Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

 

I suppose it's useful if one can learn from one's sins, so although I'm repentant, I'm not remorseful.  I committed one of the most common sins of the internet and social media, but I hope not to do it again, and by not doing it again, I hope my posts might be more effective.  But probably not, because of another thing I learned from having sinned:  there is a very selective sort of neo-talmudism that occurs on the internet.

For a long time I have been distressed that many Americans, including many of my friends, have chosen ignorance of history and ignorance of  context, and have claimed the contemporary moral high ground of victimhood  rather than responsibility.  Let Lenin convince me that I'm the victim of the Czar and I will likely soon become the victim of Lenin.  Lenin's propoganda didn't mention collecting my land and sendig me to the gulag.  Propoganda's kinda like that somtimes.

So, when a friend whom I generally consider a very good person posted one lament that capitalism is not supporting families well enough and that the government should step into the gap, and followed it with a nice virtue-signal of himself in a BLM parade, ironically while living in a town where the university was shut down for a bit of re-education when it was alleged that someone on one of the Vikings sports teams had made something someone considered a racial slur on an actually rather obscure site, resulting in demands, thankfully not met, that the name of the sports teams be changed from Vikings, I sinned.  I Googled BLM and families and saw an essay from an organization called The Federalist.com which outlined why the author, Auguste Mayrat, thinks the Black Lives Matters movement is opposed to families. I posted a link to the essay on my Facebook page. It seemed to me an unfortunate irony that someone who thinks families need help would expect to find it in an organization that is dedicated to disrupting families.   Common to both of my friend's posts, I suppose, was a not-unusual disapproval of capitalism.  

(Sorry.  I can't help myself)

Mr. Mayrat's essay wasn't perfect.  A friend said that it was unlike me to have shared it if I had read it.  (Indeed, I had read it.  I miss the pithiness of someone like Bill Buckley, perhaps, but sometimes I take what I find.) Disappointed friend said 'It's flawed in so very many ways and written with a obviously biased agenda. I'm kinda shocked.' Well duh.  Of course it's written with a biased agenda, but unlike many publications (I'm looking at you, Good Gray Lady), it doesn't pretend to be unbiased.  The Federalist is a conservative publication, and doesn't pretend to be otherwise. In a long telephone conversation that followed, my shocked friend went on to decry the nuclear family as a myth, to argue that one does need a village to raise a child, and to pounce on Mr. Mayrat's claim that BLM hates families, based on the actual text of the BLM website. The discussion reminded me of nothing so much as Talmudic arguments, which in this case centered around Mr. Mayrat's use of the word 'logic'.  He said that the logic of the BLM website's statement suggested (I must confess that at the time of the discussion, I was sitting on a park bench and didn't have my Mishna with me, or I would have pounced on the word 'suggests'.) 'that children do better without parents and outside the home.'

Now, I realize that by openly admitting to having any conservative notions at all, and even to commit what is probably larger than a micro-agression by quoting a conservative source is enough to disallow most arguments, so I was actually honoured if a bit amused by my shocked friend's extensive discourse.  I also think that his use of BLM's conception of a village to raise children (and of Mrs. Clinton's use in her book advocating passing our children over the fire of Moloch, which I did not read until after she lost the election, but which made me less unhappy that she had lost) is double speak.  If the Black Lives Matter movement were concerned about families and children, we might find folks with BLM signs patrolling the neighborhoods of Chicago to provide a safe environment for children rather than burning the businesses of black women in Brooklyn or torching mattress factories in Kenosha.  (I found that one hard to understand for a while.  I realize that it might be argued that the sister in Brooklyn had sold out to capitalism, but mattresses?  And then I realized that they're just a symbol of bourgeois luxury.  Real workers, I guess, sleep on a thin mat on the floor.  As I do.)

So, in the future I will be much more careful about posting anything in which I haven't counted every jot and tittle.  But I would also encourage my friends who find the BLM website enticing consider that it is written by folks who claim to be Marxists, and then to consider the role Marxists give to propaganda. 

And, finding myself as a sheep in the midst of wolves, I shall strive to be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

And, in this age of miracles and wonders, the Talmud is available online.  But I'll let you Google it for yourself.

Going beyond the Self-Evident

The screen shot above is part of one of billions of interactions that occurred today on the internet.  It's not a bit deal, but it has given me food for reflection all day, and I want to share some of those reflections.  

There are three clauses in that interaction, and I want to discuss each of them, but I will save the first one, about the democrats, for last.

