Modern Marxism – Page 7 – Libertate Virtute (Virtue + Liberty)

November 7, 2022November 7, 2022

Our Politics Are a Mess. Shame on the Culprits.

President Joe Biden delivers remarks on prescription drug costs, Social Security and Medicare, during a campaign event, in Joliet, Ill., November 5, 2022. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Election Day is nigh, and our politics are a mess. Shame on the Culprits.

Biden goes on a rant about the “idiots” who actually take the Democrats for their word: the Democrats are “socialists” if not in self-acclamation, then in deeds. But you are an “idiot” for noticing. Trump fulminates in his usual adolescent way by insulting a potential rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis, as “DeSanctimonious”. When will that 20% of the GOP electorate actually grow up? Our 2024 choices at this juncture could be between the revolutionaries’ old fart (Biden) or an old-but-narcissistic browbeater (Trump). It’s a real binary because only one of the two could be inflicted on us after 2024.

Former President Donald Trump speaks during a pre-election rally to support Republican candidates in Latrobe, Pa., November 5, 2022. (Mike Segar/Reuters)

How did we end up with two septuagenarian-to-octogenarian figures to represent our political divide? One is clearly senile and the other is an embarrassing oaf who hasn’t outgrown schoolyard bullying because it sells in our hyperactive digital age. While the two mouthpieces have an equal measure of their own version of decrepitude, the two parties are not as equivalent in their rot. The Democratic Party went off their rocker into full-blown ultra-Left fanaticism. The Republican Party is the one left to buttress the nation against the lunacy, being now the only adult left in the room, but, sadly, they are anchored down by the telegenic buffoon. He just might get a second shot at it in 2024.

The GOP’s barker, Trump, had his 4-year turn with the brass ring but ran into a buzzsaw of Left/bureaucratic hostility that dominates our increasingly putrefying culture and administrative state. The thing that attracts clicks and cameras – a dramatic persona, or BDE (look it up) in the words of Trumpkins – also stirred the entrenched Left to attempt to shred our Constitutional order, which they tried to do in short order after they were returned to power under the senescent Biden in January 2021 in calls for court packing, elimination of the Electoral College, engineering four new Senate seats for themselves, calling for an elimination of any voice for the minority in the Senate (it is said that the filibuster is a “relic” of Jim Crow), pushing a federal takeover of elections to legalize election fraud to expand their voter base and ensure dominance over the horizon, etc.

And then the wheels came off the nation under their refashioned version of Il Duce’s old slogan of “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” No energy for you if it didn’t come from a windmill or solar panel. No car for you if it doesn’t take 2 hours to 2 days to charge, and won’t burst into flames after being inundated in a storm surge. The Green New Deal central planners are going to hogtie you into their utopian rabbit hole with or without your consent.

As for your sidewalks and parks, be careful because addiction on the streets and in the green spaces is “decriminalized”. Plus, you get the opportunity to see nihilism in practice with the rampant smash-and-grab mobs, property crime, and raging assaults – Anthony Burgess’s “A Clockwork Orange” brought to life. Heck, just keep your mayhem under $950, and even if you don’t, no-cash-bail and non-prosecution ensures that the miscreants will never get a chance to look from the wrong side of bars. It’s a huge subsidy for Hobbes’s old prediction of the “war of all against all”.

Our girls’ locker rooms have been invaded by XY “girls”. Our daughters aren’t safe, and their lifetime efforts and achievements cut short by XY “women” athletes. All of this brought to you by a party that wants to make all things a matter of human will. No obvious boys and girls, and all is subject to choice and human interventions. High school dances are now a real adventure for all concerned.

The so-called kitchen table isn’t exempt because you are increasingly unable to afford much to put on it. Your nest egg (401k, pension) has tanked. Shortages are disguised in euphemisms like “supply chain crisis”. It’s always a crisis with these central-planning folks. Central planning has its shortcomings. And, if you had a job, the highways just became useless since you can’t afford the juice to turn the wheels of your car, or the home charger was made inert by a blackout. “Sustainable” also has its shortcomings.

The ultimate in central planning – the pandemic lockdowns, closures of businesses, schools, and civil life, and the mandates, and the incessant tinkering with essential and nonessential – has contributed to much of the disruption of ordinary life that we experience today, setting back our kids for a year or two. COVID central planning is like Soviet central planning or the kind run out of Pyongyang: shortages and a stunted existence.

But what’s there to complain about? Much, oh so very much. The blathering blowhard of the GOP won’t be on the ballot till 2024, but Biden’s “idiots” – the average person that makes the country click by living and working – face an existential threat: Biden and his big-government party. Vote like your life depended on it, because it actually does.

You’re the Lifeguard?

Terrifier

RogerG

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* “Biden calls anti-socialism protesters ‘idiots’ in Illinois stump speech attacking GOP”, Washington Times, Nov. 5, 2022, at https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/nov/5/biden-calls-anti-socialism-protesters-idiots-illin/ .

* “Trump hits DeSantis as ‘Ron DeSanctimonious’ at rally amid 2024 announcement rumors”, Washington Times, Nov. 5, 2022, at https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/nov/5/trump-hits-ron-desantis-ron-desanctimonious-rally-/ .

November 7, 2022November 7, 2022

Can I Sue?

See the source image — California State Teachers Retirement System headquarters in Sacramento, Ca.

Really, can I sue California’s STRS, the state’s teacher pension system? I would think that I have standing. After all, I am receiving a CalSTRS pension. Why would I sue? They are imperiling my pension. Simple.

How are they harming the integrity of my pension? It comes in three letters – ESG – and, to no great surprise, California is all into it. The initials stand for “environment, social, governance” and the plan is to impose these political abstractions on the entire business sector including finance, which also includes pension investing. In practical terms, ESG means the grab bag of leftwing causes from transgender ideology to the crusade against “systemic racism” to climate-change apocalyptics. The purpose is to strongarm businesses into leftwing causes with the use of the mother’s milk of business – capital – capital even from pension members.

The State of Utah is suing – that is, suing Standard and Poor’s (S&P) for assessing the state’s financial stability and credit worthiness according to leftwing metrics (ESG), or how diligent the state is in furthering leftwing causes such as hostility to the firearms industry and energy companies. Since the electorate of Utah doesn’t have the political sensibilities of gun controllers, BLM, the progressive ladies of The View, or the Sierra Club, the state’s financial status and bonds get downgraded by S&P acting in the role of the Left’s hatchet man. If the state’s electorate doesn’t pay heed to the fascinations of a college Sociology faculty, their bonds get branded “B” (junk). The purpose is to jeopardize the state’s financial health if they don’t come to heel.

Public-employee pension funds are particularly prone to the sway of the zealots, especially CalPers and CalSTRS in California, already under the direct thumb of an off-the-charts progressive one-party state. Out goes the standard fiduciary rule of working in the best interests of the client, in comes a redefinition of “best interests” to involve the political inclinations of those like Gavin Newsom wanting to risk the pensioners’ contributions and ultimate payout on Solyndra-type ventures and away from investments that until yesterday were pro forma.

