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It’s Basic Economics. The EV Is Junk.

Watch This Severe Electric Car Fire And Explosion At A Charging Station
May 8, 2020, at a charging station in Dongguan, China, where an electric car caught fire when being plugged into a charger.

While perusing my news feed, I found a recent Fortune magazine article on the problems that electric vehicle owners are having with their cars, 80% more difficulties on average than conventional combustion vehicles (see below).  The writer tried to deflect the problems into the category of “growing pains” for the new industry.

Yes, I agree with him, but he seems unaware of the much more fundamental issue.  Problems or no, the EV is a politically driven product and, like any such good or service, has politically driven trade-offs.  Growing pains?  Growing pains or no, the whole EV industry probably would be immensely smaller but for politics.  Politicians constructing their road to utopia understand that people must be bribed, and coerced, to mass adopt something that makes their lives worse off.  The things still don’t make much economic sense compared to those efficient muscle engines.

Internal combustion engine
Gasoline direct injection engine.
Electric-car battery costs: Tesla $190 per kwh for pack, GM $145 for cells
An EV battery pack weighs on average 1,000 pounds. Your typical combustion engine and its transmission can vary from 300 (4-cylinder) to 1,000 pounds (V-8 powerhouse).

Lest we forget, politicians are camp followers, always with their fingers in the wind discerning the next fashionable thought or issue.  Those leaning to the Left already have a laundry list of ready-made issues, just add water – i.e., donors’ money.

But there’s one huge complication: Politics is a poor driver of an economy. Utility (use and practicality) occupies first place in a normally functioning economy.  Sellers invent and continue to produce the stuff that buyers find useful and enhances their lives.  If it’s not as good as the alternatives, it’s essentially junk.  It’s the economic definition of junk.  When politics enters the fray, utility disappears from the equation.  Practicality and usefulness take a back seat to powerful groups’ ideological demands.  When the movement rises in prominence due to their momentary occupation of the commanding heights of the culture, they quickly gain the reins of political power to impose their preferences, and the artificially driven esteem for junk rises.

Trade-offs and opportunity costs are tossed to the wind.  If pressed, the true believer can always interject their own wholly invented, unprovable costs into the equation.  Prominent among the hypothetical eco-costs is the existential end of the planet.  That’s always the gambit for the zealot: scare people into adopting the zealot’s choices.  The Left’s ownership of the cultural commanding heights has made it easy for already Left-leaning politicos to engage in the hyperbole.  Consequently, political power is married to an ideology’s agenda.  In the end, your family sedan is forced into oblivion.

So, as politically inspired junk is imposed on the population, what is lost, or the opportunity cost?  On the EV front, the auto producers’ resources are plowed into the less-useful and away from the more-useful.  That’s a trade-off, and it’s unavoidable.  The loss of the opportunity for producing the more useful things (opportunity costs) increases, and that’s equally unavoidable.

What to do if your electric car runs out of charge | Toyota of Orlando
An EV depleted of charge
Vandals cut cables at EV charging station on Vancouver Island - Drive Tesla
Vandals cut and removed charging handles from this charging station on Vancouver Island, B.C.

What does all this mean for you?  Your life changes, and for the worse.  It always pencils-out that way when you are forced to choose the worst alternative. How bad is that alternative?  The whole eco-agenda cascades onto you with its abundant unintended consequences.  It goes beyond the problems with charging and the batteries (some of them catch fire) in the article.  The additional resources to make the thing work as the numerous glitches of the impractical (“growing pains”) raise the costs of producing the impractical which will always translate into an increase in the cost of living.  Higher standards of living do not ride the back of higher costs of production and living.  The more that you try and do that, the worse it gets.

Save the planet by being worse off?  But you aren’t saving the planet. Do you think for a moment that India and China and the rest of Donald Trump’s “shitholes” are going to give up cheap energy?  Come on, get a grip.  China is building new coal-fired plants at the same clip as they are warships.  India, soon to be the planet’s most populous country, wants relief from the oppressive heat.  Sorry, solar panels and windmills won’t cut it.  Economies of scale in energy production, meaning a grid and power plants, is the only thing that’ll elevate people out of the sweat and filth.  Everyone, if they were honest, knows it, except AOC, John Kerry, and our culture’s eco-barkers.

Wait a minute.  That’s quite a crowd who’ve bought into the nonsense.  And nonsense it is.  The leap of faith from a period of warming temperatures to the apocalypse more resembles a religious doctrine than science.  “Follow the science” is no such thing.  It’s follow the eco-Pope.

That Genius of Lansing, Mi., Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, has decided to go California and follow the eco-Pope.  She’s hellbent on bringing blackouts and skyrocketing utility bills to the wolverine state.  She signed two bills establishing energy central planning (see below).  The state must be 100% “clean energy” by 2040, 60% by 2035.  That means a massive increase in solar and wind, 1.5 million acres more (Mackinac Center report, see below).  The costs will be humungous, and it will be taken out of the hide of Michiganders.  And out of the sovereign powers of localities.  Their power to regulate these gargantuan scars on the land in their neighborhood will be proscribed.  Expect each family in the state to shell out an additional $2,746 per year for energy (Mackinac Center report).

Declaring war on gas and petroleum and monopolizing all energy needs onto an electrical grid suffering from “intermittency” (solar and wind) is absolute folly.  Do you want to live worse off? Do you want your children to be worse off?  Don’t think for a moment that at least you’ve saved the planet, as they’ve made most people’s lives more challenging.  By the way, it won’t be true for Jeff Bezos, nor Mark Zuckerberg, nor John Kerry, who married into the Heinz fortune.

Al Gore Celebrates Earth Day By Buying Another 12,000 Square Foot Mansion | The End Times ...
Albert Gore and his mansions

The planet will be the same as before, and you’ll be less well off.  All this brought to you by people who don’t know what they’re doing.

On second thought, they do.  And it’s hooey.

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RogerG

Read more here:

* “Electric vehicle owners report 80% more problems than with conventional cars and trucks amid ‘growing pains’ for the industry, Consumer Reports says”, Tom Krisher of the AP, Fortune, 11/23/23, at https://fortune.com/2023/11/29/electric-vehicle-reliability-more-problems-gas-powered/

* “Michigan Gov Whitmer signs sweeping green energy bill forcing transition from fossil fuels”, Thomas Catenacci, Fox News, 11/30/23, at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/michigan-gov-whitmer-signs-sweeping-green-energy-bill-forcing-transition-from-fossil-fuels/ar-AA1kJF4I

* “New Energy Bills Would Increase Costs and Blackouts”, Holly Wetzel, Mackinac Center, 10/27/2023, at https://www.mackinac.org/pressroom/2023/new-energy-bills-would-increase-costs-and-blackouts

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Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon”, Another Attempt to Erase The Great Men of History?

