The Getty Fire burns near the Getty Center along the 405 freeway north of Los Angeles, California, U.S. October 28, 2019. (REUTERS/ Gene Blevins)
We aren’t well-served by the mass of our journalists or schools. Frequently as a simple reader or teacher I’ve come away from an article or textbook treatment of a topic with a lingering sense of bafflement. The stories don’t make much sense.
As a History teacher, for example, the common treatment of the Great Depression is awash in incoherence. Blame is placed on greed and “over-production”. What?! “Over-production” is everywhere present in an economy and is corrected by sell-offs with no hint of a depression, let alone a “great” one. As for “greed”, it’s been with us since Eve met the serpent, maybe before. It wasn’t invented by the 1920’s.
The New Deal’s answer for “overproduction” and the decline in agricultural prices.
Plus, the authors don’t attempt to explain why the thing lasted so long. The greed and over-production mantras are presented as a set-up for a love affair with FDR and all things New Deal. Interestingly the horror persisted and even worsened in ’36-’37. Textbooks and teacher training are composed of the long march of banalities, and we’re spreading the bunk to the youngins.
Ditto for news stories. Descriptions of today’s happenings are often muddled. Take for instance The Atlantic’s Annie Lowrey in her piece, “California Is Becoming Unlivable”. The “unlivable” part of California is ascribed to the underlying factors of climate change and high housing costs. Both, according to Lowrey, led to California’s fires. The high cost of housing forced development into the wildland urban interface (WUI). Her answer is the totalitarian urge to herd people into apartment complexes, something the commissars in Sacramento have been trying to accomplish for at least a couple of decades. Could this have something to do with the high cost of housing? Something about the dementia of “doing the same thing and expecting a different result” comes to mind.
Could this be their vision for the future of California housing?
Mulberry Street, NYC, circa 1900.
Of course they won’t leave the topic without throwing the fire epidemic into the climate change vortex. But the climate change god doesn’t just pick on California. It’s a global phenomenon. What has turned California into matchsticks is a combination of its dry-summer climate, with its El Diablo winds, and the clowns in Sacramento. Wildland fire suppression tactics are so passé among the ruling class of lefties in Sacramento. Though, in the dry-summer chaparral biomes, it’s like playing with firecrackers in a refinery.
The clowns try to hide their incompetence behind a barrage of charges against the utility companies. They can only get away with it under conditions of collective amnesia. PG&E and the rest of the gang are under the PUC’s thumb and its lefty hobby horses. Hardening the grid in a dry-summer climate takes second fiddle to dreams of a greenie energy utopia. After piling up the firewood under the weakly-maintained power lines, the goofs are shocked that physics takes over. Astounding!
A power line goes up in flames along a hillside as the Cocos Fire continues to burn in San Marcos, California May 15, 2014. (REUTERS/Mike Blake)
Parents beware of the indoctrination of your kids. Additionally, you have to be leery of the network news and print and digital publications. I’m beginning to wonder about the benefits of ignorance when compared to propaganda. Mmmm, something to think about?
I was drawn back to the Soviet concept of the “correlation of forces” after reading Yuval Levin’s piece from over a week ago (Sept. 27), “The Impeachment Train”. The Soviet notion was fully researched by one of our Defense Dept.’s agencies (DARPA) in a report, “The Soviet Concept of the Correlation of Forces”, in 1976.
Soviet era propaganda poster.
The Soviets sought to exploit what they considered to be favorable circumstances to advance their foreign policy goals at our expense – “the correlation of forces” so-called. The current period in our country’s history has all the ingredients for another “correlation of forces”, one that could drive the nation into strongly hostile camps resembling the antebellum divisions of the 1820’s to 1860, hopefully without the violence. The “correlation of forces” are present for all to see.
The divide has been described as a blue/red and urban/rural one. It’s true; we are deeply split in those two ways. I’ve written about this often. Since the divide is culturally-based, it has the capacity to be even more combustible. Enter Donald Trump. A divide that has been building for quite some time is deepened and widened by Trump’s style of politicking and personal mannerisms. Those manners drive people to their corners.
Part of the blame lies at Trump’s lack of a filter when he speaks (or Tweets). He’s not Bill Clinton who can compartmentalize. Trump in private is nearly the same as Trump in public. He doesn’t distinguish that much between a locker room and moments before microphones and cameras. He cares not about whether he’s talking to foreign dignitaries in private phone calls or crowds at one of his rallies. With Trump, you get what you see … everywhere. He’s unfiltered and inflammatory.
Trump rally, August 2019.
Thus, he elicits strong reactions. Trump’s presence isn’t a soothing one. Sparky talk incites sparky actions. Newton’s third law of motion comes to mind: for every action in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction.