In the case of a public-employee pension system, “best interest” can’t be limited to managers taking dictates from powerful and ideologically pretentious politicos. Contributions come from everyone from Marxists to NRA members in general funds like CalSTRS. The only real requirement is to be a teacher of the requisite number of years. The one thing that they all have in common is being retired and spoiling their grandkids. If any of them want to fund the antics of The Squad, they can do it from their pre- or post-retirement income, not beforehand after a deterioration of potential payouts to every beneficiary by Gavin Newsom’s preferences.

Kentucky’s AG, Daniel Cameron, senses the chicanery as well. He hit the mark with a letter to the state’s pension fund managers when he warned them about ESG investing because it would “violate statutory and contractual fiduciary duties.” He continued, “There is an increasing trend among some investment management firms to use money in public and state employee pension plans — that is, other people’s money — to push their own political agendas and force social change.” Those fiduciary duties might apply to California as well.

A favorite tactic to make ESG seem legitimate is to label the opinions of the Left a matter of “science” and a product of a “consensus”, therefore irrefutable, therefore “misinformation” if challenged, therefore above and beyond the standard rules of fiduciary responsibility. This new “science” – the scientific truth (?) of Leftist opinion – is actually a “science” without the scientific method. Think about it: What scientist comes from an experimental test of his/her hypothesis with the observation that the results are wrong because they violate a “consensus”? The whole exercise is as nonsensical as handing over my pension’s investment portfolio to the screeching ministrations of Greta Thunberg or Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

But here we are at a place where we can’t challenge the destruction of a pension because anyone who disagrees is censored as a “denier”. So, the Left gets carte blanche with the money for my old age. I don’t think so. Send lawyers, guns, and money. Oh, drop the “guns” part and let’s sue.

I identify with Warren Zevon’s predicament in his song “Lawyers, Guns, and Money”. The lyics:

“I went home with the waitress, the way I always do
How was I to know, she was with the Russians, too?

I was gambling in Havana, I took a little risk
Send lawyers, guns and money, dad, get me out of this, ha

I’m the innocent bystander
Somehow I got stuck between the rock and a hard place
And I’m down on my luck, yes I’m down on my luck
Well, I’m down on my luck

And I’m hiding in Honduras
I’m a desperate man
Send lawyers, guns, and money
The shit has hit the fan

Alright, send lawyers, guns, and money
Huh, yeah
Send lawyers, guns, and money
Uh
Send lawyers, guns, and money
Hey
Send lawyers, guns, and money
Oo, yeah
Yeah
Yeah”

Zevon’s performance of “Lawyers, Guns, and Money”:

RogerG

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* “Follow Daniel Cameron’s lead, purge every hint of ESG from your state’s finances”, Washington Examiner, Nov. 4, 2022, at https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/faith-freedom-self-reliance/follow-daniel-camerons-lead-purge-every-hint-of-esg-from-your-states-finances .

* “Utah pushes back against pro-Putin ESG financial analysis”, Washington Examiner, May 2, 2022, at https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/utah-pushes-back-against-pro-putin-esg-financial-analysis .

November 4, 2022

Today’s Opportunities for a Columnist with Flair, Heather Wilhelm

charging-station-california — Electric cars sit charging in a parking garage at the University of California, Irvine, in Irvine, Calif., 2015. (photo: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

I get a kick out of Heather Wilhelm’s columns. She writes for The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, National Review, etc., and calls Austin, Tx., home. She has a flair, as in a recent piece “Running on Fumes”. The topic is California’s fetish for electric cars. As I’ve written many times, it’s a looney idea. Wilhelm agrees . . . with flair.

Here’s some juicy tidbits from the column, with a few quips of my own:

* “. . . America’s favorite loopy wine-swilling communist aunt who dabbles in astrology and mushrooms — I’m speaking, of course, of the government of California . . . .” — What a great distillation of Sacramento.

* “What could go wrong?” [A reference to California’s brain fart to end gas-powered cars by 2035 coupled with the state’s grid operator recently requesting a stop to EV charging from 4 pm to 9 pm.] Putting it in more laymen terms in a fictional expansion of the announcement, she wrote, “ . . . freeze, just like a statue, between the hours of 4 p.m. and 9 p.m., avoiding movement that could cause an injury, lest you have to walk 16 miles to the ER with a broken scapula. Please also refrain from having any personal emergencies that might require a car during this specific time window. And for heaven’s sake, do not — please do not — go into labor between the hours of 4 p.m. and 9 p.m.”

* Then she quotes a Newsom spokesperson: “We’re not saying don’t charge them. We’re just saying don’t charge them between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m.” — You can’t make this stuff up. California is an SNL skit in real time.

* “Ah. Remember: If you’re going to get appendicitis, don’t.” — Need I say more?

* “California is a gorgeous state filled with natural wonders and wonderful people, but pretty soon the only way to get out of the place might involve the few remaining clusters of beleaguered residents’ begging Ron DeSantis to fly them to Martha’s Vineyard.” — Nicely put.

* On EV road trips: “Electric cars are great, unless you actually want to go somewhere that’s, you know, far.” Further, “. . . if you want to take a road trip with a car that plugs in, in a vast, sprawling country with multiple wilderness areas that will likely never have an abundance of places to plug it in . . . well, you might want to give the whole idea a second thought.” — You say?

* Or this line about her: “I believe in self-sufficiency, am a bit of a prepper, and always keep my gas tank at half full or higher in case the apocalypse breaks out or Beto O’Rourke somehow gets elected to some form of public office.” – The latter hypothetical would be proof that the electorate went mad. Again, hope that DeSantis will fly you to Martha’s Vineyard.

* Lastly, this jab at the airheaded central planners like Newsom and his coterie of sadomasochistic Green New Dealers: “I’d bet on the free market to do a better job than a guy like Gavin Newsom.” Precisely, let people decide – it’s called a free market – and not some shortsighted drunk-on-power goofs with an adolescent vision.

Radical visionaries seldom trouble themselves with consequences. With the “sustainable” grid chronically down, a heat wave means that you’ll . . . sweat, hopefully not into stroke. No electricity, no air conditioning. After controlling your usage with “smart” thermostats – beware of Alexa – the same geniuses might mandate the return to the Victorian 13-foot ceiling and ban air conditioning to go along with your gas-powered car. In one fell swoop, the state’s housing stock of 8-foot ceilings will be made obsolete. Our airheads follow in the footsteps of the many totalitarians who have gone before. They will make you into their better person even if it’ll ruin you.

Heather Wihelm’s full article is at https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/10/17/running-on-fumes/.