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Fashions of thought and material things can dwell up from the bottom as in a free market economy with a new technology, catching stodgy elites by surprise.  They can also permeate downward from academia to the movie studio, for instance.  Astride the forceful demise of western civ courses, the lefty capture of most of the academic universe has dispensed with The Great Man Theory of History because, according to their lights, there are no great men, only cis-gender, patriarchal oppressors.  You know the tripe.  Has Ridley Scott succumbed to this half-witted zeitgeist in his latest offering, “Napoleon”?

Of course, there are great men (and women).  Their status can’t be attributed to so-called misogynistic agitprop of an older, crueler age.  In fact, today’s real agitprop actually comes from the shallow rhetoric masquerading as grand theory emanating from the stilted minds in our faculty lounges.  Conversely, there were great men and women because they were so very influential in what followed for decades and centuries, maybe millennia.

Honestly, I haven’t seen the movie yet.  There’s so much trash coming out of Hollywood – and probably that’s always been true – that I wait for the critics’ reactions.  Some cinematic subjects just don’t interest me (all the Marvel/DC effusions come to mind).  Some are so scurrilously riddled in lefty bromides (men as inherent abusers, most villains are rich, etc.) that I can’t bear to plunk down the 10 bucks for a ticket.  Does “Napoleon” come draped in the same set of presumptions that are drilled into the heads of today’s Humanities students?

Bringing down The Great Men can involve reducing them to also-rans, or dullards according to one critic.  In the assessment of Kyle Smith writing in The Wall Street Journal, the Napoleon who took over a continent was diminished to a simpleton in Scott’s rendering to such an extent that the great man “could never have commanded so much as a squadron of the Salvation Army”.

The 10-dollar-threshhold remains. Is it worth 10 bucks?  Or, would I be better off reading Andrew Roberts’s biography of Napoleon and drop the movie?  I suspect the latter.

On second thought, I may just take the hit to my meager pocketbook and go see it.  I can walk and chew gum at the same time.

My main worry, though, is that after a few decades of a movie-going audience marinated in lefty agitprop in their public schools, and the sense of awe produced by big-screen audio-visual, an unread people will mistake a movie for the real thing, er, person.  We’d best not forget that reality.

RogerG

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Thanksgiving 2023

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Are we in the process of wasting our bountiful legacy, that fruit of the ultimate Giver of all truly good things?  We might be forgetting that we have much to be thankful for. Thankful to whom?  Why, of course, God.  We have many blessings that we should be humble enough to recognize the Benefactor.

Are we?  Many, yes, but others are too busy dismantling our cultural edifice, and with it, God.  The rot began at the top among an academic nobility, people festooned in paper credentials and debased ideas and beliefs.  The quaint barroom jibe gets to the point: “You have to be very well educated to be that stupid!” (as stated by Wilfred Reilly)

So did George Orwell: “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”

From the inquisition to ferret out the esoteric “white supremacy” in the military to the recruitment of all levels of government in the crusade to the indoctrination of our kids in it, the trendy thought penetrates everywhere.  Watch today’s football games for commercials festooned in swank thought.  Amazingly, it’s how the corporate biggies wish to express their altruism by being fashionable and doctrinaire activists.

You’ll see commitments to pursue climate-change ideology in the burnishing of the least practical alternative in personal, mass transportation – the EV.  You’ll see Wells Fargo ads bragging about using my savings and checking account to resuscitate the 2009 financial crisis.  What they’re saying in tv commercials is only the tip of the iceberg.

If we continue on this trajectory, the blessings in future Thanksgivings may be harder to discern.  But ultimately, God is in charge.

Are we to go the way of the Roman Empire or ancient Sumerians?  Can a civilization think its way into decline?  Possibly.  Yet, at this moment in time, we should remind ourselves that we have much to be thankful.  Surely, God has blessed us. Let’s not forget it.

RogerG

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USC 20, UCLA 38; Five Losses Over the Last Six Games

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Once again, USC proved that it doesn’t have much of a functioning defense.  And that incapacity has disheartened the offense.  Caleb Williams and company had a bad day from the offensive line with the sacks to the receivers with the dropped passes to the running backs with a total of 3 yards rushing.  Losing is a downer and the team is beaten.  It shows.

The team has quality players, by all accounts, but maybe not enough of them.  Yes, poor alignments, delinquent adjustments and strategy, poor coaching play a huge role.  But I’m wondering if at least some of the problems can be traced to California’s changing population.  California is becoming more feudal each decade.  The state may not be producing as many of the 5-star recruits in all positions, particularly the ones that require the big, burly types: d-line, o-line, linebackers.  I’m not an expert.  I’m just wondering.

All I have to go on is personal anecdote.  I taught and coached in a California Central Valley high school and went to high school in another one of those Central Valley secondary schools.  By the time I am working through my career as a teacher and coach, I began to notice the gradual decline of the towering, big, and burly teens in the student body.  It reflected the shrinking portion from African Americans and the descendants of European immigrant families, far different from my personal high school experience and my early years in teaching and coaching.

It’s not simply a matter of race.  The relationship between the social environment and biology is only beginning to be understood.  We do know that over time, maybe generations, new groups take on the characteristics of the surrounding and prevalent groups.  Point: things change and blend.

But, for the purposes of recruitment today, the pool has changed.  There are indications that some in the coaching ranks allude to the fact.

I’ve monitored online forums, social media threads, and web reports on the state of play in college athletics, especially USC. Head coach Lincoln Riley naturally has been the brunt of criticism for the team’s performance.  One of the recurring complaints is the relatively mediocre recruiting classes, especially if you want to compete for national championships.  Related to that is the charge that he hasn’t recruited enough local talent (LA area, California broadly), like from powerhouses like St. John Bosco (Bellflower, Ca.) and Mater Dei (Santa Ana, Ca.).  It is true but that the talent pool is plucked clean by programs from all over the country; though, this fact doesn’t detract from the possibility that the amount of highly rated athletes is incrementally shrinking leaving an intensifying feeding frenzy for what’s left each succeeding year.

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USC coach Lincoln Riley
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UCLA coach Chip Kelley celebrating

So, when Riley responds to questions about mediocre recruiting classes, particularly locally, he’s quite right in saying that the local pool may not give you what you need.  And, like everyone else, USC is in need of big, burly, fast, and smart.  They surely can be found in California, but it’s unrealistic to expect USC to rake in the vast majority of them.  And the problem worsens over the long term as California’s persistent outflux and influx change its population and athletic talent pool.

I’m wondering if California is demographically doomed.  Somehow, USC and the other big California schools will have to increasingly try and convince athletes from a national pool to come to the land with the highest rate of poverty and homelessness, expensive everything, violent and property crimes galore, gangs, blight and filth from the urban core to exurbia to small towns to the fields and orchards.

