vehicles for disseminating it in mass quantities. That is a threat to our nation, our system of self-governance, of everything we hold dear.
I don’t mind debating a different worldview. If one does so with an open mind, BOTH points of view usually expand.
When one side resorts to lies, distortion, fakery, and actively suppresses facts and evidence, it is not debate, it’s fraud. It’s cheats the process.
When one engages in a criminal enterprise to cheat the truth and to openly lie to people about nearly everything, it’s systemic intellectual warfare.
I believe, maineman, that “issue spotting” is no longer enough. It is not enough to say “oh, there they go again…we caught them”. There is a sepsis of lies and distortion that has metastasized within our body politic. We have to stop treating the symptoms. The disease is raging and rampant.
Tamquam, I think all Christians with a healthy level of discernment reach the same conclusions you did, and they watch their exposure to others accordingly. One reason some small churches end up getting run by a monster is that all the people with sense smell something bad and leave, and only the fools are left behind to be fleeced – I’ve seen it happen.
The original “Night of the Hunter” with Robert Mitchum is an excellent analysis of this. (do not even take notice of the very badly done remake)
Only movie Charles Laughton directed, by the way – one of my all time favorites.
W: “Orwell believed every successful tyranny had to stamp out the ability to think…”
“There will be no thought as we understand it now; orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think; orthodoxy is unconsciousness… The heresy of heresies was common sense.” George Orwell – 1984
Common sense means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously (the truth and the lie), and accepting only the truth… with the truth always one leap ahead of the lie.
Somewhere, once, I read that about 38% of all people have a personality type that can best be described as hierarchics. They see their social environment as a pyramid, and their paramount desire is to fit in. They absorb the narrative of their pyramid and accept it unquestionably. If the narrative shifts so will their beliefs. These are the kind of people who one day can believe that we have always been at war with East Asia and have always been allied with Eurasia and on the next believe that we have always been at war with Eurasia and have always been allied with East Asia. ( I am exaggerating, but only as to the time frame it takes to absorb the contradiction) For them reality is group consensus. This is not to say they are stupid, its just how their minds work.
These people were the key to the rise of the “Progressives.” If you control the narrative of the pyramid these people will follow. The more analytical on the Left realize this and they also understand that this block of people is a two-edged sword. If the narrative changes, they will be doomed and their power will crumble. That is why they cannot allow the narrative to change, and they will resist all efforts to do so, as some narratives, like that of the Nazis, die in ways that makes their resurrection likely.
There is nothing more dangerous than a cornered animal. We best beware.
Doppelgangers: “true cases”. The cat’s/cat’s meow/meow.
…-
“Ocean acidification: the “evil twin of global warming””
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
…-
“Doppelganger!
Incredible true cases of exact doubles who appear often as a forecast of death or disaster, and remarkable stories of people who can be in two places at the same time.”
paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa111102a.htm
perhaps we need to change the paradigm of our thinking regarding information. there is no longer something we called journalism, nor are there journalists. everything we see and hear is biased in favor of opinion and or just plain ignorance, laziness, greed, fake history.
in order not to go insane (as in orwell’s intelligent insanity) we have to stay within the confines of our own research from original sources (or long ago documentaries like morley safer narrating the exodus and the british in 1947, which will remind us of what the british are).
and, we need to be with others who share the information we know are factual.
there is, it seems, no third way.
W: “At the root of every totalitarianism’s desire to manipulate history is partly the primitive superstition in the magic of mirrors. By managing the image, they manage reality. By controlling the narrative, they control the story. By controlling the news, they make history.”
“Who controls the past (with lies) controls the future; Who controls the present (with lies) controls the past.” George Orwell – 1984
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others… We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we’re doing… Power is not a means, it is an end… The object of power is power… Always there will be the intoxication of power… We are the priests of power… Power is power over human beings, over the body; but above all over the mind… The real power; the power we have to fight for night and day is not power over things but over men. How does one man assert his power over another… by making him suffer… Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing… We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back… Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling; everything will be dead inside you… You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves… Do you begin to see then what kind of world we are creating… a world of fear and treachery and torment… ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph and self-abasement; everything else we shall destroy…it will be a world of terror.” George Orwell – 1984
cf bleachers
Too true. The other side of the coin however is how awful things get when even the ‘good guys’ lie, cheat and propagandize. Bush and his ilk handed us Obama on a tin platter. This is the horrible truth of our situation. “All that remains for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” But when so called good men are actually bad men in sheep’s clothing it becomes truly horrific. When capitalists have no mores they are mere pirates. We are in deep doo doo.
What if a reflection is single-sided? This post tocuhes on a terrible problem for the Right, particularly for Pajamas Media. What if there is no reflection (distorted or otherwise) of a grave global issue emerging from the conservative side and the Left has a monopoly on narrative? The Catholic Church, the most conservative and durable institution in the world is under ferocious attack and has admitted to grave sin . . . and who is covering this on PJM?
For years, many leading conservative intellectuals (Bennet, Neuhaus, Lopez, etc.) have praised the mission and energy of the Legionnairies of Christ, and now, according to the Vatican itself, the founder of the Legion was a child molester, drug addict and fathered at least three out of wedlock children. This is a terrible disgrace, a thorough decapitation of one of the most powerful Catholic orders since Opus Dei . . . and it’s been met with silence among many Catholic and right-wing bloggers.
PJM simply doesn’t have the resources, the bandwidth to cover such issues, and therefore cedes the packaging to the Left. Either that, or too many PJM bloggers are simply avoiding the mass instances of child rape within the Church and its loathsome community of cover-up because they’ve nothing new to add.
It is a basic expression of the freedom of speech to refuse to answer idiotic questions.
What happens in the Church is a matter for the believers, and for those who gleefully pick up stones. All my adult life there has been an ever present undercurrent of sex and scandal within the Church. It has been that way since its beginning I am quite sure. Even priests and heads of orders are human with all the failings of being human. God will stand in judgement of their crimes when the time comes. As for the here and now those found guilty of earthly crimes should be call to account and pay with prison time. But since I am not a member of the Church what happens there is off little concern other than the desire to see that wrongdoers are brought to Earthly justice.