And for hypersensitive Dems, their over-the-top reactions are easily facilitated when the party has been lurching ever leftward for the past few decades. Today, there’s not much difference between them and the radical left of the 60’s. Much of it is driven by the cultural radicalization of our urban and suburban areas. The radical has become mainstream in the party. Sure, Trump makes it easier for them to embrace extremist policies as they seek to distinguish themselves from what they considered to be a wholly detestable figure. As the cultural undertow pulls the middle of the party to the left, the more moderate elements get dragged along. Of course, Trump’s behavior is no excuse to foist the poison of socialism on the country.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey (right) speak during a press conference to announce Green New Deal legislation on Feb. 7. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
Trump is not the reason for the Democrats’ love affair with socialism and their leftward leap. Environmentalism is. Environmentalism is a pseudo-religious ideology. It’s religious for its faith in a materialistic explanation of reality. Interestingly, the combination of “religious” and “materialistic” in the same sentence makes for a classic oxymoron. Recognition of the fact by the cultural left won’t stop them from papering over the disjunction by turning Jesus and the Bible into citadels of wokeness, to go along with the long-desired surrender of humanity to a semi-deity, mother nature. It’s pantheism at best. The dogmas are grotesquely incoherent.
Environmentalism provides excellent cover, though, for socialism’s expansion of government power into every facet of life. Is it really all that surprising for the party of government to be a party of socialism? Environmentalism satisfies the Democrats’ itch for government control. The modern Democratic Party is so immersed in its socialism that it doesn’t take much for their opponents to be cast as evil. They don’t need a Trump. Anyone not drinking the Kool-Aid can be branded a “denier”, “racist”, “xenophobe”, “fascist”, and on and on. They didn’t wait for Trump to brand George W. Bush a religious fanatic, a hater, a wanton killer in the chant “Bush lied, people died”, a fascist, a corrupt stooge of Big Oil, an instigator of 9-11, etc., etc.
Code Pink at the White House, about 2005.A protester calling for the impeachment of Bush in June 16, 2005.
The word “impeachment” frequently graced their lips. Trump’s crude mannerisms make for an even easier target for their ideologically-driven hypersensitivities.
The entire gamut of woke communities – on our campuses, in our cities, among our super-rich tech and finance tycoons, amidst white collar public employees, et al – can be energized for lefty activism as need arises. Ask Brett Kavanaugh. Without a shred of evidence, accusers came out of the woodwork to level the worst kind of human conduct at him: perversion, rape, gang rape, a reveler in the grossest bacchanalias, you name it. Even the most “credible” accuser, Blasey Ford, turned out to be “incredible”. In law, we must keep in mind that a story is fiction till its proven. These were never proven, and probably couldn’t ever be proven. They are lies.
Brett Kavanaugh at confirmation hearings, September 2018.Protesters demonstrating against the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh on the steps of the Supreme Court.The discredited and unsubstantiated Kavanaugh accusers.
The script is repeated on Trump. Instead of an engineered line of supposed female victims, we have the denizens of public employment near the top of the Leviathan pyramid coming forward under the cover of “whistleblower”. They are proof of the existence of a government worker subculture with its own set of norms, values, and expectations that are distinct from their reason for existence. Some of those norms are ideological and partisan. Though, it must be admitted in the case of Trump that a “D” and “R” designation isn’t as relevant as the collective judgment at the water cooler that Trump is reprehensible. Nonetheless, there are vastly more D’s than R’s on the rolls of taxpayer-funded employment. Virginia is blue for the fact. The administrative state isn’t exactly a level playing field.
The ginning up of the activists will require additional gripes to increase the credibility of the charges as per the Kavanaugh caper. It doesn’t matter if the tales are true or not. What matters is the number. The one “whistleblower” story will be followed by others. As I write, a new complaint against Trump is currently percolating from the depths of the Leviathan.
Could Trump adjust by dialing down the bombast? Yeah, but not likely. Trump is like the big post man in basketball who drains a 3-pointer in the beginning of the game. After that, he cannot be found anywhere near the bucket for the rest of the game. Trump believes that his outspoken and unfiltered self is the reason for his shocking victory in 2016, while ignoring the loss of the ‘burbs and married women. So, that’s what we’re going to get for the rest of his time in the White House. He’ll continue to do it till he faces defeat.
But who knows, he may turn out to be a great 3-point shooter. Color me skeptical.
Trump’s saving grace is … today’s Democratic Party. All the talk about Trump’s incivility ignores the Democrats’ irresponsible embrace of socialism and the cultural left. Trump’s behavior may be deplorable, but the Democrats cannot be trusted with our nation. This is one of the weaknesses of some of the criticisms coming from the center-right, like Yuval Levin’s column. I don’t know of anyone who can claim that a dethronement of Trump won’t lead to an empowerment of the Democrats’ socialism. For the average citizen, their choices appear bleak: continue the Trump drama or ruin the nation by handing the keys of power to the Democrats’ leftism.