The weather, beautiful coastline, and the Sierras may not be enough.

RogerG

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Have We Lost Our Mind, Or What?

Ex-NHS psychologists warn children are being over-diagnosed, over-medicated for gender dysphoria ...

Some people believe in things that are completely nuts.  Look at “gender-affirming care” and the adults in positions of authority who have bought into it.  Think about it: the self-diagnosis of a toddler or tween is sufficient to invoke a permanent life-altering trajectory as the result of a medical intervention that screams malpractice.  Despite the indoctrination that is mislabeled as counseling, the kid will never be the same, either emotionally or physically, and can’t return to their former self.

After the victims’ exposure to the counseling/indoctrination, Lupron (AbbVie’s chemical castration drug and puberty blocker), cross-sex hormones, and surgeries, we’re starting to see regret in the form of the word “detransitioner”.  Later comes the realization, after all of the changes to the body and mind, that the tween’s rash self-diagnosis for sex-transition can’t be fully undone.  Cutting to the chase, this whole thing is c-r-a-z-y!

Of course, the response of the adult enthusiasts in the transition Borg when confronted with any reluctance to the treatment is a resort to the rhetorical equivalent of Defcon 1 (nuclear war is imminent or has already begun) – “Do you want a dead daughter or an alive son?”  Heck, the affected are still committing suicide . . . after the transition.

I give you three cases of regret: one ends in suicide; the other is ending in a lawsuit; and still another concerns a whistleblower at a gender clinic.

The situation involving David Reimer (the full account below) will turn out to be a refutation of the behaviorist’s chief insight, that social conditions overwhelmingly define a person’s development.  It was believed by some that the influences of biology can be replaced by the social engineering of “expert” interventions.  Reimer was thrust into the trap of a psychologist’s effort – John Money, a Johns Hopkins University psychologist – to reengineer David from a boy to girl.  It didn’t work.  David committed suicide at age 38.

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David Reimer as Brenda (l) and the Reimer family
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John Money, Johns Hopkins University psychologist

The story begins 8 months after David’s birth in 1965 when his penis was accidentally removed during a surgical procedure.  After consultation with John Money, his parents agreed to interventions to turn David into Brenda.  14 months later, David’s remaining male genitals were removed, artificial and rudimentary female genitals installed, and he started a regular regimen of estrogen injections.  His upbringing as Brenda ensued.

An uneasiness would plague him for the rest of his life.  And then he learned what happened to him.  He would “detransition” back to David and replace his artificial female genitalia with artificial male genitalia.  He got married, adopted 3 children, but continued to be consumed by depression up to the moment of his fateful decision to take his life.

He was misdiagnosed as an adult with “gender dysphoria” because he wasn’t “in the wrong body” so to speak – or maybe he was, put there by an “expert” whose ideological inclinations would prevent him from realizing the obvious truth that XY chromosomes signal the release of male hormones to the body and brain.  The potential for harm is as great for the modern version of the John Money approach, “gender-affirming care”.

That brings me to the case filing of Chloe Cole v. Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, Inc, in early 2023.  At age 13, Chloe fell into the arms of Kaiser’s gender team. According to her filing (see below), “a team of doctors (i.e., the Defendants) . . . decided to perform a mutilating, mimicry sex change experiment on Chloe.”  Even more damning is the treating practitioners single-minded commitment to one approach – gender-affirming care – without adequately divulging the controversial nature of the treatment, risks, and the shortcomings of much of the research into it.  How could anyone, let alone a 13-year-old, exercise informed consent under the pressure of doctrinaire activists in white smocks?  Chloe’s formal complaint reads,

“Defendants [i.e., Kaiser] obscured and concealed important information such as the following: the conflicting studies in this area; the high quality evidence demonstrating poor mental health outcomes; the existence of only low to very low-quality studies purportedly supporting this treatment; the significant likelihood that desired outcomes would not be attained; the significant possibility of desistence, detransition and regret; and the lack of accurate models for predicting desistence and detransition.”

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Chloe Cole

Chloe detransitioned at age 17 and is now seeking legal redress for what can only be described as mental and physical mutilation by a branch of the medical industry that is more beholden to an ideology than real medical science.  It’s nearly as horrific as anything that came out of the German SS Race and Settlement Main Office or the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics of the 1930’s with its fixation on other forms of malevolent flights of fancy under cover of “science”.

Now, other clinics and hospitals have earned suspicion and scrutiny for engaging in practices that can only be described as licensed mutilation.  Jamie Reed, a former pediatric gender clinician at Washington University Transgender Center, St. Louis Children’s Hospital, blew the whistle on the hasty and obsessive herding of minors into gender-affirming care.

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Jamie Reed

Former employee of St. Louis transgender clinic reaffirms allegations of misconduct • Missouri ...

Even the New York Times, frequently dismissive of such charges, has confirmed much of Reed’s story.  They validated many instances of the facility’s staff jumping to transition counseling and testosterone before any underlying emotional issues were addressed.  It became commonplace at the clinic, facing a social contagion of gender dysphoria among adolescents, particularly young girls, to reach for short cuts in processing the horde with a reliance on highly dubious outside examiners and the snap push into cross-sex hormones and the indoctrination of the patient into accepting that they’re the opposite of their chromosomes.

Manias based on dubious “truths” aren’t unusual in history.  Astrology, phrenology (skull shape is determinative of a person’s nature), and bleeding (opening a vein, leeches) were integral elements of medical training and practice.  Pre-Civil War, some races were said to be best suited for subjugation (slavery for instance, John C. Calhoun).  It carried over into Jim Crow.  An incomplete and rudimentary understanding of heredity led to the horrors of eugenics which fed into the Supreme Court’s Oliver Wendell Holmes’ stupefying opinion in Buck v. Bell (1927) – “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” – and Auschwitz, et al.  Karl Marx was intent on uncovering a “science” of history which, when put into practice in the 20th century, led to over 110 million deaths.  Far from enlightening, some “scientific truths” have been the harbinger of much misery.

Who knows, climate change in its current ideological form may join history’s many delusional offramps from real science.

Meanwhile, the self-diagnosis of tweens as a proper basis for life-altering treatment is farcical.  Euphemisms like “gender-affirming care” can’t hide the ugly reality.  Which leads to another profound question: Why does it seem that the vulnerable – the mentally limited, those powerless in slavery, the subjugated by military conquest, the people stripped of their power of self-defense, children – are chosen to be the guinea pigs?  Harvard grads don’t usually show up in the casualty lists.