Tarnsman, as a member of The Church I agree completely with your assessment, but I would be far harsher with them (and anyone who facilitates or covers up for them) if it were up to me.
I am always amazed that the proponents of the most reprehensible of things (the Dems and Lefties in general with their decades long infatuation with sexual perversion in general) caper and clap when one of the Church members is found to have committed a sin. Usually a sin that the Leftie has routinely engaged in himself.
Perhaps (as I firmly believe) it is that the preisthood should be held to a higher standard, but then, should not the pols in power as well? Lux seems hugely interested in the sins of a few, is he as interested in the sins of the many? The many currently stealing our future while violating our Constitution and crushing us into financial servitude to their “higher goals”. The many that would enslave all of us to their lust for power, or is Lux just another troll?
According to The Black Book of Communism the total murdered by Atheist-Communist regimes approaches 100 million people. According to R.J. Rummel (author of Death By Government), the figure could exceed 250 million. There is some uncertainty over who is the worst murderer: the Soviet Union or China. The Black Book of Communism attributes roughly 20 million civilian murders to the USSR (Lenin and Stalin) and 65 million to China (Mao). R.J. Rummel credibly estimates other death counts throughout history, and he pulls no punches or otherwise minimizes the death counts from Christian and Western movements; for example the Spanish Inquisition murdered about 350,000 people.
http://theblackbook.wordpress.com/2006/11/22/excerpt-from-introduction-the-crimes-of-communism-by-stephane-courtois/
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM
No one comes closer to “Social Justice” than the Marxist Left.
LOTM @ 48: The CPB system, especially the radio arm NPR, provides generous incomes to Establishment leftists… It is now a cossetted Middle Class Rip Off.
Indeed. But public radio is high among the Stuff White People Like.
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/31/44-public-radio/
You have to hand it to the Left. They have created institutions that employee millions of their fellow travelers, mostly on someone else’s dime. How many places can conservatives go to work, as conservatives? A mere handful.
And speaking of that man in the mirror, I’ve often pondered that the sure secret to my happiness would be to become, in heart and mind, a Leftist. Good Lord, the world would be my oyster! The girls! The glorious self-satisfied gloating! The presumption of holiness! The freedom to vent my hatred at parties and get furious nods of agreement from all! What a life.
Why can’t I get over that hump?
PS – Speaking of my happiness, yesterday I purchased the Miss Peggy Lee box set, four CDs worth of songs via download. It has considerably brightened my day!
too many PJM bloggers are simply avoiding the mass instances of child rape within the Church and its loathsome community of cover-up because they’ve nothing new to add.
The question of child abuse by the Catholic clergy is one of the most interesting and serious questions of the 20th century. There have always been bad guys in the clergy. The Borgia Popes. The “national novel” of the Philippines, the Noli Me Tangere features Friar Damaso who fathers the heroine out of wedlock. We are all of us familiar with Claude Frollo of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. But is the pedophilic emphasis relatively new? I don’t know the answer.
Back in the day I was personally close to many clergymen, including some who were genuinely heroic and had occasion to observe sexual peccadillo. Children fathered out of wedlock, apartments for assignation, etc. You’d see them in bars drinking with their cronies. Occasionally you’d catch a glimpse of a priest sneaking into a honky-tonk.
Yet I never personally heard or encountered a case of pedophilia, not that it didn’t happen, I don’t know. But I spent my entire childhood in Catholic Schools and saw clergymen at close quarters during the underground where sexual hanky panky was more or less openly displayed without seeing pedophilia. Maybe it was the last taboo. The unmentionable. who knows?
Yet my guess is that pedophilia is that there was far less of it then; that it is far more highly correlated with the European and American churches of the post 1960 period than it is with the Third World Church today or even the Western churches of the pre-Vatican 2 past. They had sexual sins, but they were different sexual sins is my guess. One of the things I’ve wondered about is whether a) this conjecture was true; b) what caused the change.
But be that as it may what does the Church do about sexual sin? Internally it engages in a taxpayer revolt, recall and expulsion from office. Parishioners have a surprising sense of who they trust as a pastor and who they don’t. I avoid certain priests for example, and attend the masses of others, purely on intuition. Taxpayer revolt means nobody comes to Mass. And of course stuff happens in parent groups, there are petitions led by the nuns or lay leaders. Often the struggle is couched in words that would make the Chinese leadership proud. “Let a hundred flowers bloom” is replaced by a “return to the Holy Life”. Code words mask the struggle. Yet it happens, but not to the extent one would hope.
Criminal prosecution in the modern age is the province of the state. Only they can or arrest people. The possible exception is the Vatican, which has attributes of a State. Without knowing all the facts either way I think the Popes have made the mistake of trying to apply a stimulus package to solve their problems. They reassigned creeps or sent them into counseling when they should have booted them out or sworn out a complaint in court. The key problem with firing clergymen is that if this were done mercilessly and instantly, there be very few clergymen left. To solve pedophilia the Popes would have to decimate the Western church hierarchy.
I think the Pope should have done it, just as I believe Obama should let failing companies go bankrupt. Like every other institution, the Church is sacrificing the long-term for short term survival. The long-term reason for a lack of vocation in the West is that the Church has failed to maintain a true elite. Failed by not keeping the standards high enough.
I don’t believe the Church is going to disappear. The religious impulse is too deeply ingrained. But … it is possible than any wholesale confrontation of the problem of pedophilia will take into territory the liberal West will not want to visit. Whether the “gaying” of the clergy had any role in it; the question of whether Western society, as a whole has sexualized children in a perverse way. When you come right down to it, the evil clerics rode a trend which goes far beyond the Church. Just Google Marc Dutroux and ask yourself whether its possible that a parallel network of pedophiles exists in the bureaucracy and in ‘polite society’.
I don’t believe the Church or any institution can permanently rid itself of predators. But the garbage collection process, like the ordinary one, or like the computer one, or the political one, has to be continuous and unremitting. The Church, like larger society cannot survive the corruption of its operating system. Reboot if you must and don’t worry, the machine will pop back up again. But don’t let the viruses and bad memory run unchecked.
The Church was corrupted by a seminary culture that turned rapidly to homosexuality. Just as gays quickly and overwhelmingly took over, for instance, the fashion industry, so did they the seminaries.