RogerG

November 4, 2022November 4, 2022

Real Institutional Racism in the Boardroom

The admissions building at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A trial widely perceived to be a referendum on affirmative action is scheduled to begin Monday. (HADLEY GREEN / The New York Times, file) — The admissions building at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (HADLEY GREEN / The New York Times, file)

Benjamin Disraeli (19th century British politician, Prime Minister, and writer/philosopher) in his book “Sybil, Or the Two Nations” wrote of the deep split of a people into two camps, almost nations, each completely estranged from the other:

“Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws . . . . THE RICH AND THE POOR.”

For him, the divide was between the rich and the poor, an artifact of a time of much greater hardship. For us, it is between the blue silos of a radical Left cultural ethos and the red hinterlands of the traditions of standards, faith, the rule of law, equality before the law, and popular sovereignty under constitutional checks. The former wishes to overthrow the latter.

In these isolated little blue enclaves, overwhelmingly inner cities and college campuses, the hyper-wealthy and academics can entertain ideological fancies far afield from the lives of the vast majority of people living outside, people who are actually struggling with the daily realities of living and not secure from them by walls, money, and tenured academic freedom.

How could the corporate boardroom – in the past immune – become so enthralled by this revolutionary ethos? The answer lies in the social realities of living in a narrowly confined space of limited interactions. A homogeneous mind incubates in a scene of intermarriage, secluded social engagements in a protective cocoon, and an upbringing that transmits the same campus cultural revolution in these secluded social petri dishes.

los angeles estate — Security gate at a Beverly Hills estate

Adapting Mao’s Long March mythology, Rudy Dutschke, a leader of the German radical Left of the 1960s, advocated a long march through institutions in that 1967 time of troubles of strikes, riots, and massive protests in the West. Rather than tear the institution down, take them over, he said. Well, it happened. Yesteryear’s student radical is today’s tenured college faculty with matriculated mental offspring littered throughout the Fortune 500.

What brings this to mind? Eighty-two American companies expressed their official support for race-based college admissions, loosely referred to as affirmative action, in two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court involving the University of North Carolina and Harvard (see their briefs below). Big corporate players such as Google, Apple, JetBlue, and General Electric produced briefs utilizing the same old neo-Marxist rhetoric of group-conscious oppression. Rhetorically, the table is set for the talisman of “diversity”. Merit is redefined as being a member of the proper race or possessing the proper genitalia and calling it “diversity”. No, this isn’t diversity of opinion. It’s the diversity of immutable characteristics. Competence and a special gnosis, it is assumed, emanates from melanin count and genitalia, not from observable qualifications. It’s preposterous.

The pretzel logic required to make this scheme marketable boggles the mind. In Monday’s hearing before the Supreme Court, defense counsel emphasized the gambit of race as one among many factors but couldn’t escape withering cross examination from Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito and Barrett. The inescapable fact is that at least some admissions will be based on race, and thusly a violation of statute and the Constitutional guarantees of equal protection. Trying to hide race among the weeds doesn’t eliminate the fact that race will be determinative to award advantages to some to the detriment of others not so privileged with the right skin color and genital comportment.

How could they get away with this after a Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment, Brown v. Board of Education, and the various Civil Rights Acts in the long campaign to end the award of benefits and/or disabilities based on race or other immutable factors? The whole enterprise relies on rhetorical legerdemain and a mountain of verbiage in bastardized “studies” to the point that “studies have shown” has gained the reputation as a tipoff for ideological skullduggery. It’s a new Jim Crow favoring the radical Left’s “oppressed”.

And an afront to most people’s practical sense of fairness. There’s a reason why lady justice wears a blindfold.

Not surprisingly given their backgrounds, corporate titans have bought into it. Read the briefs and you’ll find the ritual abuse of “diversity” and “qualified”, as in “Classroom diversity is crucial to producing employable, productive, value-adding citizens in business.” Or, how about the claim that the favoritism produces “a pipeline of highly qualified future workers and business leaders”? “Highly qualified” just became an oxymoron. “Qualification” now means the right melanin count and genitalia.

The whole thing is a legal, moral, and rational trainwreck. To borrow a movie line, “Yes, Virginia, there is institutional racism”, but it’s coming from the folks who brought you The 1619 Project, CRT, the 2020 summer of BLM riots, home appliances, and annual college admission letters. Amazing, the campaign against institution racism was always about furthering institutional racism.

May be a cartoon of text

RogerG

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* The corporate briefs in Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, and Harvard, can be found at https://www.naacpldf.org/wp-content/uploads/Brief-for-Major-American-Business-Enterprises-Supporting-Respondents-FINAL.pdf .

* An excellent synopsis of the case by Brittany Bernstein can be found at https://www.nationalreview.com/news/dozens-of-major-u-s-companies-urge-supreme-court-to-uphold-race-based-college-admissions/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=next-article&utm_term=first

October 23, 2022October 23, 2022

We Did It to Ourselves

In Rob Reiner’s “This Is Spinal Tap”, the boys in the band are asked about the unexpected deaths of some of their drummers, including one who mysteriously erupted in spontaneous combustion.

It’s hilarious, but not so funny for Florida electric vehicle (EV) owners in the wake of Hurricane Ian. We now know that water and EV batteries don’t mix. The things don’t need a spark. After the deluge and submersion in flood waters, they’ll just quietly simmer in a super-hot chemical reaction, smoke a little, and then erupt. Watch the Good Morning in America (GMA) report below.

The EV is the darling of our eco-central planners and the eco-acolytes who sit atop many of our institutions. For the elected ones, they didn’t gain their seats of power and influence by accident. We chose them. Through the franchise and Electoral College, we made the choice to give power to those who would force us out of our deep family investments in clean and fuel-efficient sedans, mini-vans, and SUV’s and into the thing that could set a packed parking lot and neighborhood ablaze. Add to that the range anxiety from inoperable, scarce, and inconvenient charging stations; dishonestly advertised operational distances if one takes into account running life-support and other systems like air conditioning and the heater; and the threat of hypothermia as we wait the hour or two for enough juice to get the thing up and running in a Michigan winter.

Wait, there’s more. The same folks who are foisting the EV on us are creating the most unstable grid distributing the most expensive electricity. An ever-growing expanse of giant windmill forests and broadening seas of solar panels marring ever greater portions of the earth’s surface will be our future if they have their way. And if that isn’t enough, much of that grid is exposed to the annual seven-month firestorm season from eco-crazed forestry practices that annually belches millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the air, like the 130 million tons from last year’s conflagrations in California – the equivalent CO2 of 25 million regular autos. So, they shove everyone into EV’s to allegedly save the planet as they encourage the buildup of debris to burn it up. Go figure.

Incidentally, try to find a place to charge up the thing if you happen to be in the path of the flames, the lines are down, and the cell towers are incinerated. It’s a perpetual motion machine of eco-nuttery. Lesson: Don’t sell that old Camry with the regular unleaded in the gas tank.

Who’s at fault? We are. We elected the clowns who thought that showering the country in paper money was economically righteous and think that eco-central planning is somehow different from the Soviet variety.

