The Purge: Post-Election Edition

Sometimes, you are faced with a disconnect that is so profound that it is alarming in its implications.  One such example is the conduct that I and other friends have been on the receiving end of since Tuesday night.  The vitriol itself would normally be bad enough, as it has come at the hands of people who are usually vocal to the point of preachiness about “tolerance” and “diversity”, but when its coming from people we thought were our friends, it is as disappointing as their venom is disturbing.

Earlier today, I read a long post on Facebook from someone whom I have known a long, long time, explaining his justification for such behavior.  In several ways, this was a continuation of a series of disparagements and slanders he started Tuesday night, but to read just how much he’s allowed this poison to cloud this thinking really took me aback.  I had resolved to sleep on it before writing this piece, but when I got home, I saw this from another friend who I have only known for about ten years, a friend who I first befriended online, but who I later met in person (he lives in the north part of the Puget Sound region, and whom I have since met up with several other times):

so I’ve been called a racist three times in the last two days….twice by people who know me well and who should know better, and once by some idiot who doesn’t know me at all. So, I make this request of all of you…….If you consider me a racist for how I voted (which I’ve explained numerous times). Instead of dirtying yourself with that kind of ugliness, unfriend me both here and in real life…..It is wrong and ignorant and prejudiced and you know it. I have a pretty high opinion of all of you and would like to hold onto that opinion…..so just unfriend me and not ruin my perception of the better person that I believe you to be.
I wish you well.

Reading this angered me.

It angered me, because I know this man.  I’ve done business with this man.  I’ve had coffee with this man.  I’ve met his wife, and I’ve done work for the both of them.  This slander angered me.  And my disappointment tempered it.  I was disappointed because two other people who knew him could still hurl this accusation in a way that clearly displayed serious enough intent that he took it seriously.  I was disappointed because he was not the only person I knew experiencing this.

Which brings me back not only to the friend justifying this kind of behavior, but all my friends.  Facebook is really an interesting development.  While it can be a timesuck, it has also been a means  for me to keep in contact with family all over the country, to renew friendships with people I went to college with, people I went to law school with, people I worked pre-law jobs with, or to strengthen friendships formed in other places on the internet, as well as make new friends with friends of my friends, and join some online communities based on shared interests, some of which don’t really have too much at all to do with politics.

Now when you think about it, having friends from so many different experiences and times in my life, it should not be too terribly  shocking that some of them hold political leanings to the opposite of my own.  While this can “get loud” sometimes, I have never considered “unfriending” anyone because we disagree about something.  I have often said, my tongue only partially in my cheek, that if I were to act in such a manner every time someone else was wrong, I would have long ago given the world the finger, and moved to a remote cabin up in the mountains where I would no longer have to deal with such effrontery.  The truth is that I’m actually used to having relationships of various degrees with people who believe differently than I do.  Much of my family actually falls into this category, but it doesn’t dim my affection for them.  Some of my friends on Facebook are people whom I chose to be friends with, knowing full well their opposition to my viewpoint on various matters. I was able to do so because I still shared some sort of interest with them, or because I enjoyed the exchanges I had with them, because they were able to debate without the hyperbole, the slander, and the pigeon strutting which is all too common in my experience when dealing with those who have political views which oppose my own.  As for those who subscribe to a different view who are my friends from previous shared experiences, the point remains the same; I chose to be friends with them, if only because my previous experiences with them taught me that they weren’t bad people, regardless of their political views.  Put another way, their opposing viewpoints do not dim my affection for these people whom I made a conscious decision to associate with and  “friend” on the social media platform.  So when I see these same people unflinchingly and reflexively assert that the possession of an opposite opinion can ONLY be the result of evil intention and/or some debilitating form of ignorance or intellectual disability, which then somehow justifies the ongoing slander and disparagement, like some perverse cadence of curiously permissible hate and intolerance of the now “unfriended” or soon to be “unfriended” individual, my sadness becomes profound.  When the justification includes naked assertions of “facts” which are no such thing, and when the justifier is someone you know to be smarter than the things they are saying, I am disappointed.  When the justification is then wound up with this rather remarkable pronunciation:

People are not “unfriending” their “friends” because of an election. They are separating themselves from people who have exposed themselves to lack the benevolence, intelligence, sophistication and good-will-of-heart to participate in the advanced citizenship known as “America”.