This 2002 article talks about the topic, as well as noting the book “Goodbye! Good men” that discusses this.
http://old.nationalreview.com/dreher/dreher031302.shtml
I agree that the common excuse of “it happened in the past, we just didn’t talk about it” is facile and wrong. It’s much worse now, and the priesthood WAS filled with a far better breed of man prior to the 60s.
As a husband and father of a Christmas and Easter Catholic family, who married into the faith and has never been confirmed, can a knowledgeable Catholic explain why the Pope and much of the Church is so resistant to married Priests?
From what I’ve read of Roman history, married Priests were common in the early church. From what I understand, part of the schism between the Eastern and Western Church revolves around not only the predominance of the Pope, but also on marriage of Priests.
The Greek, Russian, and other Eastern rite Orthodox churches have always had married Priests from what I understand.
Why did the Roman Church move away from married Priests? Why won’t it accept them now?
Some comments derail a thread more effectively than others…
Why did the Roman Church move away from married Priests? Why won’t it accept them now?
The historical reason I’ve always heard is that the Church did it to avoid having Church property bequeathed to non-priests (i.e. the priest’s eldest son, should the son not don the mantle). No kids, then everything stays with the Church. I don’t know if this is actually true, or among the many very common anti-Church myths.
As for why the modern Church has resisted it, heaven only knows. The Catholic Church’s stands on birth control and married priests I think have done it severe damage. I can almost see the integrity of tradition for priestly celibacy, as I’m a tradition minded guy. But the birth control thing… such a mistake.
(I’m shooting for an even bigger TDE: Thread Derail Effect.)
Wretchard — Western women are all about Social Proof. Indeed Elizabeth Hurley confessed to crushes on powerful politicos. That is Obama’s strength, social proof, and women will abandon him only in the greatest extreme.
Need I add, there are obvious male-female issues with social proof. Most men desire a flat, relatively meritocratic society with few set-asides, Affirmative Action (which benefit non White males and penalizes White males), and emphasis on social proof. Since only a few men can rise to the top of a hierarchy. Whereas women WANT a society based on social proof and the sort of thing Lovelock wants. Why?
Because the social value of every man might as well be bar-coded onto his face. No difficult assessments. And the evolutionary derived emphasis on status, hierarchy, princes, and of course … princesses is fulfilled. A woman can rise far higher, even with only marginal prettiness, in such a society. Look at Rielle Hunter. Already being sold in articles titled “the Quiet Dignity of Rielle Hunter.” A plain old Lisa Druck, slaving away in a cubicle next to some beta male drone, accounts for nothing. No magazine covers, no videos, no constant attention. A re-invented Rielle Hunter, girlfriend of famous authors and John Edwards, matters.
This is the mirror wanted by most Western women. It would be astonishing if they did not wish it, human nature as it is. For most Western men, it is in their interests to smash it, completely, and never allow it to be rebuilt. To completely destroy the Celebrity Industrial culture, never let any man rise too high, or princesses be formed. To drag all the Rielle Hunters back to Lisa Druck-villes, in drab cubicles, where they just don’t matter.
Southpark had special venom for the Kardashians, Sarah Jessica Parker, and memorably Paris Hilton. Easy targets but filled with special venom. I always found that … telling. I do agree the issue is not “truth” but simply:
“Who’s side are you on?”
The media, Celebrity Industrial complex may eliminate the ability to think, but never to feel. Feelings don’t go away they just become more powerful the less one thinks.
Re: Catholic pedophelia? Hollywood has had constant glamorization and justification of it, including “The Woodsman,” “Little Children,” Oscar-winner “the Reader,” and of course Roman Polanski. What is interesting is how Whoopi Goldberg justifies the latter as not “rape-rape” because Polanski is a big man. Women allow, socially and en masse, as a group, Big Men to get away with anything. While Betas get away with nothing. Part of being a Big Man is breaking social rules particularly with children with impunity. You would think women would lead the charge in society against Pedophelia. But they don’t, ala Whoopi, a woman making her career on telling other women what to think and believe, they justify it. Because of the Big-Man-ness.
Another problem with information–technologically enabled communication–is its speed. A hundred years ago, you might have hours to days to absorb and analyze a piece of news or political development. Now, instant decisions must be made. Propaganda can make its effects felt immediately; contesting it and undoing its negative effects can take a lot of work, or be impossible.
I admire Andrew Breitbart for recognizing that fact. He does the only thing one can do: mount an instant counterattack. (That’s where Bush failed, in realizing that he was the first 21st century President and had to respond to attacks in a 21st century manner.)
If we hope to preserve any semblance of truth and reality in our information delivery, we had better be prepared to follow Breitbart’s lead.
Peterike/103
My brother-in-law entered the seminary in the early 50s right out of high school, stayed 7 years and left as soon as he saw my sister. He told me that in those days the seminarys were vigilant in dismissing homosexuals, but as the number of applicants dropped in the 60s and 70s they were forced to keep the homosexuals, though trying to impress upon them that it was not the condition but the act that was sinful. The Catholic Church took its chances and paid the price.
Regarding the pedophilia scandals among the Catholic clergy:
Don’t underestimate the malign influences of the communists during the Cold War in shaping internal policies and culture within the church, and of course today the poor clergy are exposed to a virtual storm of carnal temptations, everywhere they look in our permissive society.
Manning Johnson, a former official of the Communist Party USA, gave the following testimony in 1953 to the House un-American Activities Committee:
“Once the tactic of infiltration of religious organizations was set by the Kremlin … The Communists discovered that the destruction of religion could proceed much faster through infiltration of the Church by the Communists
operating within the Church itself … In the earliest stages it was determined that with only small forces available to them, it would be necessary to concentrate Communist agents within the seminaries … to influence the ideology of future clergymen in the paths conducive to Communist purposes.”
Mr. Johnson went on to say, “It is the axiom of Communist organization strategy that if a body has 1% Communist Party members and 9% party sympathizers, this 10% can effectively control the remaining 90% who think and act on an individual basis.” He further testified that the goals of this infiltration were twofold:
1. To make the Catholic Church no longer effective against Communism.
2. To direct clerical thinking away from the
spiritual and toward the temporal and political …hence, the preaching of the social gospel.”