I have known Dan Krotz for about twenty years, since he owned a bookstore from which I bought and then sold and then often re-bought many years.  He's a minor but rather brilliant author, and someone for whom I have much respect.  Indeed, the cover photo on his Facebook  page is one I took of a book he wrote  that I bought and have recommended to many. And Dan said that Trump is simply and openly a pig.  That doesn't seem too remarkable, does it?  And yet, in the history of the world, it's been a rare thing that someone can call the leader of one of the world's most powerful nation a pig with no fear of retribution.  When Trump was elected, I remember being told by many friends that all our rights would be taken away, even that I perhaps should get a burner phone.  But in fact the times I have personally been under scrutiny and censorship by the government was under democratic regimes.  Dan said that without even getting any dislikes on Facebook.  (It's a good thing he didn't call a fat black female actress a pig, because then he would have been put in social media jail or banned for life. (At least he would were he a conservative comedian.) 

Thinking about that remark, I am struck by how much Dan's remark about Trump resembles some of the things Trump says on Twitter about people he dislikes.  Yet, somehow, I still respect Dan.

Now, of course, there are things about Dan's statement that are self-evident.  I mean, I have yet to forgive Trump for destroying the facade of Bonwit-Teller.  He's often crass, calling people things like 'pig'. And yes, there is, I'm aware, corruption in the Trump administration.  But, alas, I'm afraid that is not unusual.  Mr. Obama is somehow now a poster child for good presidenst, but I rented an apartment from the Chicago Democratic Party back in the 1960's when the Johnson administration was tapping my phone , and when somehow my building escaped enforcement of the Chicago building code.  I doubt things have changed much since. (And, if I may borrow a phrase from the democrats' nominee for likely the true leader of the nation, 'are you aware that there's a perception' that people around some politicians are likely to commit suicide?)

So, yes. Trump is a pig. His faults are pretty self-evident.  But, the alternative, about which Dan sadly agrees, the democrats and their program to dismantle western civilization, is carefully covered in banal feel-good phrases like hope and light and love.  If putting up with Trump's self-evident piggishness for another four years will delay the arrival of the full-on Animal Farm, I'm willing to risk it.

Yup.  Trump's a self-evident pig, and he hasn't been given an Nobel Peace Prize.  But I would suggest that it is not enough to just rely on the self-evident appearances of any situation, it is not enough to be seduced by slick intentions, but look for results.  I'm fond of fewer wars.

 

Why I Have Decided to Vote for the Fucking Moron

 

Like  many others,  I was shocked on 8 November 2016 when Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.  I would not have been pleased had Hilary Clinton won the election.  I thought her a dangerous hawk whose primary qualification was overweening ambition.  But the polls . . .  I had voted for neither of them.  It had seemed that Gary Johnson was the only adult in the room.  He may not have known where Aleppo was, but he didn't need to know because he wasn't going to bomb it.  He may have forgotten the name of Mexican President Vicente Fox, but then so had I and I had worked in Mexico when Fox was first elected, and it seemed very unlikely that Johnson would waste millions of dollars building a wall along the Mexican border. I had no illusions that Johnson would win the election, but it seemed a good thing to at least mark my position, kinda like pissing on a fire hydrant. I live in western Washington, and I'm surrounded by Pavlovian progressives who haven't thought critically since they had to write a compare-and-contrast essay in eighth grade English class.

Like many others, I was horrified on 8 November 2016 when Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.  He shared Clinton's ambition, but seemed even less likely to choose good advisors.  He seem to obey neither the laws of grammar, nor of the United States.  I confess I have broke both from time to time, but truthfully I more often consider grammar.  Of course what should have been obvious to anyone who has listened to people talk for more than five minutes or has read any novel written since 1900, communication does not obey the laws of grammar, either.  And when I had talked to supporters of the most enthusiastically supported democratic candidate, Bernie Sanders, it quickly became apparent that law, especially constitutional law, has very little respect from anyone in the current political climate change.  Nevertheless, I posted a long string of memes describing the president a a fucking moron, posts which garnered likes on Facebook.

Like many others, I expected some great catastrophe to follow after 8 November 2016 when  Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.  My progressive friends told me so.  CNN told me so.  And they both told me that Fox News was in cahoots with the devil.  I had been rather appalled by what a pansy Anderson Cooper had been in his reactions to the Trump during the debate he failed to moderate.  (Yes, I know one isn't supposed to use terms denigrating someone's sexuality, but I'm a pansy, too, so I get a pass, like a rap singer using the Nword.)  I had been impressed by how the only moderator during the debates who did reel in Trump was Chris Wallace, whom I had been told worked for the devil himself.  So when the Fucking Moron attacked false news, I thought of that in terms of an attack on freedom of the press, despite that never has the press reported anything about me accurately, and despite that I in general recognize that the true centers of power are now more the big media/tech companies and not Washington.