It’s not that the donkey party hid it from us. Nancy Pelosi and The Squad have been busy concocting the Green New Deal since Pelosi took the gavel (2019) and Biden the oath of office (2021). Anyone above the sentience level of a worm should have known. Biden repeatedly bellowed their intent when he, for instance, looked into the eyes of a teenage girl (a real XX-chromosome one) in 2019 and said,

“I want you to look at my eyes. I guarantee you. I guarantee you. We’re going to end fossil fuel.”

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden pumps his fist as he speaks during a campaign stop, Friday, Sept. 6, 2019, in Laconia, N.H. (AP Photo/Mary Schwalm)

True to his word, he’s trying to euthanize the entire industry: practically ending oil development on federal lands and offshore, axing pipelines, lavish spending on loopy “sustainables”, and a quiet strangulation of the energy companies by frightening financial capital away from them. For this gang, real, affordable energy is a dragon to be slain.

The choice of candidates in the 2020 presidential race was between the uncouth with the right policies (for the most part) and a revolutionary ethos of class warfare, neo-Marxist race-baiting, transgenderism, open borders, law unenforcement, and greenie fanaticism. As it turned out, a majority preferred the revolution. Look no further than the mirror for the cause of our troubles if you thought that the uncouth drove you into the arms of the revolutionary. A candidate is much more than the fact that he’s not the other guy.

See the source image

RogerG

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* “Red Tape Is Making Wildfires Worse”, Shawn Regan and Tate Watkins, National Review Online, Oct. 4, 2022, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/10/red-tape-is-making-wildfires-worse/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=capital-matters&utm_term=third

* “About Those Green Jobs . . . They Keep Vanishing”, Andrew Follett, National Review Online, Oct. 15, 2022, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/10/about-those-green-jobs-they-keep-vanishing/

* “Climate Policy Should Pay More Attention to Climate Economics”, John H. Cochrane, National Review Online, Sept, 3, 2021, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/climate-policy-should-pay-more-attention-to-climate-economics/

* “In intimate moment, Biden vows to ‘end fossil fuel'”, Steve Peoples, ABC News, Sept, 6, 2019, at https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/intimate-moment-biden-vows-end-fossil-fuel-65442382

October 14, 2022

Are We Getting Stupider?

Could be, I don’t know. We fellow Boomers weren’t so smart. We rebelled against self-restraint and got a world without self-restraint. Now, a pleasant afternoon stroll in Denver or New York City will be through a smokey haze of people lighting up blunts amid the staccato bursts of drive-bys.

You can’t say that the times are the best for kids. If we aren’t pummeling their future prospects with eco-nuttery and $31 trillion of debt, we are destroying their mental capacities under a barrage of toxic neo-Marxism and a campaign to turn teenage emotional instability into gender dysphoric mutilations. Not only that, with all the cultural poison at their I-phone fingertips, we suffocate their leaning behind masks, plexiglass, social distancing and an end to in-person instruction under the threat of teacher union die-hards. The results? This is the most anti-child era in living memory, if not all time, and I haven’t got to the zealous push to abort them from conception to just before the slap on the back side after exiting the birth canal. Maybe after that too. A few data points are illustrative.

Item #1: ACT Scores dropped to their lowest level in 30 years. The ACT is a snapshot of the mental astuteness of this year’s incoming college freshman class. The shamings, lockdowns, school closures, and kids living their lives in the glow of flat video screens have produced one of the most ill-prepared incoming classes of matriculants. We did it to them under the pseudo-claims of “follow the science” and “experts”. Progressivism’s blind faith in a professional-but-politicized class of bureaucrats led us straight into a dark hole, and an even darker and deeper one for our kids.

And once they get to the ivy-covered walls of state U, more stupidity awaits them. Look at what our isolated hyper-wealthy in the isolation of their hyper-wealthy foundations consider “genius”, a “genius” that will flush through the lecture halls. Item #2: the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation released this year’s 25 winners of their no-strings-attached “genius” cash awards ($800,000). They’re left-wing activists. They’re “geniuses” because of it. Really. I don’t know of any veterans of the Young Americans for Freedom or Federalist Society getting the phone call.

The winners check all the preferred boxes of today’s race/gender neurotics. Two-thirds are women and 19 of the 25 were recruited from the so-called “marginalized”, all of the approved biases. No Candice Owens or Winsome Sears (Virginia lt. gov.) types were obviously considered. Somewhere, among the sanctified, you might find someone of the wrong genitalia and melanin count but still certainly, along with the rest, of the right ideological orientation.

Patronizing mediocre artists (Amanda Williams) and a chattering class of whiners (Kiese Laymon, etc.) with the title of “genius” will degrade it like “real estate agent” after the collapse and serial fraud in the Florida Land boom in 1926. “Genius” was applied to Reuben Jonathan Miller, U. of Chicago prof and peddler of the “mass incarceration” nonsense. The crusade against “mass incarceration” means “mass decarceration” and is turning many of our neighborhoods into war zones. Thanks “genius”. How many more vapid treatments of anything “indigenous” do we need? Robin Kimmerer serves up another one in “Braiding Sweetgrass”. The more-in-tune-with-nature schtick is an attack on air conditioning, the family mini-van, and the single-family home. This stuff is as old as the hippie commune and is as equally bankrupt. And this makes her a “genius”? The WaPo reporter tried to buck up Kimmerer’s status by writing that her book “has gone from surprise hit to juggernaut bestseller”. No, only if “juggernaut” is 4,474 in Amazon’s rankings (paperback, 1,504 in Kindle, 3,313 in hardcover).

See the source image

Are these our educational influencers? These are only geniuses among people who are gullible enough to believe it. As a teacher of 30 years and annually exposed to the blatherings of credentialed activists telling us how to teach, I’ve watched them wilt under even mild cross examination. The phrase “empty suit” was tailored for this type. Yes, they’re empty suits but now they’re also rich “geniuses”. As for the kids, they’re languishing.

Watch Kmele Foster’s excellent observations on the decline in ACT scores, but don’t expect an $800,000 “genius” award for him coming from the MacArthurs. Use the link below.

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6313699523112

RogerG

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* “ACT Test Scores Drop to Lowest in 30 Years Following School Closures”, Cheyanne Mumphrey, RealClear Politics, 10/13/2022, at https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/10/13/act_test_scores_drop_to_lowest_in_30_years_following_school_closures_148318.html .

* “Meet the new MacArthur ‘genius grant’ winners”, Karen Heller, Washington Post, 10/12/2022, at https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/12/macarthur-genius-grant-fellows/ .

RogerG

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* “Meet the new MacArthur ‘genius grant’ winners”, Karen Heller, Washington Post, 10/12/2022, at https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/12/macarthur-genius-grant-fellows/ .