Another former Communist, Dr. Bella Dodd, a Communist most of her life, after her defection revealed that one of her jobs as a Communist agent was to encourage young radicals to infiltrate seminaries and religious orders, because the Catholic Church was the only one feared by the Communists, for it was its only effective opponent. She said, “In the 1930′s we put 1,100 men
into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within. The idea was for these men to be ordained, and then climb the ladder of influence and authority — to come to be monsignors and bishops. Right now, they are in the highest places ….”.
peterike @ 105 responded to the question:
“Why did the Roman Church move away from married Priests? Why won’t it accept them now? The historical reason I’ve always heard is that the Church did it to avoid having Church property bequeathed to non-priests (i.e. the priest’s eldest son, should the son not don the mantle). No kids, then everything stays with the Church.”
The story I heard was there being concern about papal dynasties, i.e. a person becomes pope because his father was pope. This sort of situation almost happened anyway when the Medici family controlled the papacy. I guess the logic follows that if the Pope can’t have a family then no cleric under him should have one.
Another explanation for priest celibacy comes from Paul’s issues over sexuality.
My guess is the whole priest celibacy thing is obsolete.
Armageddon Rex,
Spengler over at First Things seems to think the eruption of these allegations is a leftist attack on the church. If so, maybe the discussion does belong on this thread.
The Obamalyptic mood in the White House seems to have infected the cultural left generally. Thirty-year-old news is dragged daily into the headlines to make it appear that some dreadful truth has been dragged out of the Vatican vaults, demonstrating Pope Benedict XVI’s culpability in child abuse. It is hard to avoid the impression that the nihilists have a sense of empowerment as never before.
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/spengler/
David Goldman is an Orthodox Jew with a soft spot for the current Pope.
But he may have something of a point. I was at a dinner party with some Democrat Party activist just before the Health Care vote. They seem to think much of their problem comes from the “Pro-Life” community. I was going to clue them in: that many pro-life voters might support National Health Care without government financed abortion. And that Obamacare was bringing many people to the Republicans who formerly would not associate with all those “evangelicals.” But then I thought it better to leave them unclued.
But the Left Dem’s are sure the Christians are in their way. What is the proper response to an institution that gets in the way? Freeze it? Personalize it? Destroy it? I know, I left a few steps out.
This is not to excuse pedophilia (and I have not been closely following the story, so there is much I may have missed). I’m just wondering if “the scandals” are being used as a weapon, and if so by whom and to what purpose?
Damn Internet is bouncing around today and even eating posts before I finish writing them.
It is interesting how a thread wanders after a while.
Regarding Priestly Celibacy, if this non-christian may opine, I believe it came rather late into canon law. It is not a Doctrine. Bishops or their Eastern equivalents were always celibate. About the 6th to 7th centuries, give or take, the Western Church was drowning in the Arian sea and had no strong secular protector like the Eastern Church did. Left to shift for themselves they needed to create a body of Priests who could function as shock troops with no other loyalties. This saved the Latin Church in Spain Italy and Gaul as the barbarians were slowly won over. The practice became formalized in the West later, about the time of the schism with the East. There have always been priests in communion with Rome who are married. The Maronite Catholics of Lebanon are part of the Roman Catholic family with an Eastern influenced liturgy and a married priesthood. Recently the Pope issued a call to the Church of England offering to speed the entrance of their clergy into holy orders under the Church of Rome and keeping their access to marriage. This may draw up to a third of the English clergy into Rome’s orbit. It strikes me as an elegant way for the Church to elide the problem of celibacy. Unfortunately relying on the Church of England to provide an exit from the problem of a homosexual episcopate seems to require an excess of faith. The BC had a thread on this.
To be blogged under the title “”A Sterile Tower.”
A-Rex:
An example of the agency problem. The de-localization of politics (power moving to higher levels of government, the growing size of constituencies for each elected politician) forces us to hire agents to manage our representatives. Unfortunately, the agents need to feed their families too,and a paycheck becomes more important than the principles.
The Democrats partially solved their agency problem by making a Church out of politics (complete, c.f. Massa, Eric, among others, with sex scandals). Of course they still have their cons and grifters, but perhaps their greater willingness to shamelessly take their graft from the taxpayer reduces their need to fleece the party faithful.
Mike_W.
Huh. Commie infiltration of the Church. I know the Church swung wildly Left, just never thought about it being so deliberately done. Very obvious once you hear it said.
This helps explain the relentless anti-nuke stance of the Catholic Bishops, who are a great bet to be on the wrong side of almost anything.
Wretchard #51:
I believe that Obama and Axelrod and their ilk are not consciously trying to destroy the USA but instead believe that they can “fundamentally transform” the country and the world.
To use the Thresher analogy they believe that the sonar shows that below the sub is a layer of denser water that will prevent further sinking, enabling it to remain above its crush depth with no effort on their part. The emergency propulsion system will work just fine to meet their objectives of cruising at a deeper depth at lower speed, but even it does not the ship will just float there, suspended, as they bring the new solar-power systems on line to replace that horrid reactor.
That this has never happened before is clearly an indication of their true brilliance. The experts that say the denser water is in fact merely a thermocline, a temperature change that masks what is below but does not change the fact they are over the Marianas Trench, are simply not thinking far enough out of the box.
This professional idiot, who says that his plans will cause electricity rates to spiral upwards, but that does not matter because people will have changed to CFL bulbs per Congressional edit, clearly has never even looked at the dataplate for an air conditioner. The typical central house A/C unit, even a late model one, uses more power than thirty five 100W bulbs, so the fact that lighting power requirements for the dwelling have dropped by a total of perhaps 200W for a few hours in the evening is irrelevant. And it is the same way with health care or anything else; it is based on ignorance and first requires that moonbeams be extracted from cucumbers.
Meanwhile, Pelosi, Reid, Biden, and the rest do not share his vision of the future nor even understand it, but are in Same Stuff Different Day mode, looking for ways to implement cherished Leftist mythologies while piling on special goodies and punishments all the while.
The Undiscovered Country that Obama is trying to lead us to not only does not exist but cannot exist.