Levin is right when he says the biggest victim will be a loss of faith in our institutions. Yet, it’s not as if those institutions weren’t deserving of disrepute. The Supreme Court, and the courts in general, have been way out of their lane. Modern presidents have turned the presidency into an almost divine-right branch. Obama had his phone and pen. Congress is a eunuch that performs like a clown show. The administrative state is a law unto itself, so huge as to be unmanageable. The Constitution is made an empty document and open to the manipulations of the whims of men. We have the rule of men, not laws.
At the center of this governance by malfeasance is the institutional presence and power of the Democratic Party and its socialism-at-all-costs ethic. Trump may be personally repulsive; the Democrats are thoroughly unfit for office. The correlation of forces is lining up for a real brouhaha. The modern correlation of forces are a divisive figure in the White House, the Democratic Party’s muscular socialism, the ongoing cultural substitution of Christianity with Environmentalism, the emergence of a very partisan administrative state as the fourth branch of government, and the media serving as a megaphone for the advancement of the Democrats’ socialism and its cultural leftism. Many of these malignant forces are emanating from those blue dots on the electoral map.
Buckle up because impeachment promises to be a real donnybrook.
Piedmont, Ca., seventh-graders participate in the global strike for climate change in San Francisco on Sept. 20, 2019. (Credit: Andrew Reed/EdSource)
Overton Window: noun; the range of ideas tolerated in public discourse, also known as the window of discourse. The term is named after Joseph P. Overton, who stated that an idea’s political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within this range.
A Google search produced the above definition (more on the concept here). We are experiencing an attempt to impose the limits of acceptable opinion on certain issues. That word, imposition and its derivatives, will occur a lot in this piece. No better example can be found than the construction of an Overton window on the issue of climate change. As with any imposition, the range of acceptability is being forced upon all, while also being arbitrary with the mode of enforcement more indicative of mob behavior. A highly excitable throng endeavors to manhandle the window leftward.
The Global Climate Strike of students of September 20-27, 2019, brought to mind the idea of the Overton window. Here we have young people ranging in age from elementary to college boycotting their classes to engage in protests demanding more government power to control people for the purpose of “saving the planet”. I have my doubts about whether the goal is to “save the planet” or simply expand government power to impose a political clique’s narrow vision of the good.
Means and ends get muddled here. I was a college adjunct instructor in Physical Geography and was continually exposed to the ideological dogmas of climate change – “climate change” being the more robust and useful term as compared to the mere “global warming”. “Ideological” is the correct adjective for the belief system that riddles the curriculum, support materials (textbooks, et al), and teacher preparation. There is much about the movement’s claims to scientifically question. Yet, the movement glosses over the uncertainty about the climate issue’s severity, the exact nature of the phenomena, and the realities of proposed solutions to immediately rush to the goal of revolutionary social, economic, and political reorganization.
However, before the zealots get to their beloved revolution, prudence requires the rest of us to seriously consider a simple question: Are the zealots’ claims correct? Much has been said and written about the issue but only a small slice gets the light of day. To be clear, the purpose of this article is not to present a detailed examination of the activists’ assertions about “climate change”, but to report on a singular episode – the students’ Global Climate Strike – as part of an ongoing campaign to use politicized science so one may foist on the general public a drastic alteration in our settled social, economic, and political arrangements and confer near-totalitarian power in the hands of a select few.
If interested, if you have 32 minutes, below is a reminder that an honest debate on the science of climate change actually exists, something the fanatics would like to squelch and close the Overton window..
What happens when fanaticism replaces scientific inquiry? Well, we get young and impressionable minds ditching school for a day to help stampede lawmakers into creating the environmentalists’ Leviathan. How were the kids primed? Well, the ideology-as-science corrupted the dogma’s purveyors, the teachers, and permeates the kids’ media-rich social ecosystem. I know; I’ve been there, particularly at the campaign’s pedagogical front.
It’s interesting to know that the professional and degreed people with the least scientific background take up positions as the most prominent mouthpieces of the movement, some in taxpayer-funded government posts and some riding their earlier name-recognition in politics to a new and very lucrative career in climate change. Does the name “Al Gore” come to mind?
Almost any metropolis and city with a university presence will have a municipal position solely devoted to the issue of climate change. For instance, in my state of Montana, Chase Jones serves as the Energy Conservation Coordinator for the City of Missoula with the portfolio of developing and coordinating the city’s climate plan.
Chase Jones, City of Missoula Energy Conservation Coordinator
In a radio interview, he stipulated that he has a degree in Communications from University of West Virginia. He cut his teeth in Montana environmentalism through the Montana Conservation Corps, an environmental non-profit. The Chairperson of the Corps’s Board of Directors is Jan Lombardi who has a rich personal history in Democratic Party politics, Planned Parenthood, National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), etc. Another member of the Board is Chris Pope, the Democrat representative of Montana House District 65 and possessor of a Spanish Degree from University of Oregon and Masters in Public and Private Management from Yale. Chase’s background and the résumés of those around him are symptomatic of the kinds of experiences that inclines them to accept broad and general scientific claims, especially if they confirm ideological biases, while they lack the detailed understanding to debate the substance of any of the many scientific aspects of a meta-issue like climate change.