September 29, 2022September 29, 2022

The Tomfoolery of “Transition”, Social That Is

Watch buffoons in the national media and the upper rungs of the government sound technocratic, which means that they claim to be the inheritors of the “science”, the “experts”, and the “best and brightest” from our academic bubbles in the grip of, truth be told, cultural extremism. And watch our life get measurably worse.

Politics corrupts judgment, and no more fevered environment exists than one just before an election. Today, the word “transition” is employed to hide many sins. Just a week ago, Karine Jean-Pierre, Biden’s press secretary, announced, “. . . what we are seeing . . . is a transition to a more steady and stable growth.” Transition frequently crosses her lips on nearly everything that could foretell troubled times ahead. Biden, the donkey party powerful, and blue-state potentates are also especially fond of the word. It’s their current favorite to sound wise.

The jargon is a reflex of progressivism. Progressivism built its reputation on replacing the compromises, clashing interests, “smoke-filled rooms”, and bargaining of messy democracy with the credentialed “expert”. They actually believed that society can be managed by fine-tuning, like a technician adjusting an old-style carburetor. A little turn of the fiscal and regulatory screw here and there and bliss will be upon us. So, if fighting climate change and pursuing social justice (ergo blatant racial favoritism) are your goals, an agency of degreed “experts” and appropriate decrees from on high will seamlessly float the people in the right direction without pain. It’s all a bunch of hooey.

Hundreds of millions of free souls will not be rigidly controlled by a claque of government employees who lack the humility of admitting that they don’t know half as much as they claim, and a good portion of what they do know is wrong. The economist Friedrich Hayek warned of the inherent “knowledge problem” in government. It’s playing out before our eyes.

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“Transition” conceals a troubling winter. Fuel prices normally experience seasonal gyrations, but the Biden people raised the water level of those fluctuations by over half. Prices undulate at a rate of 50% to 100% over a year or two ago. Be prepared for a jump in electricity rates this winter on the east coast, Northeast, and other blue bubbles, which is not surprising given that they are most enthusiastic about rule by “expert” – all according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, an agency that is limited to measuring reality, and not to be confused with the “experts” of the climate change and equity freakouts.

“Transition” is often coupled with “soft landing”. President Clinton caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar, once parsed on the meaning of “is” in his perjury before a federal grand jury. The same is true for the treatment of “transition” and “soft landing” by the gaggle of progressives dominating the regime. The words are rhetorical cosmetic surgery for probable layoffs and business retrenchment. You don’t have to look far for proof. The economy only recently reached its pre-pandemic total employment numbers, which doesn’t take into account population growth. The laggard pace of employment screws up the unemployment rate. Vigorous job growth coming out of a shutdown by government fiat isn’t surprising. But a 3.7% unemployment rate out of a pool of adults shrunk by huge numbers opting out of the workforce makes the unemployment number almost superfluous.

Retrenchment is in the winds. Big Tech and others are beginning to trim some fat. Meta, Twilio, and Snap are jettisoning workers. Gap, Boeing, and Walmart are lopping administrative overhead. Real estate is taking a big hit as Wells Fargo, RE/MAX, and Redfin cut employees and agents as the Fed raises interest rates to combat another Fed-induced problem: inflation. And Biden and company still want to fight inflation – too much money chasing too few goods – by amazingly throwing more money at it. Never has a fire been successfully fought by pouring jet fuel on it.

Local businesses are hard it. The 2020 summer of riots didn’t help. Downtowns resemble ghost towns. Cities can’t proclaim a welcome mat for business when the sidewalks are open sewers and wanton theft, even serial assault, are ho-hum to district attorneys. Now we get to the cultural dimensions of “transition” and “soft landing”.

“Transition” to an “equity” society entails racial discrimination (against Asians and white males), lawlessness, crime victims, property destruction, XY-chromosome girls in XX-chromosome girls sports, and extremist indoctrination (eco-cultism, CRT, transgenderism, socialism) in the schools. No place is safe from the transitioners, not the home, not parenthood. Listen to Nikole Hannah-Jones – a symbol of the intersectionality of Black, female, and extremist cultural revolutionary – expounding on the danger of parents having a say in their children’s education (see below). It encapsulates the foolishness of “transition” and “soft landing” by “experts”.

Dropping the pretense of deceptive verbiage would be a great start. The so-called reformers are revolutionaries and should be forced to lay out their vision of how to create the new person for their new world. It’s totalitarian in scope. They need to lay their cards on the table so we are aware that the “soft landing” will be hard and brutal, as all such movements have proven to be. It won’t end well.

RogerG

Read more here:

* The U.S. Energy Information Agency’s electricity rate forecast of Sept. 7, 2022 can be found at https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/electricity.php .

* Jim Geraghty of National Review wrote an excellent piece on the subject in “The Economy Is Starting to Buckle”, National Review Online, Sept, 26, 2022, at https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-economy-is-starting-to-buckle/ .

* The normally suspect Bloomberg News announced the achievement of the employment milestone In “Employment in US Has Finally Exceeded Its Pre-Pandemic Level” at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-02/employment-in-us-has-finally-exceeded-its-pre-pandemic-level?leadSource=uverify%20wall .

September 23, 2022September 23, 2022

The Dystopia Bowls

May be an image of 4 people and people playing football — San Francisco 49ers safety Tashaun Gipson Sr. (31) celebrates after intercepting the football against the Seattle Seahawks during the second quarter at Levi’s Stadium on Sept. 18, 2022. (photo: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports)

Robert Smiley with The Hand Up Project brings backpacks full of food and essentials as he visits a homeless encampment along 112th Street Southwest in Everett on Friday. Smiley used to be homeless and addicted to drugs. Now he runs The Hand Up Project, where he goes to homeless camps and asks people if they want to get into treatment. (Mike Siegel / The Seattle Times) — A homeless encampment along 112th Street Southwest in Everett, Wa., near Seattle. (photo: Mike Siegel / The Seattle Times)

Probably due to past loyalty, I sat down to watch the San Francisco 49ers v. Seattle Seahawks game last Sunday (SF won 27-7); however, I must admit that my enthusiasm for professional sports has waned. I can’t remove from my mind Big Sports’ enrollment in the radical left. Neither can I erase the images of these two cities’ decline into urban chaos, as is true of most of the other NFL home cities. These cities willingly chose that path. A smothering cloud of ideologically driven misrule overhangs the stadium crowd, the broadcast, and the team organizations. With few exceptions, the NFL schedule has turned into a series of Dystopia Bowls: one team booster of the radical left agenda from a radical left dystopia playing another with an identical image.

I didn’t politicize the sport. Previously, I had no clue about the political leanings of those composing the team organizations and the league, and didn’t care. As for the cities, they upheld for the most part some sense of decency. Not anymore. The sport concerned itself, pure and simple, with athletic competition at the highest level. Not anymore.