RogerG

Read more here:

* The story of the David Reimer and Dr. John Money can be read at “John Money Gender Experiment: Reimer Twins”, Julia Simkus, Research Assistant at Princeton University, review by Saul McCleod, PhD, in Simply Psychology, June 23, 2023, https://www.simplypsychology.org/david-reimer.html#:~:text=The%20John%20Money%20Experiment%20involved%20David%20Reimer%2C%20a,identity%20and%20transitioned%20back%20to%20male%20in%20adolescence.

* An excellent introduction to the Cole v. Kaiser can can be accessed here: “Cole claims that Kaiser Hospital physicians encouraged her to undergo irreversible, gender-affirming procedures without exploring alternate options, such as psychotherapy”, Ryan J. Farrick, Legal Reader, Feb. 23. 2023, at https://www.legalreader.com/detransitioner-chloe-cole-lawsuit-kaiser-hospitals/. Also here: “Chloe Cole v. Kaiser Permanente”, Dhillon Law Group (representing Chloe), at https://www.dhillonlaw.com/lawsuits/chloe-cole-v-kaiser-permanente/.

* The story of Jamie Reed’s allegations can be read at “How a Small Gender Clinic Landed in a Political Storm”, NYT, August 23, 2023, at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/23/health/transgender-youth-st-louis-jamie-reed.html

* More on Jamie Reed’s allegations can be read at “I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I’m Blowing the Whistle”, Jamie Reed, The Free Press, Feb. 9, 2023, at https://www.thefp.com/p/i-thought-i-was-saving-trans-kids

* Excellent reportage on the troubles with gender-affirming care can be read at National Review Online. For example, “New York Times Confirms St. Louis Gender Clinic Whistleblower’s Claim That Adolescents Were Rushed into ‘Affirming’ Care”, Ari Blaff, NR, Aug. 23, 2023, at https://www.nationalreview.com/news/new-york-times-confirms-st-louis-gender-clinic-whistleblowers-claim-that-adolescents-were-rushed-into-affirming-care/. Also in “Chloe Cole v. Kaiser Permanente”, Madeleine Kearns, NR, March 14, 2023, at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/chloe-cole-v-kaiser-permanente/.

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Our Revolting Politics Is Making a Lot of Things Revolting

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38-year-old Vivek Ramaswamy running for the Republican presidential nomination
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Inside Pride Month 2023 at Target
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Dylan Mulvaney and Bud Light

Two things are on today’s docket: Vivek Ramaswamy’s star is rising and Bud Light and Target are still crashing.  Regarding the former, Ramaswamy is pandering to the Trumpkins in the GOP.  He’s trying to be a 38-year-old Trump but without the ugliness.  He’s risen to second place in some state polls.  Astonishingly, Bud Light and Target have jumped onto the gender-confusion/teenage-genital-mutilation bandwagon, as if their customers want to hear from them on the culture war.  In both cases, what foolishness.  Who in their right mind would think that any of this would pass the smell test?

Trump’s powerful presence in the GOP is making the party a reflection of his unlikeable persona for a functioning majority of the national electorate.  By that, I mean disliked by those not siloed behind the increasingly constricted walls of MAGA world.  As many Trumpers cling ever so tightly to him with each indictment, other and far more numerous GOP-leaning demographics fly the coop, no matter the imbecilities of the Biden clan on the other side of the political ledger.  Democrats win by making the other guy more detested than them.

Vivek wants the nomination and will say anything to get it.  For him, as an investment guru, everything, including politics, is transactional – i.e., you get something (the nomination) by paying something (pandering to the Trump crowd).  What comes out is pure, unadulterated poppycock.

Have you heard Hugh Hewitt’s interview of Vivek from August 14, 2023 (transcript and audio below)?  Vivek announced to the world a green light for Red Cina to invade Taiwan after 2028.  You heard me right. Imitating his mentor (DJT) in the use of blunt and stark terms, no matter how asinine, he declared,

“I’m being very clear: Xi Jinping should not mess with Taiwan until we have achieved semiconductor independence, until the end of my first term when I will lead us there. And after that, our commitments to Taiwan, our commitments to be willing to go to military conflict, will change after that, because that’s rationally in our self-interest.”

Vivek Ramaswamy talk's Hugh about his new book "Capitalist Punishment." - The Hugh Hewitt Show

There you have it in Ramaswamy’s words: Don’t mess with us until after my term ends and we have transplanted Taiwan Semiconductor and/or a good portion of the world’s semiconductor industry to our shores within reach of our IRS, EPA, and our ascendant neo-Marxists.  After that, Taiwan, my friend, you’re on your own.  Done.

MAGA is thrilled because no more “forever wars”.  A President Ramaswamy looks tough in announcing a four-year delayed abandonment in “Trumpian” words.  Well, for Taiwan, starting in 2029, enjoy the Taipei May Day parades of the People’s Liberation Army.

When pressed by Hewitt about the astounding repercussions, Vivek began repeated non-clarifications with “Let me make myself perfectly clear.”  Making oneself “perfectly clear” is a poker-tell that you’re not going to be clear.  He continued to insist on sending a huge naval force to the area but backed away from the will to use it.  What’s the point?  Thugs need to face real threats, not an armada that would blithely move out of the way for the PLA’s amphibious and aerial assault.  The will to use it must be conveyed along with the deployment of the Pacific Fleet.  Without the will, it’s an empty bluff.

Vivek, try to be something more than talking like Trump while acting like Jimmy Carter, Obama, or Joe Biden.  It isn’t a good look for you, nor is it good for the country.

I would say, “Thank God, this guy isn’t president”, but then I have to glance over at the current occupant.  Whew, what a mess, what a choice.  Sadly, for this investment exec, transactional thinking doesn’t necessarily incorporate strategic calculus, such as the loss of Taiwan producing a gaping hole in the first island chain for the burgeoning PLA Navy to flood the Pacific.  Vivek will do nothing but reinforce among our allies our habit of abandonment when things get messy.  Remember Vietnam, Bill Clinton’s 1990s dithering with Al-Qaeda, Obama’s Iraq pullout and red line in Syria, and Biden’s Afghanistan bugout?  And now Taiwan?

Naval news and analysis: China caught between a green and a blue water navy

Our potential and current friends and allies will certainly remember.  A lack of steadfastness and reliability won’t bode well for alliance-making.  Who’d want to be our friend?

At that point, it will be America alone as the export part of our economy dries up in the face of a cordon of CCP satraps.  If you think that Biden and company is making a hash of our way of life, wait for a President Ramaswamy and his 20-30% hit (value of our exports) to US GDP after his forced retreat to fortress America.  We would be in Great Depression territory.  Speaking of transactional thinking, Vivek’s pandering to the no-more-forever-wars constituency will have real world costs.  We’ll quickly learn the value of alliances as we get crushed under a depression-ignited, debt-fueled, and bulging safety net.