Jan Lombardi (center), chairperson of the Montana Conservation Corps
These people are impressed by the pronouncements of large groups, as if the announcements put finis to any further scientific inquiry, and closes the Overton window to those who dispute them. They then can announce a “consensus” to dismiss the irritating queries of those of a more scientifically skeptical mind. All the while, they ignore the vast scholarship on groupthink and Public Choice Theory which does more to explain the behavior of large associations and bureaucracies in perverting pure science. The stance may work for the politically-motivated non-scientist, but it isn’t science. It’s partisan politics masquerading under the rubric of science.
Non-scientists are pushing the issue with the assistance of politicized scientists and their politicized associations. Large and long-established professional associations are particularly prone to fashionable political moods. Blacklisting is common. Remember McCarthyism? In regards to climate, remember nuclear winter, global cooling, and now global warming? Remember the Union of Concerned Scientists and their Doomsday Clock during Reagan’s defense buildup to counter the Soviet threat? Remember the blowback to Reagan’s idea of missile defense? Going back further, how about scientists’ enthusiasm for eugenics that would ultimately seep into the Final Solution? The wreckage is astounding whenever science is mingled with politics.
“Best Baby” contests promoted eugenics at the Oregon State Fair in the early 1900s. (courtesy of The Oregonian)
“Selection” of Hungarian Jews on the ramp at the death camp Auschwitz-II (Birkenau) in Poland during German occupation, May/June 1944. (Wikimedia Commons/Yad Vashem)
Inevitably, science will be the handmaiden to politics when the two are merged, with disastrous consequences.
The loudest advocates of a Green New Deal are likely to have the least acquaintance with real science. If anything, they have just enough exposure to be dangerous. Their stunted view is propagated to the young in a never-ending torrent from one grade to the next, from one movie to the next, and from one social media post to the next . The stage is set for a critical mass of people who lack the tolerance for opinions cynical of the artificial zeitgeist. The radical all of a sudden becomes the popularly “sensible” and those outside of this favored cohort will be dismissed, or worse. The eco-revolutionaries, hiding behind the innocence of youth, are well on their way to the kind of power to upend our way of life and build a new green order.
Some concessions to popular consent will have to be made, but the threat of an opposing majority will have been lessened by a demography-wide closed mind. It will be a constituency willing to cede great power to a set of elite experts in the arts of the eco-gnosis. But to be on the cusp of power in the first place requires more than indoctrination. It’s necessary but not sufficient. To tip the edifice into a revolution, a panic must be created through crisis-mongering, or as long-dead progressive/socialist leading lights would have called it, the moral equivalent of war. What goes for the “conscience” of the Democratic Party, our giddy sophomore class president and congressional blowhard from NY’s 14th congressional district (AOC), parrots the war line along with sycophants in the party’s presidential derby. After the panic attack produces electoral success, once in power, they aren’t going to give it up because the population happens to be profoundly discomforted by the mandated changes. In this ends-justifies-means world, popular sovereignty will be luxury that can no longer be afforded. The whole scheme could end up being one man (or woman, et al)/one vote/one time.
A 1968 Cultural Revolution poster. The caption reads: “Destroy the old world; Forge the new world.” Today’s eco-activism is reminiscent of Mao’s campaign to reinvigorate the revolution.
This is more than a slippery slope. It’s a well-trodden path through the pages of history. Why are eco-activists so intent on repeating the horrifying record? Interesting question but the answer is obvious. They think that they’re immune to the trap many others have fallen into over the past couple of millennia.
They are kidding themselves. Over those very same millennia, power has proven to be quite an intoxicant. It overwhelms a person’s conciliatory and moderating nature. The goal of eco-purity will crowd out everything including tolerance for the opposition. To borrow from Lenin, a vanguard elite leading the way to the green future won’t trifle with elections unless they can be manipulated into validating predetermined decisions. Pure and simple, it comes down to imposing a small group’s preferred mode of living on a broad population who may be unaware of what is happening.
The 1920 Presidium of the 9th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Seated from left to right are Enukidze, Kalinin, Bukharin, Tomsky, Lashevich, Kamenev, Preobrazhensky, Serebryakov, Lenin and Rykov.
I’m reminded of the circumstances in Russia in the few decades before the Revolution of 1917. One is struck by the wide acceptance of radicalism among the educated classes (teachers, the professoriate, students), many circles in urban populations, and some of the well-off gentry in the years leading up to the Revolution. It even penetrated the military’s officer corps. Denunciations bordering on treason, even advocating the assassination of government officials from the czar on down, riddled the last couple of decades of the regime. Socialism of a variety of shades was trendy, as is the “green future” and “sustainability” today.