Like many others, I found that following 8 November 2016 Donald Trump did one outrageous thing after another, and not only did he fail to appoint particularly brightest and best staffers, he fired them as quickly as  he had done on the Apprentice.   It seemed like the presidency as a reality TV show. It was interesting to me that the things my liberal/progressive friends condemned mostly loudly about his policies were things that Mr. Obomber had been doing all along. It seemed to me that the best way to keep from even considering putting kids in cages would be to keep the out to begin with.  But they had hope with Mr. Obomber, and they had horror with Mr. Trump.  Mr. Obomber had been Nice looking, while the fucking moron didn't need to be caricatured. He always looked like a cartoon.

And, can you imagine what Jackie K-O would think about the way he redecorated the White House?  At least he had the honesty to brag about having sex with that woman, so long as she was nice looking.  

Following the inauguration of Donald Trump on 20 January 2017, I like many other people was reminded that we in live a post-moder of alternative facts.  I learned that some massacre somewhere in Kentucky  had occurred in an alternative universe and  that covefe is a thing. I was introduced to government by Tweet, which if one considers it, is really much more appropriate for the contemporary political climate change than fire side chats.  Unlike my progressive friends, I was pretty much pleased by a lot of the early actions of the administration, although they seemed to have been the program of Paul Ryan, who I noticed abandoned the swamp after two years, putting a bit of distance between himself and the new American Greatness.

Following the inauguration of Donald Trump on 20 January 2017, the world didn't end.  No new nations were bombed.   Bombing and targeted attacks were not ended, but hay, America is great right.  I mean, one of Clinton's claims to glory as the assassination of Mumammar Khaddafi, an act which has made life miserable for an awful lot of Libyans.

Following the inauguration of Donald Trump on 20 January 2017 the wold didn't end.  Things pretty much chugged along as they would have anyway.  People continued to invent things.  Wages went up.  Prices went up, but mostly slower than wages.  Because I am what a friend of mine calls a 'god-damned one worlder', I have been very saddened that the United States has disengaged from China, and indeed from much of the world.  It never seemed to me, for instance, that the Fucking Moron understood that NATO was established for the benefit of the United States.  On the other hand, I must realize that the world in which NATO now exists is quite different from  what existed in 1949.  I don't think that the presidency has much power for good, and a lot of power for bad,  but still I was disappointed that the Fucking Moron's pastiche of tweeted ideas that might better have been saved to examine in the cold light of dawn, often  been to strengthen Russia and China.  I don't think he has been alone in working up the electorate by triggering their-our--fears,  The Democratic National Convention has been a Fear Week.  And no one seems more anxious to race bait sooner than Nancy Pelosi, a woman whom I confess I find a bit difficult to take seriously because she reminds me so much of an aunt who lived much of her life in California and who tended to spike heels and pant suits and a shrill voice.  The only thing Pelosi lacks is my aunt's Chiwawa named Oogie.

But, four years is a long time, and following the inauguration of Donald Trump on 20 January 2017, I have been collecting a bit of random data.  The loyal opposition--is irony still allowed in 2020?--has carefully cultivated the Trump derangement syndrome.   Time and again when I have asked my progressive friends, who are about the only sort there are here in western Washington, so I may have a skewed viewpoint, why they support some activity, from such things as the Green New Deal to the looting being perpetrated in honor of George Floyd, their answers have nothing to do with my question but quickly become 'I don't like Donald Trump'.  As he said himself, maybe it's his personality. I, however, find most of the ideas of the loyal opposition arebboatahto6bopposed to the ideas that have made America great in the first place:  classic  English liberalism, free trade, and capitalism.   I doubt the fucking moron understands classic English liberalism, but he hasn't overtly attacked  it.   He has done nothing much to help free trade, alas.  But he doesn't attack--always; I mean, his tweets do seem to be random--the capitalists like Tim Cook who stand up to him on free trade.

But, of course, the Virus.

The Big Black Swan.

It is far too early to pretend to know all the results of the covid pandemic, but I will say that it's foolish to blame it on China, as the Fucking Moron does, or to blame it one the Fucking Moron, as the democrats do.  One needs to avoid derangement syndromes of every sort, I suspect.