Vivek’s foolishness can be chalked up to youthful rashness.  What’s the excuse for the seasoned big wheels at Anheuser-Busch and Target?  Or, are they “seasoned”, by whom, where?  Who thought that a man (Dylan Mulvaney) trying to compete and look like a bulk of their customers’ wives and girlfriends would be a nice way to expand the Bud Light brand?  Who thought that the family-friendly Target, with many a mother with children in tow, would be an excellent venue to advocate gender confusion and same-sex amory?  It’s unfathomable.

At this time, Bud Light’s sales continue to plummet.  They can’t give away the stuff.  Whereas, at the beginning of the year, it ranked #1.

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Alissa Heinerscheid, the Bud Light advertising exec behind the Dylan Mulvaney endorsement

The person most responsible for the debacle was Bug Light’s 39-year-old advertising exec Alissa Heinerscheid.  Her classroom pedigree is impressive: Groton, Harvard, Wharton.  But is such a distinguished pedigree a marker for success for the company and its products?  We’re at a stage in our history when people need to question the idea that business acumen is a product of overhyped degrees from institutions who have been diminishing in excellence for years.

It probably never occurred to Alissa that expanding the brand in one direction could lead to lead to a dramatic contraction in another.  This is a person who was marinated in a cocoon far removed from the lives of the people who buy the goods.  She may know of the average Americans’ way of life, but it’s a kind of knowing absent the intimacy of actually having lived it.  For her, “beer” meant European or craft.  In her rarified social atmosphere, sex rebels are a cute social appurtenance; they’re kind of cool.

However, for the bulk of Bug Light’s consumers, it’s a movement to revolutionize their lives and expose their kids to emotional harm in their crucial developmental years.  They want a beer to drink at the bar-be-cue not one that is curated to advance a disturbing cause.  Who would have thought that in a week someone like Heinerscheid could turn a popular product into an icon of a left-wing cultural revolution?  Bud Light’s sales have dropped for 17 straight weeks.  “Expanding the brand” turned into subtracting the core, and out goes Alissa, and down goes Bud Light.

Target Stock Down After 1 Million Promise to Boycott - Family Policy Alliance

It’s a similar pattern with Target.  Pride Month 2023 in June heralded a drop in sales which continues into the third quarter after the geniuses in the c-suite thought that it was a good idea to plaster the kids’ department in pride flags, introduce a line of “tuck friendly” girls’ swimsuits, and carry children’s products from Abprallen, famous for their Satanist line.  What accounts for what can only be described as bizarre decisions?  Like Bud Light and its determination to link with a TikTok “influencer” for transgenderism, these decisions arise out of people who were acculturated in a peculiar environment at odds to the life lived by most people who’ll never experience the Groton-to-Wharton social pipeline.  The c-suite is simply out of touch, and grossly so.  It’s as if they came from a different planet, and don’t realize it.

LGBTQ activists call for new strategies to promote equality after Target backlash
A Pride Month display at a Target store in Dickson City, Pa. (photo: Ted Shaffrey/AP)
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Idealized Target board meeting from its website. They’ve certainly got the look of the ignorant and naive.

Both cases are abject lessons in how to clog the bankruptcy courts by making yourself detested.  The quality and affordability of the good or service is made irrelevant.  Simply seen walking from the parking lot into the store, or being seen with the blue can in your fridge, now could brand you as an endorser of extremist causes.

It’s more complicated than “go woke, go broke”.  The turn-off won’t come from the Groton-to-Wharton crowd.  Anyway, their Maserati won’t be seen in the parking lot or with a 12-pack in the passenger seat.  More accurately, it’s “go woke and half the country will be suspicious of what you’re selling”.

Meanwhile, from the right comes the youngish business savant, anxious to be president, who is completely out of his league regarding foreign relations and national security, adding greater urgency to the possible uses of the phrase “idiot savant”.  Along with much of the c-suite, their self-confidence is so grand that they will court disaster for all of us.

May be a doodle of text that says 'RANIPS Forget Cancel Culture, I think it' a sham I do not like it, Uncle Sam-I-am. Ignoring achievements in the name of the Woke, and cause more division with the fires they stoke. Take history out of context is now the new game. Not looking for justice, just someone to blame. Today, it's a book, so watch what you do. One day in the future, they may cancel you. @Ramireztoons michaelpramirez.com'
Michael Ramirez is great for a comical portrayal of our current condition. Could fear of being “cancelled” drive the corporate brain trust to endorse left-wing cultural causes?

RogerG

Read more here:

* Transcript and audio of High Hewitt’s complete 8/14/23 interview of Vivek Ramaswamy: “Vivek Ramaswamy On All Things National Security” at https://hughhewitt.com/vivek-ramaswamy-on-all-things-national-security?highlight=vivek%20ramaswamy

* “Who Will Heed the Lessons of Target and Bud Light?”, Jim Geraghty, National Review Online, 8/17/23, at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/who-will-heed-the-lessons-of-target-and-bud-light/

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It’s the People, Stupid

More than half the voters at San Francisco City Hall registered on Election Day - ABC7 San Francisco
San Francisco voters at the polls

“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”   Winston Churchill in the House of Commons, 1947

But, dear Winston, what happens when the people vote for lunacy, or vote into power an autocracy of the self-important who happen to be the missionaries of the lunacy?  It stays and never seems to go away until the place becomes a ghost town.  Such is the bane of our times.

To borrow another line from the demagogic James Carville in 1992, “It’s the economy, stupid.”  Rework it a bit and you would uncover another truism: It’s the people, stupid.  The civilizational rot in our deepest blue places did not originate in a foreign lab.  It was homegrown by our citizenry voting for lunacy and lunatics.  No coup put into power in Sacramento, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, Albany, practically the entire Bos-Wash corridor, such a homogeneous grouping of the daft.  They were freely chosen by the residents who decided to show up at the polls in those jurisdictions-turned-asylums.

We know it to be lunacy because . . . just look around.  It’s littered all over the ground in these places, in the abandoned store fronts, empty commercial buildings, the gauntlet of the homeless/needles/feces, business flight, the lawlessness, the eviscerated economy from the eco-fanaticism.  Of recent note, here’s a few examples of the dégringolade (civilizational decline).

The people of California, in the grip of the decarceration schtick of the Obama years, passed Prop 47 in 2014.  It tweaked the state’s criminal code to reduce many felonies to misdemeanors, under the moniker “nonviolent”, especially property crimes with damages under $950.  Probably, the only benefit from the change is that it improved the math skills of some of the state’s worst students.  Understandably, rushing down the aisles of Nordstrom grabbing everything hither and yon and being able to produce a running – literally running – total of under $950 will sharpen anyone’s math intellect.