The Left is not only stranger, dumber and more corrupt than we imagine; it is stranger, dumber and more corrupt than we can imagine.
When you have people operating to a shared world view things happen without the benefit of conspiracy. That goes for both the conservatives and the left. A lot of what passes for “conspiracy” is simply getting along and reacting to informal signaling.
It may be that a “conspiracy to infiltrate the church” happened or maybe it didn’t. The Left seems to believe there’s some secret control room from which the Tea Parties are directed. I doubt it. But what they may be observing is a kind of shared value system producing similar results.
I think the aggressiveness associated with Obamacare probably set off the more authoritarian instincts which are never far below the surface of the Left. Allowed to grow unchallenged the signal is self-reinforcing. And I’m sure that for the next week or two the conservatives and leftists are going to be engaged in a ding-dong battle. That’s just par for the course.
But in the end the conservatives should keep their strategic focus. They have an energy advantage in a political insurgency because they don’t have this massive apparatus to support. The Left is like the Sheriff of Nottingham scouring the countryside for taxes. I think the struggle will be far more even than most on the Left believe possible.
Wretchard writes: “But I spent my entire childhood in Catholic Schools and saw clergymen at close quarters during the underground where sexual hanky panky was more or less openly displayed without seeing pedophilia. Maybe it was the last taboo. The unmentionable. who knows?”
I don’t know either, but find it interesting that many of the Catholics I know in France, Italy and Switzerland all knew of priests (and even one bishop) who were conducting nice, normal, sometimes even long term, heterosexual affairs. Is it the more rigidly puritanical culture of America, in which Catholicism has been a late arriving import, that twists so many priests sexuality towards children? It was a workable theory, but now molestation cases have been revealed in Ireland, Germany, and Canada as well. Odd.
Wretchard: “Parishioners have a surprising sense of who they trust as a pastor and who they don’t.”
Maybe, but the pederast priests have found various means of circumventing suspicious parishioners. The first, as in Wisconsin and Alaska, is to prey on children who can’t complain. The deaf or Inuit children in Wisconsin and Alaska respectively. This is also true in Canada (Inuits) and in orphanages in Ireland (the poor and discarded).
Secondly, too many archdiocese simply kept circulating the trash, hoping it wouldn’t stink up any one location or parish. Cardinal Law knew that Father Geoghan had molested seven children — and had him transferred to another parish. So too with Father Paul Shanley. This is why the US should extradite Cardinal Law from the Vatican to try him in criminal court. (But then, what if Josef Ratzinger was involved in a similar cover up of his priest’s crimes? I don’t believe so, yet, but it’s an interesting hypothetical.)
Wretchard: “But the garbage collection process, like the ordinary one, or like the computer one, or the political one, has to be continuous and unremitting. The Church, like larger society cannot survive the corruption of its operating system.”
I concur, but is that truly the institutional nature of the Church? To police its own hierarchy so thoroughly? It seems to me that that would require some degree of democratic oversight, the very antithesis of the Church’s authority.
Wretchard, thank you for your thoughtful response, but I’m, left wondering why so few conservative bloggers and no PJM bloggers have written on this? It’s a developing story that should not be the sole provenance of the Left.
#115 RWE writes:
The Left is not only stranger, dumber and more corrupt than we imagine; it is stranger, dumber and more corrupt than we can imagine.
Truer words have never been spoken. Thank you Sir(Madam?).
My wife went to a Presbyterian retreat a few weeks ago where one of the first things out of her group leader’s mouth was how she hated Republicans. My wife’s minister included disparagement for (conservative) incivility in her sermon last weekend. The minister is not a treacherous or intentionally deceitful person, but apparently has had dark glasses or smoky mirrors imposed on her which limit her perception and thought.
I decided to attach a copy of Wretchard’s “Man in the Mirror” essay to a note to the minister. Although I have greatly enjoyed Wretchard’s unexpected (for me anyway) syntheses almost from the blog’s beginning, I went to Wikipedia for background.
I found that the entry for Belmont Club was deleted a few days ago by an administrator named Nihiltres, because it read “like and is an advertisement for a blog/web page. I do not see how it belongs in an encyclopedia. It is neither newsworthy or notable.” This administrator claims to want to be judged “on the quality of my contributions and the cogency of arguments which I put forth.”
His contribution to Wikipedia seems to be deleting work of others, for incogent reasons.
Here is what I found today for the Wikipedia Belmont Club entry:
This page has been deleted. The deletion and move log for the page are provided below for reference.
• 16:06, 21 March 2010 Nihiltres (talk | contribs) deleted “Belmont Club” (Expired PROD, concern was: This stub article reads like and is an advertisement for a blog/web page. I do not see how it belongs in an encyclopedia. It is neither newsworthy or notable.)
I looked up the cached version of the Wikipedia Belmont Club entry. Here is the cached entry:
Belmont Club is a weblog that has been in existence since late April 2003. The site focuses on current affairs and public policy, often placing an emphasis on military action and foreign policy issues. The Belmont Club welcomes and supports comments by its readers. The site’s founder and primary contributor is Richard Fernandez, who runs the site under the pseudonym Wretchard the Cat and Wretchard. Fernandez also maintains a website at Wretchard.com. Fernandez is of Filipino background and has Australian citizenship. Fernandez’ interest in history began at Harvard, from where he graduated with a Masters in Public Policy. Since its founding, the Belmont Club site has generated more than eight million hits as of September 2005.
Wretchard is the name of an imaginary cat, in the words of Fernandez, “the symbol of that entire race of stoic, yet somewhat foolish creatures.” [1] Belmont is the name of a suburb Fernandez roomed in while at Cambridge, Massachusetts.
As of 2006, he is a contributor to Pajamas Media.
[edit] External links
• First location of Belmont Club
• Second location of Belmont Club
• Current location of Belmont Club
• Wretchard.com
This article about a blog, vlog, or other internet publication is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
I then clicked on the Wikipedia page for this administrator. He must see himself in a distorted mirror. Is there a self-reflective mirror distortion that magnifies grandiosity?
Nihitrres, the “administrator” who deleted the Belmont Club entry seems pretty full of himself. He claims to be a liberal who wants to judged on contribution quality and argument cogency. Yet his work as a “wikipedian administrator” is “primarily deleting pages tagged for speedy deletion or proposed deletion”.