I realize that some of the people who cry loudest about “tolerance” and “diversity” are least capable of living in a society that values it, or can benefit from it.  Henry Ford once famously quipped at an early point in his company’s life “You can have one of my cars in any color you like, as long as it’s black.”  That kind of restriction doesn’t live up to the ideal presented in either word, nor does it make for a healthy society.

My unfriending friend also made a point often made by various members and followers of the Left over the last decade or so…his own variation on the slightly humorous assertion that he and others who share his view are the “adults” in the room:

We can relate to children because we were all children once upon a time. However, as we grow older and wiser and more sophisticated, we do not socialize with children. They are not part of our peer group. We do not pass notes that say “yes, no or maybe” when we are 30 or 40.

That is, of course, his view.  For myself, once I moved away from the community we both grew up in, and went to law school, where I started to ask questions which made some of my professors uncomfortable, and started reading the treatises that used to be used to train lawyers, but have been long since abandoned in favor of the case method, I grew to form more conservative views than those I have been exposed to (less diplomatic people might be inclined to say “indoctrinated in”) when I was younger.  The irony is that the more I read, and the more I observed, and the more my body of knowledge grew as I continued my education, the more I developed these views.  The key to this is the “I”.  I didn’t come to these conclusions because they were what I was being taught.  I didn’t come to these conclusions because it was what my professors were telling me.  I did that, as my knowledge and experience grew and developed.  These weren’t conditions that lend themselves to “regression” to some troglodyte lens through which the world is viewed, and while I’m not hurt by the endless broad brush assertions to the contrary, I have grown impatient with apparent apprehension that is excuses people who state this from having to take me seriously, and instead somehow get a free pass to insult me and my friends, and casually ascribe all manner of ill or evil intent to our views.  If you’re a friend of mine, and you’re doing this, the question I challenge you to answer is this:

“Are you really that unwilling to focus your wit and intellect on persuading me to see the reason in your position, or are you simply incapable of successfully doing so, and your actions are instead some kind of coping mechanism?”

I submit that the question is one that you should answer honestly as much for yourself and your own well-being as it is for mine.

Will any of this cause my unfriending friend to engage in any serious introspection, or will he simply continue his social media crusade and unfriend me too?  I hope that it is the former and not the latter, not just between us, but between all of the people in this country right now, because it is one thing to call me an enemy, but still engage in a dialogue for the sake of our shared experiences and amity (Hell, if Jefferson and Adams could do it, there is no reason for us to want or believe otherwise).  It is quite another to call me an enemy, then set out to treat me as one…and if this happens often enough, to enough people, then that is exactly what we will have, and nothing about that is “American”.

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The Cowards Are Winning The Nation Because We Are Letting Them

I have been watching the latest cultural crusades with some dread and trepidation.

The campaign against the Confederate Battle Flag is one in which cowards have not only prevailed, but engaged in an orgy of self-congratulation that would leave most rational witnesses convinced of the insanity of the most fervently committed, and it has enjoyed a success that could not have been possible until we empowered those among us who decided to be offended at anything.  Once we allowed offense to become a de facto crime, we robbed ourselves of the most powerful tool of personal and regional autonomy: The Burden of Persuasion.

Make no mistake.  This is where we have been headed the minute we set foot on this road.  One need only look back and recognize that this has been how the left has accomplished every major coup of the last 60 years.  What could not be won in persuasion, and therefore by legislative means, was won in courtrooms, by judges and justices peering in “the law”, and divining just the right purpose to reward petitioners by mining the necessary meanings from penumbras and emanations, until they have gotten so bold that they will announce their conclusions as rooted in shallow philosophy rather than actual jurisprudence.  And at the same time, they have set themselves up as the ultimate arbiters of culture, unafraid to take advantage of the general good nature of those they would browbeat into submission.  This, was in fact, their avenue to victory.  By claiming offense at anything and everything, they caused those they deemed themselves to be superior to surrender.  It is a cowardly way to advance an idea, a notion, a concept, or a worldview, but shame was not to stand in the way of victory.