“Smash and grabs” have become the latest thing for many urban youths in the Golden State.  Watch the ransacking below of a Nordstrom in Topanga, Ca., Saturday, August 14.  Brazenness has become commonplace in the post-Prop 47 world of California.  It (Prop 47) was billed as a sensible response to overzealous prosecutors.  Instead, it produced A Clockwork Orange.  All of it democratically chosen.

Don’t think that’s the end of it.  Up and down the state, the mania is sweeping high-end shopping centers.  That venerable mouthpiece of “decarceration”, NPR, in a rare sign of awareness of reality, stated, “Saturday’s robbery was the third Nordstrom heist in California in less than two years.”  Days before, an Yves Saint Laurent store in Glendale was hit.  San Francisco is famous for it.

Walgreens, San Francisco, chains their freezer boxes.  Convenience shopping at a Walgreens or CVS is harder to come by since many have closed.  One shoplifter at a SF Walgreens when asked by a reporter why he didn’t pay, as he nonchalantly walked out of the store, responded casually, “It’s San Francisco, Bro.”  Watch the ABC 7 report here:

Seattle turned itself into a basket case.  Remember CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone – ergo, no cops allowed) from that 2020 summer of riotous “fun”?  In a recent Household Pulse Survey, Seattle residents’ disapproval of their own city ranks it ahead in the misery index of such metropolitan disaster zones as Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New York City.  600,000 residents were queried and half cited “rent increases” while a quarter of them pointed to “unsafe neighborhoods”.  Not a good look if you’re trying to keep or attract people.  And the policymakers that made it all happen were duly elected, and may get elected again.

Oregon, in the grip of the inmates of the Willamette Valley urban asylums, passed with a 60% majority Measure 110, drug decriminalization and stepped-up treatment programs.  Drug decriminalization occurred, but the measure’s treatment programs grotesquely floundered, so much so that the program’s director, Angela Carter, resigned one year later.  The state is a druggies’ haven with overdose deaths and crime skyrocketing and the public square filthy and littered in homeless encampments.

A self-described “left of center” Portland resident and restaurant owner, Lisa Schroeder, expressed her regrets, “If I could turn back time and repeal Measure 110 tomorrow, I would do it.”  Some are trying.  Clackamas County Board of Supervisors, which encompasses some of Portland’s suburbs, approved a resolution requesting the state to do just that.  Don’t expect that to happen any time soon.  Other popularly elected representatives stand in the way.

At root is the prevalence of a mindset – left, right, and center – that an individual’s problems are somebody else’s fault, or the costs of their misbehavior will be borne by an abstracted “other”, not by them.  They are not their own fault . . . when, in fact, they are!

This mentality is growing on the right.  The anti-racists’ “privileged” (whites) are not so privileged – look at the opioid and meth deaths among poor whites – and these destitute whites are acquiring the outlook that they too are victims of faceless, nameless “others”.  The lack of agency is as profound as the ingrained excuse-making among the youths rampaging a Nordstrom in California and their left-wing abettors in positions of power.  The it-can’t-be-my-fault is resplendent in Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” tune.  It’s gone viral.  Some lyrics:

I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
So I can sit out here and waste my life away
Drag back home and drown my troubles away

Sorry, but here’s a guy who needs to get off his ass.  Bull**** pay?  You know, he may have to walk around the homeless encampments, but he could go to school and pick up a skilled trade rather than fret about “bull****” pay while he “drown[s] [his] troubles away”.  Watch the full ditty:

That’s the problem: too many people have bought into system-mongering.  The “system” is said to be working against them, whether the panderers are talking about blue-collars in depressed areas or the deepest blue precincts who see a racist under every rug.  You see, it’s the “people” who believe in things that aren’t true.  In a democracy, a deranged people create a deranged government.  It’s time that we put the blame where it belongs – on the people – and stop the pandering.

RogerG

Read more here:

* For an excellent compendium of Churchill quotes: Churchill by Himself: The Definitive Collection of Quotations, Richard Langworth editor, 2008 edition

* Southern California thefts, including the Toganga one, here: “’Savage’ mob robbery at Topanga Nordstrom sparks outrage, beefed up LAPD patrols”, LA Times, August 12, 2023, at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/savage-mob-robbery-at-topanga-nordstrom-sparks-outrage-beefed-up-lapd-patrols/ar-AA1fgJJO

* “SF Walgreens puts chains on freezers as shoplifters target store 20 times a day, employee says”, Luz Pena, ABNC 7 News, July 18, 2023, at https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-retail-theft-sf-walgreens-shoplifters-geary-boulevard-17th-avenue/13520154/

* “Seattle tops major metros for people feeling unsafe in their neighborhood”, Gene Balk, The Seattle Times, August 2, 2023, at https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-tops-major-metros-for-people-feeling-unsafe-in-their-neighborhood/

* “Oregonians Turning against Drug-Decriminalization ‘Mistake’ amid Record ODs, ‘Dystopian Nightmare’”, Ryan Mills, National Review Online, August 15, 2023, at https://www.nationalreview.com/news/oregonians-turning-against-mistake-drug-decriminalization-amid-record-ods-dystopian-nightmare/

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They Just Don’t Get It

Guns, technology, and police shootings; San Francisco board of supervisors elections; AirBnB ...
County of San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Mayor Londond Breed center
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San Francisco Mayor London Breed

Many of our debates are vastly off-kilter. It begins with hugely consequential things.  Republicans seem intent on foisting Donald Trump on the country again.  The Democrats are focused on making a shambles of our country.  The former makes the latter more likely.  The abhorrent DJT is simply too ugly a face for the GOP to succeed among a national electorate.

It doesn’t stop there.  The so-called solutions have the maturity and depth of understanding of locker room humor.  Trumpkins insinuate that the country needs a Tasmanian Devil (of Looney Tunes fame) to fight, fight anyone, anyone coming from any direction, making enemies of friends.  The Dems and their fellow cultural revolutionaries (their inspiration: Mao), after creating swaths of wreckage from their cuckoo ideas, want the help of people, who they have habitually tarred, to clean up their mess.

For the revolutionaries in power, more cops to reverse the doom loop of places like San Franscisco is much less feasible of an option after years of decriminalizing criminality and the branding of cops as racists.  What they just don’t get is the fact that once the slide is initiated, like an avalanche, it’s awfully hard to stop.  This class of revolutionary ruler is emotionally and mentally ill-equipped to address the situation.

The carnage is glaringly obvious to all. Type “doom loop” and/or “San Francisco” in YouTube’s search field and you’ll see.  The list of major retailers abandoning the city is too well-known to require mention here.  The two largest downtown hoteliers prefer foreclosure to continuing operations among the filth and crime.  The iconic Westfield Mall has discovered a similar affection for foreclosure.  San Francisco is the donkey party’s policies taken to their logical conclusion.