So, here's the deal:  Much to my surprise, and largely because of his incompetence and tendency to chase every squirrel, the United States hasn't been doing badly for the past four years if one looks at reality rather than the news.  The United States has not been the worst nation in its response to the virus, as we were repeatedly told by the DNC. nor has it been the best nation, as the Fucking Moron claims.  What makes the United States' situation difficult is of course that it is a union of states, something which Trump has mostly noticed and honored during the pandemic, despite the many calls for one-size-fits-all measures from Pelosi & Company.  As Rahm Emanuel, home boy of Mr. Obomber said, no good crisis should be wasted.

Unfortunately, although the democrats seem firmly in the depths of Trump derangement syndrome, powdered Biden mixed in with one's organic vegan smoothie is not a cure for the virus.  I have seen nothing from the loyal opposition to suggest that their 'belief' in science will actually change the facts for the many scientists all around the world who are working for a cure and/or preventative already.

Unfortunately, I have seen no signs that the democrats would recognize the achievements of Regan and Nixon in bringing Russia and China into the sphere of American influence and build on it.  Rather it seems that the democrats would embrace the notion that Trump and Sanders have in common, the notion that 1953 or thereabouts was some sort of golden age that can be brought back by presidential fiat.  Meanwhile, the policies that the democrats do seem to embrace would be catastrophic to the classic liberal freedom of the individual, of free trade, and of capitalism.  

Like many others, I was shocked on 8 November 2016 when Donald Trump was elected president.  But I was wrong to think that the United States was so fragile that it could not survive the presidency of a guy who is only slightly, if much more bigly loudly, incompetent than the norm.  The New York Times still prints all the news it pretends is fit to print, even when it's often fake.  Rachel Maddow still says things about the head of state that would lose her her head in many Muslim countries. The people who are being censored are those more conservative than the leaders of Twitter or Google or Facebook.  

Now, four years later, Donald Trump is up for re-election.  He remains a sort of Cardi B personality, loud and outrageous.  And his opponent, Joe Biden, is--what?-- a sort of retired crooner performing in a casino. Mr. Biden, whom I can't help but think of as a return of Mr. Potatohead, a person with no real personality or ideas of his own, on whom a sardonic smile can be hung by the instructions on the teleprompter, might seem to be a return to a calmer presidency.  But he comes with a lot of baggage.  Many people do not expect him to survive one term, making Kamala Harris very likely the real president. And the others who would almost certainly be members of a Biden presidency are not people I trust to protect my freedoms or the United States Constitution.

Now, four years later Donald Trump is up for re-election, and it has been four years of continuous attack on him by the democratic congress, nearly all of which has been proven baseless.  Again and again the willingness to accept the truthiness of the 'evidence' of the Mueller investigation and the dossier of allegations has proven to be wishful thinking of a bunch of folks who are sure they know better than the electorate. I find myself as surprised by how Trump has really governed as has John Yoo, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley, who wrote a fascinating book entitled Defender in Chief:  Donald Trump's Fight for Presidential Power.  In it he writes, 'If friends had told me on January 21, 2017, that I would write a book on Donald Trump as a defender of the Constitution, I would have questioned their sanity.  I had not voted for him in the 2016 primary or general elections.  His many personal and professional flaws repelled me.' But Yoo brilliantly explains the struggles between Trump and the democrats in terms of the checks and balances and expectations of the federal constitution, not claiming that Trump even realized what he was doing, but that the founders of the constitution created a system in which the struggles of individual persons for their own power would be channeled for the common good.

Now, four years later, Donald Trump is up for re-election, and I find myself in position I could not have imagined four years ago.  I would have been unhappy with a Clinton but I expected her administration would have been pretty much a return of the normal blundering incompetency we have come to expect from the presidency.  I hope, in case Biden is elected, that I am wrong, but I expect a Biden administration would to be a targeted attack on the principles of western civilization that underlie the founding of the United States and that  have made it a destination for thousands, whether they were 'huddled masses' or others who 'were yearning to breathe free.'  

Now, four years later, Donald Trump is up for re-election.  I would certainly prefer a calmer candidate, some less ego-centric, someone whose voice I enjoyed hearing, someone who is handsome and doesn't have an absurd hair-cut--the list could go on.  But the United States has survived four years of Trump, and I expect that it will survive another four years, that we will recover from the blows of the virus,  and that we will flourish.  There has been nothing in the actions of the loyal opposition to make me think they would encourage recovery or flourishing.  

Because I live in Western Washington, my vote mostly doesn't matter.  One of my friends will likely call my opposition to Biden/Harris/Pelosi/the Squad/Sanders & Co. mental masturbation.  But I consider it marking my position.  I have  enjoyed the privilege of living in a society that is heir of English Liberalism. I will do what little I can do to share that privilege. To do otherwise I would consider cowardice.  A small cowardice, of course, but at my age, one does what one can, even if those acts are small.