Policy mistakes compounded the troubles. One was the decision in 1906 to confer a safe space from police intervention for university campuses. It was hoped that the policy would quiet things down on the campuses. It did no such thing. The radicalism was allowed to fester and boil over to nearly all sectors of society. The radicalized young of 1905 became the violent revolutionaries of 1917 and later Lenin’s shock troops in the imposition of the Bolshevik conception of the good.
Russia, 1917: Mass political meeting of workers at the giant Putilov factory. Bolshevik and other radical student agitators were active in fomenting strikes and other upheavals Tsarist Rusia.
Sound familiar as you view the images of the young faces demanding a Green New Deal in the Global Climate Strike? Those scenes of a radicalized youth who are radicalized by a radicalized curriculum, sustained over the many years of their matriculation, should send shivers down the spines of anyone knowledgeable of Russian history circa 1890 to 1921. In the end, a radicalized caste will get the opportunity to impose their narrow vision of the good on a population ignorant of their own children’s indoctrination.
The Overton window of tolerance for opposing views is shifting left. The zealot’s politicized science will be the only approved form of science. That means that the only accepted version of science will be the kind that has garnered the assent of the governing elite. It must, like everything else, serve the ends of the secular dogma’s dream of the good life. It’s so Orwellian.
Climate protesters September 24, 2019.
In the end, prepare to retreat back a couple of centuries in quality of life. These vision quests aren’t concerned about the production of wealth so much as dictating the smallest details of living for 330 million people. Conditions gradually deteriorate as the legacy of prior affluence begins to erode. Some flee and others adjust to a world without variance from the rules of the eco-commissars.
I’ll end this piece where it started: the student Global Climate Strike. Watch the speech of a sincere but naive youngster before a UN panel as she tearfully pleads for the erection of the eco-Leviathan. Also observe the shamelessness of the adults as they exploit a child whose personal identity has been supplanted by a fanatic’s nightmare of impending doom. Watching her as she gives her speech is wrenching enough, but remembering what has been done to her is much more terrifying.
I got a reply from “cushelp.com” at Walmart regarding my comment on the company’s new gun policies. The company’s online respondent indicated that the comment will go up the chain of command, and included a link of the newsletter/memo from President and CEO, John McMillon, to the employees (see the first edition of “A ‘Woke’ Walmart” for the link). This only further drew my ire. After reading McMillon’s missive to employees, I pounded a reply. Here is my rebuttal:
Thanks so much for your timely reply to my email which contained a link to a company circular from Doug McMillon, President and CEO, to associates about the new policy. Apparently somebody read my detailed response to your new policy on guns and ammunition. Again, thanks for taking the time to read it. However, rather than allay my concerns, they have been heightened.
McMIllon’s announcement to associates reads like a heated reaction to an issue-of-the-moment. Indeed, it goes further. It adopts wholesale the line of argument of partisan gun control activists such as the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, the Brady Campaign, etc., etc. All in all, Walmart is gradually aligning itself with the center/left. McMillon is confirming John O’Sullivan’s famous aphorism: “All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.”
Let me count the ways. Surprisingly, I am not bothered so much by the company’s decision not to allow open carry in the stores. The problem lies with joining well-publicized nationwide gun-control crusades, emblematic in the demand that “the status quo is unacceptable”. It’s part of the usual rhetoric coming from the usual hive of gun-control groups and the Democratic Party. Parts of the memorandum could just as easily come out of Chuck Schumer’s office (D, NY).
I’d like to remind Walmart that the Second Amendment is part of the “status quo”. The Supreme Court defined the ownership of firearms to be an individual right, not a collective one. It’s presence in the Constitution is not for hunting or protection from MS-13. The Amendment is an avatar for citizen control of their government. A lesson in the English Civil War would work wonders in the corporate boardroom at Walmart.
So, what parts of the “status quo” is to be subjected to change? Well, it’s inanimate things like guns and ammo that are to be targeted (no pun intended) for punishment. The unstated premise is that the availability of these things constitutes a danger to the public. You tout the the company’s previous decision not to sell “military-style rifles”. The policy is nonsense as is the call to join a debate on resurrecting the Assault Weapon Ban. Calling for a debate are weasel words for establishing one (Ban). The debate on the Ban has been over for quite some time: the thing didn’t work, was allowed to lapse, and the Democrats refused to bring it back when they had the White House and majorities in both houses of Congress.
Further, the “military-style” nomenclature is silliness on stilts. It’s all about a gun’s cosmetic qualities. These guns are no more dangerous than any semi-automatic gun. By the way, guns are by their nature “dangerous” … as are crossbows. If they weren’t, they’d be no good for hunting. The AR platform and its knock-offs are associated with the miscreants of mass shootings because they are broadly popular with the gun-buying consumer base in the general public. They are the most highly demanded product in a gun manufacturer’s inventory. Hopefully, you’re not suggesting that all these buyers are crazed lunatics. If semi-auto shotguns with more compact barrels were to be all the rage in the murderous-loser class, would a call for a ban on semi-auto shotguns be next? Strange legal principle: find out what’s popular with lunatics and prohibit it.