Mayor London Breed quipped in support of additional funding for public safety, “San Francisco must be a safe and just city for all”, and her fellow-travelling potentates on the Board of Supervisors responded with an additional $60 million in funding for the Police Department and 220 more officers.  I don’t know what 220 more cops will be able to accomplish for residents, under the guise of the same ravenous Red Guards who created the situation, except spend a whole lot more money for more uniforms, training, equipment, and compensation with little real power to do anything to clear the public spaces.  What high-quality candidate for SFPD recruitment would be willing to step into that minefield?

My guess is, if the same clowns are running the show, that things might marginally improve, but “marginally improve” is a bit like “marginally mugged”.  It’s still going to be horrible, and managers responsible for many employees will recommend Zooming (stay home) if at all possible, instead of running the gauntlet.

San Francisco's Federal Building: A Desolate Symbol Amidst Escalating Crime & Homelessness Crisis
A view of the troubling walk to the entrance of the San Francisco’s Federal Building

And that includes federal employees at the downtown federal building.  HHS Assistant Secretary for Administration Cheryl R. Campbell issued the following advisory to SF district managers earlier this month, “In light of the conditions at the (Federal Building) we recommend employees … maximize the use of telework for the foreseeable future.”  Even with the added cops, any return to the office workstation won’t survive the next assault.

Nancy Pelosi’s well-publicized pleas won’t matter squat if the people in charge fundamentally still think like her.  That’s the crux of the matter: the critical mass of politics in San Francisco is infatuated with the power of the state to create Shangri-la and the view of the world through the lens of systemic victimization.  So long as that sticks between the ears, decline becomes more than an option. It’s a perpetual reality.

Ideas matter, and boy do they matter.  The clowns in San Francisco City Hall just don’t get it.

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RogerG

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* “HOW SAN FRANCISCO BECAME A FAILED CITY”, Nellie Bowles, The Atlantic, June 8, 2022, at https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/how-san-francisco-became-failed-city/661199/

* “Federal workers in San Francisco told to work remotely ‘for the foreseeable future’ because local crime is so bad”, Chris Morris, Fortune Magazine, August 14, 2023, at https://fortune.com/2023/08/14/remote-work-federal-workers-san-francisco-work-from-home-crime-drugs/

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Speaking Truth to the . . . Unhinged

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Our politics are insane, much more so than normal.  Our national figures act as if they walked off the drawing boards of the cartoonists for Warner Brothers Looney Tunes.  Our two major political parties modulate between a cult of personality and a nest of neo-Marxist revolutionaries.  It’s deranged.  Why vote?

Of special note is Donald Trump’s grip on the GOP.  Opinion polls consistently show him to be the far-and-away front runner for the nomination.  Objectively, by any measure, the guy is loathsome.  Would you actually like your children if they grew up to behave like him?  Think about it.  The bombastic self-promoting narcissism has left a trail of former allies, now turned enemies, in its wake.  All that’s left are sycophants and a chunk of the party base seemingly in the grip of a mass psychosis, for want of a better term.

To understand the gravity of Trump’s scorched earth of the party, first we must grasp the fact that there aren’t any serious RINO’s – “Republican in name only” in the mold of Lowell Weicker or the Rockefellers – in the party anymore.  Reaganite fusionism defined the character of the party, and for most still does.  RINO has been mindlessly coopted by Trumpers for anyone not enthralled by the man from Mar-a-Lago.  “RINO” is conjoined to “establishment” and the “swamp” to make the nonsense compelling to those consumed in jargon and sloganeering, and nothing else weightier.

Speaking of nothing else weightier in the head, so bound up in jargon are Trumpkins, and so ill-informed, that a gaggle of them showed up at a July 29 meeting of the California GOP to protest a rules change at the behest of their political guru, DJT.  They thought that it was the “establishment” trying to screw Trump, completely unaware that the rules change was concocted by the Trump campaign for the benefit of Trump.  Whew, go figure.

Let’s examine the line of corpses along Trump’s path to power.  Jeff Sessions, an early endorser and Trump’s first AG, was one of the first to end up on the cult’s blacklist.  The Bushes, not as flamboyant as the orange man, were reduced to wishy-washy “neo-conservative” and “establishment”, not that most of the cult’s enthusiasts could define the words.  Ex-military commanders such as John Kelley (chief of staff) and James Mattis (SecDef) quickly learned that working with an ignorant blowhard is untenable.  Hawks of the peace-through-strength variety like John Bolton – the Democrats’ bette noir and now Trump’s – was tarred for not acceding to Trump’s impulsive isolationism.  Bill Barr, Trump’s latest AG and bulwark against the Democrats’ Mueller grotesquerie, was blasted for not being sufficiently supportive of Trump’s stop-the-steal drivel.  One could go on and on.  The track record would invite the conclusion that anyone friendly to Trump will eventually become an enemy, given enough time.  The closer you get, the more likely you will get burned.

It’s even true for that mainstay of conservatism, Mike Pence, VP under Trump.  He’s now enemy # . . . for not rejecting Electoral College votes from states of Trump’s choosing on January 6. Trump besmirched Pence with the schoolyard taunt “Liddle Mike Pence” after Pence forthrightly recalled on Fox News, “The American people deserve to know that President Trump and his advisers didn’t just ask me to pause.  They asked me to reject votes, return votes, essentially to overturn the election.”  As if on cue, Trumpists showed up at a recent Pence event in New Hampshire yelling “traitor” and “sellout” as he tried to speak.

Pence brutally heckled, called a ‘traitor’ by Trump supporters at Iowa ...
Pence heckled by Trump supporters in New Hampshire

The stupidity should blast anyone in the face still in charge of their wits.  Trumpkins enjoy the jargon of epithets, such as “neo-conservative” as a substitute for adult reasoning.  That abuse of “neoconservative” by Trumpkins obscures the policy reality of “peace through strength”. Strength for what?  Yes, peace, but also a peace worth living. Reagan’s “evil empire” and “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” is the quintessence of what used to be standard Republican foreign policy.  If Trump exercised a little (liddle?) self-reflection, it was his too. Only, since the guy doesn’t read – he’s “too smart” for that – Trump had to first see it on tv: the bodies of gassed children after an Assad bombing.  It took tv before Trump realized that’s there’s something more to foreign policy than “America First” sloganeering.

Go figure, dump Reagan to chase after an opinionated cretin.  I refuse to follow the lemmings.  That old saw about the election being a binary won’t wash a third time.  I am not going to let a cult force me into seeing Trump as our only bastion against neo-Marxism.  If the country chooses neo-Marxism to Trump, which seems likely, many Republicans will have to face life outside the cult and the country will have to face life inside a hellscape.  Republicans should have presented a better option to the country.

And that’s speaking truth to the . . . unhinged.