How did the NFL and their urban homes allow themselves to descend into such depravity? The movie “All the President’s Men” made popular the modern cynic’s favorite principle: “Follow the money”. That’s not true by a long shot. If you want to accurately follow the course of human events, “Follow the ideas”. It’s how we got to a compromised NFL and today’s unlivable cities.

It begins with one word: Socialism. Yes, that word, a rhetorical vessel wherein the perennial hopes and dreams of human betterment can be realized, despite its track record of abysmal failure. Its oppressed/oppressor dialectic is so appealing that it escapes any final verdict on its failure. It’s the vampire that won’t stay dead.

In one sense, what began with Marx and Engels, passed through the 60’s New Left, and would end up in today’s BLM, Antifa, college campuses everywhere, and the Democratic Party platform. In the good ‘ol days of the 19th century Socialist International, the oppressed was the industrial revolution’s urban working class (proletariat). But the dreams of revolution by the proletariat fizzled and where they did succeed in a takeover, it was a litany of nightmares: 100 million deaths in the 20th century by one accounting of a group of French historians in The Black Book of Communism.

Yet, something happened on the way to the collectivist Emerald City of Oz to keep the flame burning. Two things: new groups auditioned for the roles of oppressor (the white patriarchy) and oppressed (minorities and a plethora of hypothetical outcasts), and the real threat was said to come from an abstract “system”. And voilà, new life was breathed into the disgraced Marx.

Pointing the way were disgruntled Marxists ensconced in what came to be called the Frankfurt School. They followed the line of thought of Antonio Gramsci who tried to explain away the reluctance of workers to be enthusiasts of revolution by pinning the blame on “cultural hegemony” – the values, mores, institutions, and ways of life that keep them supposedly docile. In modern lingo, synonyms would be “the man”, “the system”, or “the establishment”. Inspired by Gramsci’s gambit, European activist academics banded together and formed the Institute for Social Research at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, which would later be dubbed The Frankfurt School. Hitler, however, set them packing in the 1930’s. Many of them made their way to the United States – the Frankfurt School set up shop in New York City – to eventually take up academic posts to proselytize the American young in their babble.

Theordor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, et al, and the risible Herbert Marcuse lent their thoughts and encouragement to the burgeoning 60’s counterculture and the extremist New Left to continue the erosion of the foundations of western civilization. The physical consequences were plagues of drugs and STD’s. The political offshoots were the SDS, Weather Underground, Black Panthers, Symbionese Liberation Army, etc. Crime and urban riots erupted, and campuses were paralyzed in protest and violence. It would appear that the trail of these ideas is one of tears. Some liberals were shocked into neo-conservatism by the 1970’s and 1980’s.

Once again, disaster, and, once again, someone will appear to pick up the torch to fling it. It’s proof that gullibility like the poor will always be with us. In our social media world, glibness reigns supreme in the form of stitching together words into appealing quips that remain just as erroneous as they did before. The glibness of the BLM politburo, Nikole Hannah-Jones (the lead founder behind the intellectually bankrupt The 1619 Project), Bernie, the Biden crowd, the CRT demagogues, AOC and her Squad, and the big wheels of the Democratic Party can only put lipstick on a pig and cannot with a wave of the hand turn the porcine beast into Miss Universe. I don’t believe in shapeshifting. Do you?

Today is different, though. Whereas before, the nuttiness infected the fringes of society, only occasionally bursting forth to wreak havoc. Today, it’s everywhere and especially among the those who occupy the commanding heights of the culture. Why does big business from Major League Baseball to Coca-Cola to Delta Airlines to Disney risk alienating two-thirds of their customer base, unless they actually believe this bunk? There must be something more at work than fear of the race hustlers’ shakedown racket.

Rudi Dutschke, a German missionary of the 60’s New Left, pointed the way by espousing a “long march through the institutions”. He elaborated, “Revolution is a long complicated process in which people have to change.” He meant to shove aside and replace established civil society and government. But others realized that a root-and-branch approach wasn’t necessary, that today’s unkept radicals in blue jeans could be tomorrow’s tenured staff in tweed. Welcome to your kid’s nest of revolution, errr, college.

May be an image of 1 person and standing — Rudi Dutschke

Simply put, the barbarians at the gates became the barbarians inside the gates. Lo and behold, the neo-socialism is dogma among the beautiful people residing in their super-zip code (Martha’s Vineyard, Chappaqua, NY, Atherton, Ca., Malibu, Ca., etc.), any place where hyper-wealth screens people from the consequences of their beliefs. Of course, part of the uniform for this new aristocracy is a degree from a legacy university, preferably Ivy League. They have all the outward signs of manners and outlook of a college pedigree, and the inward signs of proper breeding in fealty to the dogma. The Fortune 500 is no longer the Republican Party at work. It’s an alumni booster club for the neo-socialism of the campus.

The minions of this new privilege infiltrate beyond the boardroom and into all positions of power and influence. Since FDR made DC into the new Rome, and swelled its politico-cultural influence beyond the District and into the surrounding states of Maryland and Virginia, the neo-socialism has at its disposal the aggrandized power of the federal government. Any popular threat to its monopoly can be squashed under the banner of another German rhetorical import: streitbare Demokratie, or defensive democracy. It normally shows up as censorship. It’s the speech control in “hate” and “extremist” statutes and regulations in the European Union, UK, Austria, Germany, etc. You hear it out of the mouths of Pelosi, Schumer, Biden in “defending our democracy”, which is code for thought control by pasting contrary views with “misinformation”. Biden has attempted an institutionalization of the censorship by creating “misinformation” ministries in his administration, all stymied as of now.

Streitbare demokratie seeks to freeze in amber the gains of the long march of neo-socialism through the institutions. The effects are physically observable in viral gender confusions among the young, uninhabitable downtowns, a plague of crime, radical indoctrination of the young, an ecotopia that forcibly reverts life back to medieval times, and a crumbling infrastructure that can’t deliver safe roads, sewers, water, or affordable and reliable electricity. Hillsides aflame, high taxes, inflation, and gargantuan government waste characterize life in this “democracy”. It’s like the decay of Rome in the 5th and 6th centuries after repeated barbarian conquests and misrule. Soon, much of the place is abandoned only to fall into rubble, to be later uncovered by the new field of 19th century archeology. Is that the fate of New York City, Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New Orleans, et al?

The stench of watching it unfold in real time overpowers the senses. The knowledge of the occurrence overwhelms any enjoyment of watching a football game. Sorry.

May be a cartoon of text

RogerG

Sources:

* An account of the super-zip codes can be read here: “Super ZIPs: New map reveals who is part of the rich ‘isolated elite”, Deseret News, Nov. 18, 2013, at https://www.deseret.com/2013/11/18/20529811/super-zips-new-map-reveals-who-is-part-of-the-rich-isolated-elite#:~:text=In%20the%20Wall%20Street%20Journal%20and%20his%20book%2C,5%2010514%3A%20Chappaqua%2C%20N.Y.%20%28New%20York%20City%20area%29

* A rudimentary internet search of “streitbare Demokratie”, Rudi Dutschke, The Frankfurt School, the guiding lights of the School, Antonio Gramsci, will shed light on today’s neo-socialism.