The ludicrous nature of the Ban can be seen in the bumbling attempts to codify the concept into law. Is it the pistol grip? Is it the semi-auto nature of the thing? Is it the magazine capacity of over 4 rounds? Is it because it looks like something in a John Wick movie? Going from state to state examining their bans is an exercise in chaos theory. Usually the laws are written by people with the least knowledge about firearms. Watching them at a press conference is a real hoot. The big problem with the ban stems from the quixotic desire to proscribe a product for its cosmetic qualities. That’s it!
Then Walmart stacks its current silliness with more silliness on the ammo front. No handgun and .223 ammo. What’s the logic behind that? Clearly, the company associates those cartridges with mayhem. Why else put them on the no-go list? What’s next, a ban on 12 gauge? Any cartridge’s survival on Walmart’s shelves hangs by the thread of a killer’s choices.
Astoundingly, McMillon applauds the likely decline in the company’s market share in ammo. Now that’s a first: a company defining success as a decline in market share. Sears and JCPenney should be popping champagne corks instead of wringing their hands. It seems like the national Walmart is taking its cues from California Walmart. California is a mess and hardly an example to be imitated. I fled the state as a third generation native Californian to Montana. The state is no place to raise kids. Are the Walmarts in Montana soon to be looking like the ones in that lefty loony bin?
As always in these kinds of circulars, there are some palatable suggestions. Shoring up FixNICS and competently-written red flag laws are things to consider. But the gun and ammo ideas are just warmed over goofiness in Democratic Party bullet points. None of the ideas have a scintilla of relevance to curbing these mass shootings. Ditto for the much-vaunted “universal background checks”. Try to enforce that idea when family heirlooms are passed down from parent to child. The dribble is trotted out each time for the sole purpose of hammering more traditional and conservative circles in our population.
I suspect a general leftward orientation in corporate boardrooms. Others have noticed it as well. Walmart has not been inoculated. I attribute the phenomena to an increasing isolation in corporate governance from the common people, particularly in flyover country. Socio-economically, the “suits” identify with each other and the urban values of their location. Much has been written about this. Now these collectivist values appear to be seeping into Walmart. O’Sullivan might be proven right once again.
For your information, I shifted my recent tire purchase from Walmart to Discount Tire. In fact, I used your cheaper price to get a price match from them. You are to be thanked for providing the price leverage. But to be honest, I would have agreed to a higher price to avoid doing business with a company who appears to be lurching left. I will be doing the same with our other consumer purchases. Don’t look for my car in your parking lot.
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Once again, the online receptionist indicated that my response will go up the chain of command. I suspect the reply is boilerplate.
After learning of Walmart’s new gun policy after the murderous rampage in an El Paso Walmart, I spirited off a reply on Walmart’s website comment link. Here is my initial comment to the company’s new policy:
I am commenting on your recent policy regarding guns and ammunition. I hope somebody reads it.
Right at the start: I am no gun enthusiast but am a strong believer in the Second Amendment and its pure and historical purpose. Also, I have come to notice the left-leaning tendencies in corporate boardrooms across the country. More and more, corporate policies are reflecting the left-wing zeitgeist of our urban and academic centers. I could provide more detail about this orientation if a history and philosophy lesson is required. Still, the trend is increasingly becoming apparent at Walmart.
Certain ideologically-laden code words keep recurring in many corporate policies, including Walmart’s. These are partisan leitmotifs that are littered throughout in more than just bland pronouncements on the company website, but also in company actions. Take for instance “corporate responsibility”. In the past, I have come to associate the phrase with Walmart’s attentiveness to community needs such as assistance to homeless shelters and schools. Well, it’s gone way beyond that. “Sustainability” has glommed onto the phrase. “Sustainability” has morphed into much more than roadside trash pickups. The word is corrupted with lefty crusades such as the massively politicized “climate change”, the wars on fossil fuels and plastics, and the never-ending campaigns to force “equality” in all its intersectional and “marginalized” guises, in the name of “equity” – whatever that means.
The last one is a war on tradition. Established notions of public morality, institutions like marriage and family, and values such as self-reliance, personal responsibility, and economic freedom are assaulted in the pursuit of making the “new man/woman”. Call it social engineering; something reminiscent of more sordid episodes of the 20th century.
I am sad to see that Walmart has succumbed to the zeitgeist. Now, it’s guns. The new policy about open carry and ammunition may have something to do with liability issues. Nonetheless, the corporate course on these matters is still troubling. A mob is afoot emanating from our megalopolises, the worst in academia, and the media that is tied to the two. It takes courage to stand athwart the mob. Yours appears to be waning.