It is said that one of the great flashes of genius in the Second Amendment is that it prevents compulsion and requires persuasion.  Small wonder, then that the Second Amendment is a touchpoint, and a sore one at that in the war that our cultural betters have been waging against us for years now.  I have largely stayed out of the battle over the Confederate Battle Flag, not because I didn’t think it mattered as a fight, but because it has been a convenient distraction and wedge to occupy good people in a never-ending battle against the cultural shock troops of our betters, while the very people who have fomented this conflict benefit from drawing everyone’s attention away from what they are doing.  Frankly, the only reason I’m commenting on this farce now has to do with a blog post that made its way around Facebook this week, where a “hero” took it upon himself to tear the battle flag off the back of a semi trailer.  The author waxed poetic about the vandal’s heroism, and about the “cowards” who fought for the losing cause of the Confederacy.   The aggressiveness of the ignorance underscored why this matters.

Back when I was young, and my skull full of mush, I believed in the nobility of the North’s cause in that conflict.  I too, referred to that banner as a traitor’s flag.  But when I got outside the halls of public indoctrination, and took the time to read first-hand accounts, and to dig deep into the history to understand the events of the era, I learned that not everything that I was taught was correct, and that it sure as hell didn’t tell the whole story.  But even when I didn’t know what I didn’t know about the conflict, I still wouldn’t have characterized the Confederates as “cowards”.  Knowing what I know now, I know that men don’t fight for years, in rags, sometimes barefoot, with as many of their number falling prey to malnutrition as to enemy action out of a belief in an institution that many of them weren’t wealthy enough to practice on their own, and it is cartoonish and silly to assert otherwise.

But flush in their recent judicial victories, complete with govern-given “rights”, and cultural victories against a symbol that represents a lot of things, good and bad, our betters now assume that persuasion is no longer necessary.  They show no hesitation at demonizing anyone who dares to think, or believe in ways in which they do not approve.  They seek to criminalize non-conformity, to bring the power of the state to bear against anyone who dares resist their collective will.  This is the essence of cowardice; the absolute refusal to persuade when compulsion has been made easy.  It shows no respect, despite demanding it still when “offense” is invoked, and it will brook no resistance.  The only view that is acceptable is their own, and if you cannot be made to voluntarily silence yourself, then they will shut you up by force, and make an example of you if necessary.  And when all else fails, they will attack the dead.

I read a tweet the other day by some Administration flunky, which expressed the view that states rights has been dead (and rightly so) since the Civil War.  In some ways, he was correct, but in the most important one, he was wrong.  I don’t recall any amendment repealing the Tenth Amendment, and until that occurs, Americans everywhere are free to exercise their rights within their home state to live in any way that they did not expressly grant the Federal government control over. And it is LONG past time to stop being polite, to our own detriment, and remind our betters and our rulers (BIRM) of that fact.

It’s been said that war is simply politics by other means.  Our betters believe that politics is war by other means, and that is why they are always on the attack.  If it feels like you’re always being put on the offensive, it’s because you are.  And its being done by people who are cowards, people who don’t want to have a conversation, people who don’t want to have a debate.  They are people who want to lecture.  They are people who want to scold.  No give and take is necessary, because they don’t have to afford you the courtesy or respect of acknowledging that your opposing (or even just different) thoughts and beliefs are honestly arrived at, derived, or earned.  They are people who eschew morals, but cling to their own ideology, and advance it by any means necessary as if it were the strongest moral imperative.  As long as your motives can be disregarded by the casting of aspersion, then they do not have to persuade you, because you…YOU…are a racist.  YOU are a hater.  YOU are a bigot.  YOU are a reactionary, and only their view may prevail.

The President recently said that the only thing we all have in common is government.  It is small wonder then, that so many among us keep trying to imbue it will power it was never meant to have, in part to stamp out any non-conformity with what it would plan for us.  I think that we could set the cultural cannon fodder back on their heels if we would only stand.  It wouldn’t mean being rude; merely firm.  But then, if they continue to criminalize thought, and continue to presume that they know what is in our hearts, then they should be weary.  Getting what one has wished for has been the undoing of many people throughout the years, and the fact is that if they are determined to make me, and my friends outlaws, then I am quite sure that we will be the scariest damn outlaws to ever walk the Earth.