His description of himself must necessarily be an example of what he does think belongs in an enclclopedia:
I am Nihiltres (pronounced /nɪˈhɪlˌtɹɛs/, ni-HIL-tres), a Wikipedian. I am an administrator, and have been since a nomination in May 2007. I do a fair amount of work as an administrator, primarily deleting pages tagged for speedy deletion or proposed deletion. Aside from my administrative help, I do a bunch of work with templates, cleanup, and occasionally writing articles. I also volunteer answering emails as part of the Wikimedia OTRS team. I’m often on IRC in the #wikipedia, #wikipedia-en, and #wikipedia-en-admins IRC channels, so you can talk to me there if I’m available.
About me
I am a science student living in Pointe Claire, on the island of Montreal. As I am a student, it’s possible to guess at my age: I would discourage people from doing so, because I wish to be ageless on Wikipedia, being judged instead on the quality of my contributions and the cogency of arguments which I put forth.
It should generally be assumed that people are inherently biased—as such, I reason that it would be appropriate to disclose these biases. In terms of political standpoint, I tend to be reasonably liberal: according to the political compass test, I scored as −4.92 on an economic scale of left versus right, and −5.25 on a social scale of libertarianism versus authoritarianism. In terms of spirituality, I am nominally a Protestant, though I abandoned those beliefs a number of years ago and now am largely agnostic, with some Buddhist leanings. I therefore follow the Five Precepts and some other tenets of Buddhism, but am otherwise agnostic. Although I am generally accepting of people’s religious beliefs, I personally greatly dislike dogma, especially those which can be categorized as pseudoscience, although I acknowledge that any argument involving an omnipotent being is necessarily inductive in nature.
My username
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This user wants to be your friend.
My pseudonym is arbitrary: it is Latin for “nothingthree” (nihil → “nothing”, tres → “three”) and does not imply anything whatsoever. Several Wikipedians have at various times questioned me as to its meaning, usually making connections to nihilism. I am not a nihilist, though I do at times value a nihilistic or, similarly, minimalist point of view for its philosophical clarity.
In reality, it was an interesting compromise: I originally wanted to be Nemo, Latin for “nobody”, but the famous captain of Jules Verne’s story Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea had ruined the obscurity of the word for me. Further, I tried “Nihil”, but that was taken. I dislike numbers in names, but adding a number as text sounded fine, so I added one of my favourite numbers, three, in the same Latin as my alternate “Nihil”, to form my now epidemic username, Nihiltres.
The strangest connection that has been made with my username to another topic is the “-tres” to Moltres, whose name happens to have similarly borrowed “tres” from Latin, though through Spanish.
I tend to use the same username across the internet, Nihiltres, but occasionally I am known as Shade, a name I will sometimes prefer when it is, rarely, available.
Userspace
In my userspace I have a number of useful pages:
My sandbox, which I use for experimentation and development of things not yet ready or inappropriate for the article or template namespaces. Feel free to edit it, as long as you are constructive.
An archive of a rewrite of the Shade’s Children article I made using the sandbox: User:Nihiltres/Sandbox/Shade’s Children archive
A number of userboxes:
User:Nihiltres/Userboxes/Friendly
User:Nihiltres/Userboxes/TI-BASIC
User:Nihiltres/Userboxes/Super contrib meta
Other subpages:
User:Nihiltres/Click-to-ImageMap, a now unnecessary script written in AppleScript that converted implementations of {{click}} to the better ImageMap format. I used it while {{click}} was still a CSS hack that impaired usability. {{Click}} has since been converted to use ImageMap itself, as a method of bypassing the limitations of ImageMap was implemented by the developers.
User:Nihiltres/ImageMap how-to is now a redirect to the page to which it was moved, Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-03-03/Tutorial. That page is a tutorial explaining how to use the ImageMap feature.
Pages which govern the appearance of my userspace:
User:Nihiltres/Header controls the appearance of my talk page
User:Nihiltres/Archived controls the appearance of my user talk archives.
User:Nihiltres/Nav controls the navigation box which appears on many of my subpages.
My user skin customization pages:
User:Nihiltres/vector.js, which contains a number of various scripts which enhance my user experience by altering the interface slightly.
User:Nihiltres/vector-ipod.js, special scripts called through the monobook.js page if I’m using my iPod Touch and the Vector skin.
User:Nihiltres/vector-ipod.css, special styling called through the monobook.js page if I’m using my iPod Touch and the Vector skin.
User:Nihiltres/vector.css, which fine-tunes the interface appearance for my personal preference, including some minor changes to colour.
User:Nihiltres/monobook.js, the equivalent of the vector.js page while I use the Monobook skin. It implements a couple other changes:
User:Nihiltres/monobook-ipod.js, special scripts called through the monobook.js page if I’m using my iPod Touch and the Monobook skin.
User:Nihiltres/monobook-ipod.css, special styling called through the monobook.js page if I’m using my iPod Touch and the Monobook skin.
User:Nihiltres/monobook.css, the equivalent of the vector.css page while I use the Monobook skin.
I will update this section as needed if more content is created. If you like the layout or design of my userpage, ask me and I’ll create something similar for you.
Belmont Club and Richard Fernandez deserve a suitable wikipedia entry.
With all the capable people here, it should be possible to put together a Wikipedia entry for the Belmont Club, with citations, which should not be removed. Is it possible to remove a Wikipedia “administrator” who’se main work is apparently deleting entries of others?
Wikipedia entries can only be trusted when they concern things that have no political/ideological dimension. If you want to know about the chemical properties of silicon carbide you can trust it. If you want to know about the wonders of the health care system in Cuba you can’t.
And as far as that goes–its better to be ignored than slandered. But that’s just my opinion—-
wretchard,
without the benefit of conspiracy (…) both the conservatives and the left
Yes and no, which is to say maybe no. There is an asymmetry between the two sides that stems from their philosophical antecedents.