I’m reminded of Simon Schama’s chronicle of the French Revolution, “Citizens”. The mob of Paris and its fire-breathing demagogues were the bane of civil governance for the country for centuries. Threats, intimidation, violence, and blackmail were all-too-common. The lid blew off in 1789 and France plunged into darkness and dictatorship for decades afterwards. At the time, some people made their peace with the Revolution. Have you made yours?
Don’t mistake fashionable trends of thought for wisdom. The Second Amendment is a symbol of citizen control of our polity. As such, I’m exercising my sovereignty in severing any personal commercial association with Walmart.
Currently, I’m in a spat with Walmart. No, my complaint isn’t about Walmart as an unabashed exploiter of the working poor, the complaint common among illiterate social justice warriors. Au contraire, I’m referring to Walmart’s gradual alignment with the cultural left. Surprise, surprise.
What drew back the curtain was the company’s new policy on guns and ammunition. An emotive reaction to a horrible incident like the one at the El Paso Walmart is understandable, but don’t mistake “understandable” with “reasonable”. For many reasons, much in Walmart’s new stance on guns is absurd. More about this later.
Walmart’s approach is encapsulated in this memo to employees shortly after the El Paso shooting. It can be found here: https://corporate.walmart.com/…/mcmillon-to-associates-our-….
John McMillon, President and CEO, of Walmart.
A Wikipedia search of the memo’s author, John McMillon, President and CEO, uncovered more. Guns and religion are two of the most salient issues in the culture war. And McMillon weighed into both. In 2015, McMillon proclaimed that a “religious freedom” bill before Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson “threatens to undermine the spirit of inclusion present throughout the state of Arkansas and does not reflect the values we proudly uphold”. Cut through the gobbledygook and we see that Walmart has joined the LGBTQ crusade to punish religious dissenters for disagreeing with them. McMillon sounds like Pelosi. Religious freedom laws have become a necessity as government agencies and commissions under the sway of the powerful LGBTQ lobby have targeted private individuals for taking the Bible seriously. Talk to Jack Philips, or take a look at the Houston mayor’s attempt to subpoena pastors’ sermons, or governments’ efforts to force religious organizations to facilitate abortion.
Jack Philips of Masterpiece Cakeshop and the target of legal action by Colorado’s Human Rights Commission. Their actions against Philips were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
But now we have the big cheese at Walmart declaring “inclusion” trumps (no pun intended) “religious freedom”.
A scan of the company’s website will find it littered with the eco-lobby’s hobby-horses. I suspect that the “suits” in charge at Walmart chafe at those viral pics of unsightly-dressed shoppers. They want to upscale the company’s image by showing that they too are like the swank Malibu types with fashionable views to go along with a fashionable look.
A page from the “Global Responsibility” link on walmart.com.
McMillon’s personal history, though, presents a conundrum. He’s a born-again Christian. He’s also a lifer Walmart employee. On the religious angle, he’s confused in trying to mesh his haute couture views with Jesus of Nazareth. As an employee, he’s been in management for at least 20 years, and much of that in corporate management. Somewhere along the line he has absorbed many of the values of a university’s Sociology faculty. It’s a familiar development in the backgrounds of many corporate execs.
Wealthy people in today’s world seem to be attracted to wokeness like a moth to light.
Today, Bernie Sanders unveiled his plan for the Green New Deal, a $16.3 trillion monster. You can read about it here in the New York Times. The number – 16.3 trillion – is so huge that we lose sight of its magnitude. To break it down, if the dollars were miles, it would be a little less than three-quarters of the distance to Alpha Centauri, an entirely separate planetary system “far far away”. The size of the number means that the bill can’t be paid by anyone. The projected payback will extend beyond generations “far far away”. It’s essentially an invitation to join the Stone Age for anyone and everyone in generations from now to those “far far away”.
That dingbat congresswoman from the Bronx would like to stampede us into the Stone Age with hysterical cries that we have only 10 years before the Götterdämmerung if we do nothing. For her, better the Stone Age than extinction. Apparently, Bernie also favors the choice of the Stone Age. For me, the difference is marginal. The Stone Age was best captured in Thomas Hobbes’s famous dictum: life is “solitary, nasty, brutish, and short”.
Making flints in the Stone Age.
But is the U.S. in the catbird seat to stave off disaster anyway? Remember, our government’s decisions to economically harm us only harms … us! China and the rest of the developing world have a keen interest in indoor plumbing and air conditioning. They’ll burn down their jungles and the fossil fuels in a long list of Saudi Arabias to get out from living in the dirt. So, unless Bernie appoints himself to be the Maoist General Secretary of the World and embarks on a Genghis Khan-style conquest of the planet to enforce the resultant poverty, he’ll just end up destroying us. The rest of the world will continue to pollute, albeit at a faster clip.