September 9, 2022September 10, 2022

The Bear Flag Republic Doubles Down on Stupid

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You should know that I was a second-generation California native of 62 years who no longer lives in the state as of 2015. I am retired but had been disgruntled with the state for the previous couple of decades. The state is worn down, falling apart, and progressive utopias were, and still are, pursued at every turn. At least I got out before the blackouts.

Already, at the time, $400-$500 monthly electricity bills in the summertime heat of Bakersfield were financially strapping us. The high rates are a form of extortion to compel a resident into poorly-thought-out wind and solar schemes at a time when the powerful were beginning to kill off nuclear, natural gas, and other streams of reliable electricity. I fled a state with a current average of 25 cents per KWh to a place with 8 cents (national average: 15 cents). The state’s population is being fleeced for a blackout-riddled energy product, with rates running so high that depopulation of the Central Valley and desert regions is the unmentioned but logical consequence. What good is accomplished when you must swelter in the darkness?

Average electricity rates in 9/3/22. (Source: energysage.com)

The con is hidden behind the threat of “climate change”, which became the rhetorical substitute for the old “global warming”. CO2 is the go-to scapegoat, and it probably has a role. How much? Hard to say. Water vapor does to, but the sound of crickets resonates in media gabfests. People who claim to know don’t, and lack realistic scientific humility. They fail to admit that there remain huge gaps in our understanding of the dynamics of the atmosphere.

We do know that we live at a time when a plethora of global sensors – terrestrial, atmospheric, in space – produce a flood of data as never before. The problem isn’t the paucity of data. Gosh, we can see every weather system around the world. The problem lies in the processing of the visuals and numbers. What do they mean? Nearly everywhere across the airwaves and the net, ideology goes where scientific theory dare not tread. When they don’t know, they rely on their biases to hide the fact. Mediagenic mouthpieces declare that it must be man-caused, which leads the unthinking right into the wheelhouse of the progressive utopians: redesign the human being to fit into the utopians’ preferred lifestyle. We have left real scientific inquiry long ago. The results are played out in California with the mauling of the state in massive wildfires that are ignited by ideologically driven forestry practices and ideologically driven state agencies mandating and pressuring public utilities away from simple things like grid maintenance. And now, the regular blackouts.

Have you heard about PG&E’s guilty plea in causing the deaths of 84 people in the 2018 Camp Fire? Poorly maintained power lines touched off the firestorm. But why so poorly maintained? PG&E may be guilty at some level, but so are the eco-driven mandarins in Sacramento and their henchmen in state agencies such as the PUC, one of the state’s utility regulatory agencies. The political inmates running the asylum in Sacramento in their infinite wisdom foisted on the utilities the “Renewables Portfolio Standard” in 2002, 13 years before my flight from the state. The state has been in a pell-mell rush to shoehorn its grid into “renewables”, essentially wind and solar, 60% of all sources by 2030, in a mere 8 years! More money spent on the utopia is less money to prevent sparks from igniting the poorly maintained hillsides. PG&E was in the dock, but where were the activists, agency heads, and politicians? They deserve a perp-walk too.

It’s amazing that this is done as mandates for roof-top solar has reduced incoming company revenue. The utilities are hit by the double whammy of less coming in and more going out. It’s surprising that more of the state hasn’t been charred, and much more CO2 convulsed into the atmosphere than from the state’s 800,000 internal combustion engines in the residents’ possession.

And to think that now they want everyone out of their dependable car and into a $60,000-$70,000 electric vehicle. Nothing like doubling down on stupid.

See the source image

RogerG

Sources:

* “Cost of electricity in California”, updated 9/3/22, at https://www.energysage.com/local-data/electricity-cost/ca/
* “Wind Energy in California”, California Energy Commission, at https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/california-power-generation-and-power-sources/wind-energy-california#:~:text=Wind%20energy%2C%20an%20integral%20part%20of%20California%27s%20electricity,the%20south%20to%20Shasta%20County%20in%20the%20north.
* “RPS [Renewables Portfolio Standard] Program Overview”, Public Utilities Commission, at https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/RPS_Overview/#:~:text=California%27s%20Renewables%20Portfolio%20Standard%20%28RPS%29%20is%20one%20of,portfolio%20from%20eligible%20renewable%20energy%20resources%20by%202030
* “PG&E pleads guilty to 84 counts of manslaughter in devastating Camp Fire”, NBC News, June 16, 2022, at https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pg-e-pleads-guilty-84-counts-manslaughter-devastating-camp-fire-n1231256

September 6, 2022September 6, 2022

Biden’s Speech: Red Meat for a Red Base

May be an image of 3 people and people standing — President Biden during his speech on Thursday, 8/1/22, in Philadelphia.

Biden’s speech of last Thursday in Philadelphia was red meat for a Red base. Breaking it apart, “red meat” is rhetoric “that is forceful and poignant, as will excite or inflame their supporters”, and “Red” to characterize a political faction isn’t to be confused with the red/blue designations on US political maps. “Red” is drawn from the traditional color assigned to adherents of the socialist movement. It’s historical and dates back to the 19th century Socialist International with its red flag and workers-of-the-world-unite anthem, of which Karl Marx was the titular figure. Just to be clear.

The Democratic Party of today is the American manifestation of the many socialist parties around the world. The heart of the party’s most fervent members lies in the broader socialist movement. Notwithstanding the leaders’ proforma denials, the party’s political program meshes quite nicely with the socialist aim of greater government control of the economy and life, the same advocacy found in the Labor Party of the UK or any of the other European socialist parties. There’s a reason why Bernie, the Senate’s self-described socialist, caucuses with the Democrats. Birds of a feather. Don’t be fooled by the brush-off.

It was certainly fitting that the camera view of Biden at the lectern had a background bathed in red. From it, Biden spewed inflammatory words that had little place in rational discourse. This isn’t the tone of your local crisis counselor. It was a red speech for a Red cause.

I delayed my commentary till I could hear the speech in total and unfiltered. Bluntly put, it was shocking. Its only conceivable purpose was to rev up the base to forestall a long-anticipated Republican wave in November. It was filled with raw appeals to emotion, stoking fears, incoherent, and riddled with hypocrisy. It was the kind of stemwinder used to get the Parisian mob to storm the Bastille. And if you know anything about the Bastille events on July 14, 1789, you’ll know that the place only imprisoned a few, and they were the most heinous miscreants (the Marque de Sade among them). After the surrender, the guards were butchered, their heads cut off and mounted on pikes and paraded around Paris. Biden lifted a page from the playbook of the hate-filled rabble-rouser Paul Marat; I hope without the detached heads.