The Right is a heterogeneous fusion of several strands that often work against each other. These include both faith based and traditionalist communitarian influences that emphasis a respect for institutions and precedents and the rationalist and Liberal traditions that emphasis the market, skepticism open inquiry. Both have been relied upon to support a system depends on the rule of law and tolerance for minorities and their novel ideas while defending an open system of government that holds the rulers accountable to the people. The sources of knowledge are in Nature as discovered through a process of scientific study open to anyone and through the wisdom of the people as communicated to their representatives. Both streams of knowledge depend on a preexisting reality and a spirit of honest participation in working within that reality that ultimately was seen to come from God.
The Left is less diverse or at least more internally consistent in its influences. It can be traced back to the Dialectic of Hegel and then through the cabal of the Jacobin Clubs all the way back to the Gnostic heresies of the Middle Ages or earlier. What is common that distinguishes them is a belief in belief as transcending reality. They believe that a small group with a special secret knowledge, that is not available to the masses, have the power to triumph over the reality of creation and defy the laws of Nature to remold humanity and change history for some greater good. To these people that reality cannot be properly perceived by normal means because of the ignorance and corruption of man.
These beliefs and their encouragement of a reliance on closed self replicating authorities to dominate society and denigrate or destroy all possible alternatives have periodically been very influential even within the mainstream. For example the efforts of the Medieval Church to suppress the study of nature and to restrict access to the Bible showed the influence of those same forces the Church had condemned as heretical. There is a natural tendency to become somewhat like the enemy you struggle against.
The Left is always more likely to both accuse the Right of entering a conspiracy and also to resort to a conspiracy themselves because that is the model that they see as the proper way to gain and hold power. A Left wing administration is an ongoing conspiracy burdened by the unhappy necessity of governing. For the Left revolution is not really a means to Marx’s Utopia but is an end to itself. It is the permanent rebellion of the enlightened angels against nature. Milton understood their motives.
Consider how they resort as their first position to falsifying data to prove their position over Global Warming. They assume that they have to engage in conspiratorial activities and they project onto legitimate businesses the assumption that everything those businesses do is part of some grand dishonest conspiracy in a struggle against the left. They believe this even if their adherents have entered into positions of influence within the organizations they seem themselves competing with. They believe their suspected rivals are engaging in conspiratorial manipulations as the they would without regard to the cost to any business of doing so while still attempting to perform some task in the marketplace. Leftists always act shocked to discover that a businessman is actually in the business of making shirts instead of participating in some titanic CIA operation to track down the Leftist.
While conservatives may enter into a conspiracy they do so in the expectation that they are doing so temporarily and it is an unnatural act. At the risk of entering into a “no true Scotsman” fallacy by my standards those ostensibly conservative movements that organize themselves as ongoing conspiracies against society such as militia movements or supremacist splinter groups, as opposed to ad hoc responses to real conditions such as the Tea Parties are, should not be viewed as being of the Right at all. They are a deformed projection of the Left.
As an aside this view of the special role of the bearers of a secret wisdom in guiding humanity may explain some of the affinity between the Left and Islam. If you assume that people are inherently corrupt and that the truth can not be learned either by the scientific study of nature nor by the expression of the popular will as expressed through freely chosen representatives under a transparent system of law then you may turn instead to a circular set of truths that need no validation from reality and which justify their adherents using any means necessary to dominate and control the masses.
To be blogged under the title “Better to Rule in Hell.”
jaybird
For crying out loud I get your point but I spend an hour writing something and then you past that crap and I feel like I am buried under it.
Back maybe to the thread’s theme. The MSM are heralding the Obama scapegoating of Christians, rightwingers, militias,etc. Eugene Robinson in the WaPo today wrote a particularly egregious pile of horsecrap and propaganda.
Meanwhile, here on the border, the cartels took out the assistant police chief of Nogales Sonora execution style last week and possibly a rancher as retaliation for a confiscated weed shipment (somebody shot him;it may have been a coyote or an illegal.)Big Sis Napolitano could care less about the border (as she did when she was our governor). My theory is she like Reno before her hates Christians because of the Biblical sanction on their deviant lifestyles.
At its essence, Leftist politics are the cult of the parasite. Let all suck off off the blood of the productive. The very idea that the host may die from their parasitism never occurs to them, nor does the idea as to what will happen to the parasites once the host is dead.
But what it comes down to is that the buzzards eat everything in the carcass, including the worms who are outraged that their welfare checks are late. If you live like a worm you shall die like a worm.
And who has pity for a dead worm?
There seems to be a lot of people wrestling with what appears to be illogic or psychological problems (e.g., projection) from the left.
In my limited but not trivial experience, I have known many people who are reasonably intelligent adults (say, IQ>100), with access to knowledge and at least the basic ability to integrate and understand things, who nevertheless do or say things that make no sense, usually coming from the left side of life.
There is always a temptation to dismiss them as uninformed or playing out psychological issues, or the like.
This is usually not a productive way to understand and deal with such people. That’s my experience.
They are dangerous. They mean you ill. They know, if not exactly, in general terms how destructive or illogical their positions are, but they have other goals and that destruction is either irrelevant or part of what they are after. If after almost a year of back and forth over the Dem health care proposals, someone supported Obamacare, they did NOT do so out of genuine concern for people’s health or because they thought it would save money. If they were ignorant of basic issues such as the economics or fiscal incentives this bill creates, it is only because they chose not to look into it, and that was a conscious choice.
It all reminds me of a lot of the more rabid anti-war protests of ca. 2003-2008, when some people on the right finally realized, “They aren’t for peace, they’re on the other side.”
Don’t tell me about how the left projects their own actions onto the tea-partiers. Don’t tell me that it’s hard to figure out what are Obama’s goals.
Look at what they do, not what they say (at least not what they say when they’re blowing smoke, by all means what they say among each other is relevant and a form of action); assume their actions are rational. Figure out where their actions lead, that’s where they want to go.
No more psychologizing them, dismissing them as kooks or lightweights. That’s like the people in the USSR in teh 1930s whose relatives were shot or hauled off to the Gulag, appealing to Stalin… “if only Stalin knew, he would stop this injustice,” they said. With the benefit of hindsight, we look at them as fools. But many here and elsewhere are being just as foolish, now.