BEIJING, CHINA – DECEMBER 20: Citizens walk in smog on December 20, 2016 in Jinan, Shandong Province of China. Air quality index (AQI) readings exceeded 400 and some schools have suspended classes in Jinan. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)Burning coal in China to generate electricity.
A few numbers might help Bernie, his fellow ideological asylum inmates, and the Squad in understanding the extent of the craziness. The U.S. is about a quarter of the world’s economy. China comes in second at 15%. The numbers are nearly reversed in global CO2 emissions: China at 30%, the U.S. at 15%. So – I’ll go slow for the woke crowd – we produce 25% of the world’s product at only 15% of emissions, and China knocks out 15% of the world’s product at 30% of emissions. What’s that mean? I’ll go slow once again for all those with degrees but show no sign of better judgment: It means that China is dirtier, much dirtier at a rate twice ours. The lesson, therefore, is to smash the cleaner nation’s economy only to clear the way for the dirty one. Bernie must have skipped Math class in high school.
The hope is that China will be inspired by our example to voluntarily follow suit. What example? It’s the example of how to level a first world country into the third world. I suspect that they’d like to avoid the experience as if it was a leper colony.
California prides itself in being a ground breaker. They have adopted the greenie snake oil through a variety of measures over the past couple of decades. As of 2017/18, though, the state accounts for only 1.1% of global CO2 discharges. Even if they knock it down to zero – probably by running the rest of the economy out of the state – their slot will be more than replaced by India as it ramps up.
What’s the upshot of all the greenie caterwauling? Say goodbye to the future for your kids, their kids, and their kids’ kids. Maybe they might feel better if they know that they were making a sacrifice for the good of … no one. Not!
Mark Zuckerberg in April of 2018 was quoted as saying before Congress that Silicon Valley is an “extremely left-leaning place”. I would take it further. Any of the deep blue dots on the election map are, by definition, “extremely left-leaning place[s]”.
Today, almost any large institution or organization in our densely-packed urban nodes is likely to be an “extremely left-leaning place”. An example would be our tech giants like Google (or Alphabet, Inc). Daily, we are exposed to the socio-political biases of these “extremely left-leaning place[s]”. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (RMEF) in Montana was recently confronted with it. (see here)
Google employees at the Mountain View, Calif., headquarters.
The RMEF had been running ads on Google for years. In April, they were email notified by a Google employee that it would be no more. It seems that Google has a policy against hunting. Somebody apparently did a Google search on the RMEF. The RMEF quickly appealed to the Montana congressional delegation and the rejection was reversed.
Whether Google has a policy in opposition to hunting isn’t the pertinent question. Our gaze should be directed at the Google workroom. What’s happening in there? I suspect, with good reason, that they have an “extremely left-leaning” population at work. To them, nature is a Disney cartoon; hunting is cruelty; and we should all be vegan anyway. Hippie food stores and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation don’t go together.
Just another reminder that urbanity-as-in-citified is synonymous with eco-zealotry, gender fluidity, and Bernie bros/gals.
Lesson: Fashionable ideas frequently fall into the category of “too good to be true”.
Compare Amy Harder’s Axiospiece from yesterday, “The key to unlocking wind and solar: Making it last”, and Michael Shellenberger’s Forbesarticle from 2018, “We Don’t Need Solar And Wind To Save The Climate — And It’s A Good Thing, Too”. The former is a puff piece about another alleged “breakthrough” for solar and wind energy. The latter is a healthy splash of cold water on the whole ploy. In today’s media, almost anything chic among the beautiful people, popular with the rulers in deep blue states, championed in thousands of public service ads, and exalted in high school science fairs, should be taken with a ton of salt.
Here’s a few takeaways from the analysis:
* Solar and wind, especially solar, have always been on the cusp of the next will-o’-the-wisp big breakthrough since the 19th century. Shellenberger recounts the history; Harder unwittingly provides another example.
* Solar and wind are expensive. They sound like a great idea since the sun shines and the wind blows without our help. Check out the electricity rates of countries who have bought into solar and wind.
* The environmental damage of wind and solar is immense. They use up and mar vast tracts of the landscape, disrupt and threaten the natural flora and fauna, and the production of their devices begets toxic wastes and land scarring.
* Nuclear is an obvious alternative but gets no mention in the rush to the solar-and-wind utopia. It’s better, more efficient, more cost effective, produces no CO2, and recycles much of its waste. What’s there not to like … if we can look away from the scowls of the beautiful people?
The China Syndrome (1979), directed by James Bridges. Shown from left: James Hampton, Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas.
The real world can’t be boiled down to Sierra Club talking points. I wish that our media would stop repeating them and our kids weren’t taught the baloney.
Here’s a thought, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (waitress/batender/sophmore class president) makes it easy to imagine: AOC is proof of the mistake of extending the vote to 16-year-olds. With the exception of age, what’s the difference between her and Molly Ringwald’s character in “Sixteen Candles”? Answer: not much.