To kindle his partisans, he stood behind the trappings of the presidential office to deliver language more appropriate for a fire-breathing sermon. One ploy was the abundant use of the phrase “MAGA Republicans”. Mao wannabes need a neat word or phrase to encapsulate the “enemy”, a target, to roll up the opposition. Marx invented “capitalist” as a focal point of opprobrium, Stalin had his kulaks, and for Biden, his “MAGA Republicans”. Soon, afterwards, it was all over the airwaves as if the party’s media sycophants got the robo chain text.

Do you think that he limited his gaze to the MAGA subspecies of Republican? Not on your life. The speech’s language was fungible enough to tar any Republican, even the ones that Trump hates, if they continually stand athwart the political thrusts of his party’s radicalized base. Just lather them with “intimidated”, another gambit in the speech.

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Rhetorical ground was laid to attack all of them since being pro-life and following the Apostle Paul on marriage were lumped together with January 6 “insurrectionists”. The constant reference to “going backwards” is the well-worn refrain of all revolutionaries. Progress is synonymous with revolution and neither has any room for the venerable and time-tested, no matter the allusion to the Constitution and rule of law. Both were cynically and repeatedly violated by this man bathed in red light.

I was waiting for the tag on Republicans as defenders of slavery (Biden golden oldie: “put you all back in chains”) and Jim Crow, completely oblivious to the fact that it was the Democratic Party that rammed through the secessionitis defense of slavery of the Civil War and constructed Jim Crow in the aftermath. These historical Democrat actions came about as reactions to the rise of the Republican Party. Biden and Democrats, get your facts straight!

In essence, Biden condemned the “MAGA Republicans” as subversives to our civil order under the banality of a “threat to our democracy”, leaving unsaid the simple fact that we don’t have a “democracy”. It’s a constitutional republic, something a bit more sophisticated than a simpleton’s 50%-plus-1 standard of mail-in ballots to decide public issues. The Constitution and the rule of law belts our public officials in all kinds of restraints in spite of Gallup.

Really, the threat that Biden had in mind wasn’t the clearly observable 574 riots, $2 billion in damage, 2,000 police casualties, and anywhere from 17 to 35 killed as a consequence of the 2020 Antifa/BLM summer of riots. No, for Biden, it was January 6 with the only death accruing to a Trump supporter. Sorry, Biden, no men in blue died in it.

The bombast left unsaid the many ways that he was soiling the Constitution and rule of law. No separation of powers for Biden with the lawmaking authority in a Congress and a president limited to executing the laws. In 2021, he tried to extend an eviction moratorium although simultaneously recognizing its illegality. He knew that he was violating the Constitution, which was later confirmed by a Supreme Court decision (Alabama Association of Realtors, et al v. Dept. of Health and Human Services, et al, Aug. 26, 2021). Most recently, he invented student loan forgiveness out of thin air in direct contradiction to the previously announced position in June of his fellow-traveler, Speaker Pelosi.

It’s not just his cutting loose from the Article II restraints which limits him to carrying out laws made in Article I (Congress). He even ignores his Constitutional duty to perform the carrying out. Item #1: immigration law. The US code is chock full of provisions that define law-abiding and non-law-abiding immigration. Word has spread like wildfire in the troubled regions of the world that the border is such an open sieve that localities east and south have been emptied of their residents to join caravans in the long trek to a border manned by a Border Patrol that has been morphed into a Welcome Wagon. After a greeting by the Border Patrol, the illegal crossers are awarded plane travel to a destination of their choice.

Border Officials Expect Illegal-Alien Invasion. And Biden Won’t Stop It. — Caravan of immigrants approaching the US southern border in 2021.

Don’t forget, these aren’t refugees from Cuba or Middle Eastern jihadist goons. Biden, in effect, has redefined refugee in such a way as to declare 8 US Code Section 12 (Immigration and Nationality) null and void under the guise of “prosecutorial discretion”. That’s right, “discretion” is stretched to cover the nearly blanket non-enforcement of 8 US Code Section 12 by imperial presidential dictat. Hardly can Biden wrap himself in the Constitution and rule of law when his actions make him eligible for impeachment. The word is projection: hiding your intentions behind false accusations of your opponents doing what you have done.

A pattern of Democrat campaigning is evident: don’t tack to the middle, but gin-up your party’s normally uninterested, ill-informed, and lackadaisical voter base to counter the enthusiasm of the other side. It worked for Obama in 2012, Pelosi and Schumer in 2018, and Biden in 2020. The heart of the strategy is to embrace the Left, not run from it. Use absurdities, gross hyperbole, and illusory threats to get your people to the polls. For 2022, it is to make the campaign a referendum on Trump and not on the party in power with much to answer for. And all of this bombast was present in Biden’s speech.

The speech was an insult to the office of the presidency. Fear of the electorate punishing your party at the polls is no excuse for turning Independence Hall into a Nuremburg Rally. People quite rightly have an aversion to escalating food and fuel prices, shortages, crime surges, their cities becoming open sewers, their children suffocating behind filthy masks, their schools being turned into woke reeducation camps, blackouts, greenie fanaticism, the socialism – i.e., the general Democratic Party program and its consequences. Biden would profit from Clinton’s dose of sobriety after the Republican blowout in the 1994 midterms (the R’s gained 54 House seats): “The era of big government is over.” Instead, Biden gave us red meat for his Red base.

Doubling down on stupid may work if it gets Biden’s Red-oriented base to show up. Sad, but true.

May be a cartoon of fire, outdoors and text

RogerG

Sources:

* Numbers of casualties and damage attributed to the 2020 summer riots are curiously hard to come by. They can be found if a person expands the search beyond Wikipedia, the CNN/MSNBC nexus, and legacy media. Other than vague generalities, specifics are nowhere to be found in those venues. Here’s a list of some sources with specifics:
“More Than 2,000 Officers Injured in Summer’s Protests and Riots”, Police Magazine, Dec. 3, 2020, at https://www.policemag.com/585160/more-than-2-000-officers-injured-in-summers-protests-and-riots
“Riot deaths ignored by major networks; watchdog finds 99.3% of protest coverage focused elsewhere”, Washington Times, June 4, 2020, at https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jun/4/riot-deaths-ignored-by-major-networks-watchdog-fin/
“2020 BLM/Antifa Riot Deaths”, National Conservative, at https://national-conservative.com/extremist-files/2020-blm-antifa-deaths/
“Police chief association releases number of officers injured during violent riots”, Fox News, Dec. 1, 2020, at https://www.foxnews.com/us/police-chief-officers-injured-riots?fbclid=IwAR0wFsq7Ndyhr7HyBQQnZ10Gn4WI_eJz4gH67vbg5ehPJ8u6WBGCKgF80H8
“RIOTS BY THE NUMBERS: POLICE CASUALTIES, PEOPLE KILLED DURING ‘PEACEFUL PROTESTS’”, Louder with Crowder, July 31, 2020, at https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/riots-by-the-numbers-police-casualties-people-killed-during-peaceful-protests