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Beware The Wrath of A Patient Man

This week, Chris Matthews attempted to expand a lucrative franchise of fostering division and hatred in a manner befit of a panoply of “leaders” of the “African-American Community” when he assumed the mantle of authority to speak “On behalf of all white people“.

Now I’m not about to follow in his footsteps and make the same mistake. I can only speak for myself, and as a person who happens to be white (think physical characteristic and not identity), I assure you that Chris Matthews does not speak for me. If some of the reactions that I read yesterday are any indication, I’m not the only one who shares this opinion.

I’m not sure if the recent anniversary of the untimely death of Mary Jo Kopechne at the hands of one of his former associates was weighing a little too heavily on his conscience, causing him to have a little something extra before his broadcast, or years of seeing “RACISM!!!!” in everything from blacktop roads to the milk in his morning corn flakes has further strained his already tenuous grasp on reality. I prefer either of those options to rank cynicism and a weariness at seeing grievance hustlers like Al “I-perpetrated-a-fraud-and-got-away-with-it” Sharpton, and Jesse “Hymietown” Jackson make a very good living casting every event imaginable as an expression of racism and discrimination requiring them to “lead their communities”, and often demand apologies when none are owed from people who do not owe them, and deciding to give it a whirl himself.

Regardless, the media, and the usual suspects, which includes politicians, have done a fine job in turning Treyvon Martin’s death into something it never was: the result of racism.

From the Injustice Department, headed by one of the biggest race hypocrites to draw breath in my memory, to the President himself, who again inserted himself into this controversy by pissing gasoline all over a fire stoked by these “leaders” for the last week, the meme is out there that racism is the reason a 17-year-old is dead, along with a law that was never invoked in the criminal case against the hispanic man who shot him. And it is being used to justify demonstrations among the perpetually grieved, and riots and property damage that make most law-abiding Americans less, not more, sympathetic to their cause. “Disgusted” is far too mild a word to describe my feelings about the rhetoric, the lies, the vitriol, and the complete disrespect for the law, and its processes that I have been witness to this last week.

I was born at the beginning of the 1970s. When I was a child, the attitudes of the previous generation were already being swept away, and, at least in my social circles, Dr. King’s dream about judging a man based on character instead of race seemed normal, rather than some sort of manifestation of backwards thinking. At least for a while. As I got older, I started to see racism firsthand. I saw it on my college campus (an inner-city campus), and in the workplace, where it was often implemented by law. And the more I saw, especially in the workplace, the more I came to question its effect on society. Perhaps the most telling moment was in law school. My Constitutional Law professor, who was black (and also preparing an Amicus brief for the Grutter case), and I got into it when we were discussing the infamous Bakke case. I committed the sin of reading the footnotes, and asking uncomfortable questions about the information they contained. The plaintiff, Bakke, had applied to get into Medical School at the University of California. Being a graduate program, the school only admitted a set number of students, most of whom were selected based on grades and test scores. I say “most”, because the school, as part of an affirmative action program, set aside a set number of seats for African-Americans, and lowered the standards for admission for them to qualify, which meant that Bakke, who was otherwise capable, and met the median standards, was eligible for even fewer of the available seats because of this policy. What got me going was in reading the footnotes, members of other minority groups apparently had no problems meeting the same standards applied to other applicants. In fact, Asians had consistently higher scores, according to the footnotes. I raised my hand, and asked why we continually lowered the bar for only one class of people. My professor responded that it was a remedial measure, enacted to make up for inequality that had been practiced before. I asked him if he thought medical school was the right place to perform such remediation. He asked what I meant. I told him “Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want MY doctor to be the guy who wouldn’t have qualified to get in to medical school if the bar hadn’t been deliberately lowered for him and others like him. The class’s reaction indicated that the logic was obvious. The professor’s reaction indicated that I struck a nerve. I was lucky to pass the class.

While this lowering of the bar has morphed into something less objective, and thus more repugnant, there have been some glimmers of hope, most notably, Justice O’Connor’s assertion in the Grutter case, which indicated that government wouldn’t keep the bar artificially low forever, and at some point in the future, it would no longer be necessary to have different standards for different skin colors. As I watched last week, I realized that the time for abandoning such measures has come and gone. Ambition has given way to entitlement, and remediation has given way to a bitter, permanently aggrieved mindset, which can only be cured by government dependency on what it takes from others to redistribute, and of course, the self-style and appointed “Community Leaders” who strike an indignant pose and utter demands and platitudes into every open microphone they see. And thanks to the single most divisive “Uniter” in almost a century, and his merry band of grifters, and thieves, it has gotten worse.