The left intensely dislikes the USA and wants to see it humbled. They hate the private sector and the entrepreneurial class; they will take their money and support (as for ObamaCare, from Big Pharma and some of the insurers, etc), but in the end you are just kulaks to them.
This is for real. It is not a drill. It is not a parlor game.
The GOP did not use it’s opportunity to “defund” teh Left because too many of them thought this was just politics as usual. If the GOP ever gets back into power (a big if), they cannot make that mistake again. That sounds like a call fro ideological purity… I don’t know. you have to get control and probably can’t do that by reading people out of the party. But there is also sucha thing as party discipline, which the Dems just demonstrated. If conservatives ever get another chance, they can’t waste it or it will be their last.
Media bias? Bah! The explanation is simple:
Ugliness, threats, racism, and violence from the left = Dog bites man.
Ugliness, threats, racism, and violence from the right = Man bites dog.
Lifeofmind #122:
The prehistoric origins of the Left are not doubt as you say, but the present day Left is not internally consistent. Rather, as I have said here before, it is a trendy designer bag that they use to carry around their latest fad beliefs. Those beliefs are derived from the latest Talking Points issued by the elites combined with whatever is convenient or expedient at the time. If certain of the elites have interests in oil pipelines in Iraq, then that becomes our priority rather than getting out ASAP. If the head of NOW says that a new prenatal care program threatens abortion rights by making abortions less necessary, then feminists find themselves against prenatal care.
Tcobb: Glad you liked that comment. Obviously it is not wholly original!
Marty #
“If the GOP ever gets back into power (a big if), they cannot make that mistake again.”
One of the disturbing aspects of our current situation is what it will take to not only fix it but to prevent even a near term reoccurrence. And that is not a pretty sight. I will admit that the thought of Pelosi and Reid hanging from lampposts around the Mall in DC sounds attractive at times but I think it would be a national tragedy if it came to that. But one may have to balance tragedies against each other.
The left intensely dislikes the USA and wants to see it humbled. They hate the private sector and the entrepreneurial class; they will take their money and support (as for ObamaCare, from Big Pharma and some of the insurers, etc), but in the end you are just kulaks to them.
Well, there’s an element of truth to that. But the fact is, the left is lavishly funded by the that very same private sector and the entrepreneurial class. Groups like MEChA, which openly call for the distruction of the US, are bankrolled by blue chip corporate America.
Given corporate Americas fondness for the radical left, is it any surprise that the Republican Party (basically the political arm of the Chamber of Commerce) refuses to pick fights with it?
As far as Catholic Priests not being allowed to marry, I hope it’s not too rude to point out that 500 years ago this was one of the practices that Martin Luther felt had corrupted the Catholic Church of his day, which is why he and the other Reformation leaders rejected it.
Protestants generally have always felt that requiring celibacy was a grave error that is nowhere justified or called for in the Christian scriptures. People of all walks may of course choose this for themselves, but protestants believe it is error to require this as an employment or membership condition. This is harsh, but the practice eliminates many men with normal desires and puts selection pressure on men who have unnatural physical desires which then fester because they remain hidden.
And it is folly to pretend that a large number of men can be found who have no physical desires whatsoever. That denial of reality is the root of the problem.
too many PJM bloggers are simply avoiding the mass instances of child rape within the Church and its loathsome community of cover-up because they’ve nothing new to add.
Mass instances of chld rape! Didn’t we go through this silly witch-hunt in the 1990′s? Back then it was day-care workers who were supposedly gang-raping every kid they got their hands on.
Back in the days of the anti-Marcos underground I asked someone why he bothered to read either the government newspapers or the Communist Party propaganda sheet. He replied, “I buy it for date, my friend. It’s still good for telling me what day it is.”
Ha! So stealing that!
It’s about time conservatives take a page out of Clinton’s playbook…
“It’s the economy stupid!”
As long as the idiots in D.C. are content to simply add spending, increase deficits by hundreds of billions per year (unprecedented for any administration, even during times of prosperity), and build unsustainable programs based on political back scratching and the desire to gain & maintain power, we all lose.
At some point as a people we need to stand up and remind these pompous asses that they work for us, and it’s our money. We do not exist to serve their bourgeois class, and trying to promote a socialist idealism based on Marxism, while ideologically ‘classless’ always creates a bourgeois & proletariat, and unlike free market capitalism, there is no amount of effort that a person can put out to move themselves up to the bourgeois unless they’re born there.
Wretchard: your point in Manila, that the “Jesuit university” students were ready to take to the streets reminds me that back then, the liberation theology types were insisting that only political action could remove Marcos…it was an “either or” choice, they insisted.
But then People Power happened…a real third way.
In the US, however, the papers are shilling for the gov’t in a way that few Pinoy journalists would do. Tita Cory wouldn’t have a chance…
As for all those comments on Catholic priests by bigots: the JAMA had an article on sexual abuse of boys: from 4 to 74 percent, depending on how broad you define abuse and which populations you surveyed.
As a doc, I was not aghast at the numbers in the Irish data, as much as wondering why the abuse rate was so low. Statistically, it should have been much much higher.
And the statistics suggest a lot of sexual abuse is out there and ignored, maybe because a closer look might implicate that some in the gay community are helping in the cover up, and that would be “homophobia” so is not allowed.
Maureen Dowd seems especially upset, but one wonders why. She recently wrote an article praising “changes” in Saudi Arabia because their religious police didn’t raid an art show attended by the elite…yet no mention of the lack of churches there, the arrest of those running a “safe house” for maids, the accusations of witchcraft against domestic helpers or the arrest of two dozen Pinoys who face 60 lashes for attending a cross dressing party in Saudi.
#13 – Sgt Mom: my mother once commented on a blog you might know, it was called Sgt Stryker (or something very close to that). She expressed her discomfort about mothers in combat. She was slammed and then banned for it. All this by people claiming to be fighting for her right to free speech.
Given corporate Americas fondness for the radical left, is it any surprise that the Republican Party (basically the political arm of the Chamber of Commerce) refuses to pick fights with it?
I think it’s more complicated than that, but, in the spirit of following the money, it’s been awhile since The Tides Foundation and Tides Center have exerted any notable presence in the public dialogue. No conspiracy mongering, just following the corporate money, which always struck me as agnostic in its historical leanings.