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RogerG

Read more here:

* The Trump/Pence imbroglio is recounted in, of all places, Newsmax: “Trump Says ‘Liddle Mike Pence’ Has Turned to Dark Side”, August 6, 2023, at https://www.newsmax.com/politics/donald-trump-mike-pence-truth/2023/08/06/id/1129783/

* The ill-informed but excitable Trump following at the July 29 meeting of the California GOP: “Tensions flare as California GOP gives Trump a boost by overhauling state primary rules”, LA Times, July 29, 2023, at https://news.yahoo.com/tensions-flare-california-republicans-trump-211138809.html

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Making the New Soviet Man, Western Style

50 Jahre nach dem Attentat: "Dutschke hatte ein Stück Gehirn verloren" - n-tv.de
Rudi Dutschke

Creating the New Soviet Man (and woman, and whatever) necessitates control of the social mechanisms that transmit culture.  The German leftist of the 1960’s, Rudi Dutschke, coined the slogan “der lange Marsch durch die Institutionen” – the long march through the institutions – and thus compacted the strategy to a neat little quip.

Let’s face it, a radical leftist is a Marxist who has adopted the rhetorical flair of a claque of history’s Marxists – Antonio Gramsci, The Frankfurt School (Institute for Social Research and Herbert Marcuse, et al) – in expanding the list of the oppressed to include the “nots”: not white; not white and male; not white, male, hetero – you get the picture.  The doctrine then begins to overwhelm the culture once the revolutionaries shed their shaggy hair, jeans, and sandals and don tweed, professorial beards, pant suits, and gain tenure.  After that, their nonsensical ideological peccadillos permeate everything from Supreme Court opinions to PBS’s “American Experience” films.

The Frankfurt School and Ideology - YouTube

The crux of the strategy involves conjuring a statistical disparity between a hypothetical gender/race overclass and the radicals’ favored “minorities” – aka the “oppressed” – and then a jump to one of the many “isms” and “phobias” (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia) as the cause.  The numbers are connected to a preconceived cause – a predetermined ism/phobia – by only tenuous threads of logic and fact, at best.  Once you hear or read the shambolic reasoning, if you haven’t been previously indoctrinated and still retain your wits, you will be left scratching your head at the flight of fancy’s chutzpah.

That titan of pure reason, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who refused to define woman in her confirmation hearing, injected an extension of the tactic (statistical disparity and leap to predetermined cause) in her dissenting opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and UNC.  According to her, without the racial favoritism of “diversity” gamesmanship in college admissions, black babies will die.  Citing a study in one of those prestigious but newly radicalized science journals in the “long march through the institutions” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), she expounded with all the confidence of an excessively opinionated sophomore, “. . . for high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live, and not die.”  So, in her ill-reasoned reasoning, a B-average student from a poorly performing school should have precedence over a straight-A one who faced a more demanding curriculum, with race being the deciding factor.  Got that?  We’re back to racism.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson Declines To Define 'Woman' Because She's 'Not A Biologist,' Sparking ...

The problem: Jackson’s study is bogus.  Even the study cites a miniscule five one-hundredths of a percent (99.96% v. 99.91%) difference in the survival rate of black newborns between black and white doctors.  Diving into the flotsam of this shipwreck, the number of infants is too small to support such a tiny difference and the study’s conclusions.  The study’s methodology screams “high margin of error”.

Not only that, it relied on generalized Census data which meant that in many cases the race of the attending physician couldn’t be determined, or whether the treatment was from a nurse, physician’s assistant, midwife, or a doctor.  Other relevant factors were left on the cutting room floor, such as the plethora of social factors that aren’t evenly distributed through the population under any circumstances.  To conclude that these social disparities are further proof of systemic racism merely nestles one more logic-leap into the general logic-leap.  Welcome to the mental miasma of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Our intertwined schools and media prepare the ground for this buffoonery.  Many teachers incorporate PBS documentaries into their curriculum (I did).  Today’s “American Experience” (AE), though, isn’t the AE of a decade ago.  It’s gone woke.  Two episodes – “American Oz” and “Flood in the Desert” – illustrate the corruption.  Many of the contributing “experts” clearly worship at the altar of the groupthink. If you wanted to learn a little about L. Frank Baum and his Oz creations, you would, along with a heavy dose of racism, sexism, and genocide against “indigenous peoples”, adding at least another 30 minutes to the program.  The collapse of St. Francis Dam north of Los Angeles in the 1920’s can’t proceed without cis-gender white male racism, sexism, and the overall patriarchal contemptuousness for Gaia.

American Experience: American Oz [New DVD] 841887045384 | eBay

The St. Francis Dam Disaster | Flood in the Desert | American Experience | PBS - YouTube

The productions are littered with interesting facts . . . and a heavy dose of generational sneering.  It’s as if the production staff see themselves as a class of pure, enlightened deities passing judgment on those in the past who didn’t have the opportunity to be civilized at the feet of the great master, Marcuse.

The films are dripping with hubris, but what have these Marcuse acolytes wrought?  Inspired by the same mindset – maybe without the Molotov cocktails, riots, killings, and arson of their Antifa military wing – many of our cities, at the mercy of this governing philosophy, are in a doom-loop.  Go ahead, spend time travelling the surface streets of the doom-loop corridor from Seattle to San Diego, or Chicago (hire a protective private army), or the Bos-Wash corridor on the east coast.  If you avoid hepatitis or HIV, or cholera, from the litter of hypodermic needles and the open-air poop on the sidewalks, you may not survive the mugging.  The only thing in abundance, besides the filth, is the desire of residents to flee.  Marcuse-thought is a boon to U-Haul.

Who should be sneering, today’s half-witted who think themselves Olympian in their wisdom, or our ancestors?  Let Mark Twain cut to the quick:

“What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”

And our modern nincompoops know a whole lot that “ain’t so”. . . to our peril.

The New Man (or woman, or whatever) is a new man, woman, or whatever, mired in a hellscape.  San Francisco is the canary in the coal mine.  The bird is passed out on the floor of the cage.  Go ahead, YouTube search “San Francisco doom loop”.  Watch the video clip below, and this is what our post-modernist, neo-Marxist big wheels are proud of?  It’s shameful, absolutely shameful.

Here’s another one from a slightly different angle with the same conclusions:

RogerG

Read more here:

* “Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Dissent Repeats Debunked Claim About Black Doctors”, Sarah Weaver, The Daily Caller, July 2023, at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/justice-ketanji-brown-jacksons-dissent-repeats-debunked-claim-about-black-doctors/ar-AA1dgRln

* The study that Jackson cites: “Physician–patient racial concordance and disparities in birthing mortality for newborns”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, August 17, 2020, at https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1913405117

* Both “American Oz” and “Flood in the Desert” can be view on YouTube.