So what’s my point, you ask? It is something that needs saying, and I apologize for failing to say it sooner.

As a man who never owned slaves, and had to work for the things I have (and the things that government takes from me to give to others), I DON’T APOLOGIZE.

As someone who doesn’t take the breathtaking lawlessness currently practiced by the government as occasion to riot, to loot, and to commit mayhem, I DON’T APOLOGIZE.

As someone who has witnessed 30 years of affirmative action/diversity destroy merit in our society, and in our civil service, while continually being lectured by academic pinheads constantly spouting such inanities as “Only white people can be racist”, or waxing poetic about “White Privilege”, like I never had to work for anything in my life, because all it took was knowing the secret handshake, and the password to be taken to the head of any line, I DON’T APOLOGIZE.

As a man who is sick and tired of having to deal with the aforementioned “Community Leaders” and those who feel compelled to feel and express “OUTRAGE!!!111!!!” on behalf of others by finding racism and racial intent in every turn of phrase, in every term, and in every idiom, rather than facing and dealing with the very real problems that face ALL OF US, I DON’T APOLOGIZE.

As someone who never saw any reason to identify and characterize people based on their race, because I believe in and aspire to higher ideals, but who has had to listen to a constant drumbeat about it from people who inject it into everything, in order to bolster their continuous demands that I, and others like me need to do more, and to give more to improve the conditions of “their people”, rather than relying on them to strengthen and improve society by doing it themselves, I DON’T APOLOGIZE.

I apologized earlier in this piece for not saying this sooner. I was somewhat reluctant to commit this to writing, as it would be very easy for the very people I never want to hear from again to characterize me as a racist, or maybe even a “creepy ass cracker”, but in the last few weeks, I’ve come to realize that it does not matter. No matter how deferential I am. No matter how much I go out of my way to not offend for offense’s sake, it will never be enough for the usual suspects, and their subjective damnations or mystic (and faulty) divinations of the content of my soul. I have witnessed a fundamental transformation, and it has made my country an uglier place, not a better one. That’s the only apology I offer. I waited too long to say it, and this country has waited too long to expect the perpetually aggrieved among us to sack up and contribute to society, or go shut the hell up, and go away. I used to think that the “Boy Who Cried Wolf” treatment given racism in the last three decades did much to take the sting out of the allegation. But when it is used to ruin careers, and drive a man acquitted of a crime (and who isn’t even white) into hiding, as the President again lowers himself to racial demagoguery, I start to think something no one should be thinking: BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR.

If you agree with Tingles Matthews, The Wrong Reverend Sharpton, or the Wrong Reverend Jackson, and make racism your answer to everything, and apply it liberally to any person, group, or ideology which disagrees with you, have a care. It wouldn’t necessarily be a racial thing if good people decided they were sick of your shit, and acted accordingly. It’s past time for “communities” to dismiss their “leaders” and their “organizers”, and set to work on mending society, before we revert to a fractured land where unity is a thing of the past.

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Dispatches From Bizzaro World

What a great week.

We get a Supreme Court ruling on DOMA that WILL be used to attack the exercise of the First Amendment in a “historic” and “unprecedented” way, thanks to a remarkably intemperate ruling written by Justice Kennedy, who decided in his ruling in the DOMA case (United States v. Windsor) that the only purpose in opposing same-sex marriage MUST be malicious, which will be used against churches and religious organizations by a cabal of Christian Derangement Syndrome sufferers and the pink swastika wearing rainbow warriors of “tolerance”. Not content with this decision, the court also issued a ruling on the Prop 8 case (Hollingsworth v. Perry), in which the court came to the rather curious conclusion that you can have standing to be sued, but not have standing to defend against a suit. Such legal alchemy is no longer shocking to me, but the bigger implication of this suit is far more stunning. The net effect of this ruling is that the people of a state can use the initiative process to make laws that their elected officials WON’T, and if their governor and their attorney general refuse to defend against legal challenges, then the proponents of the initiative don’t have standing to defend against those same legal challenges. The silence from the usual defenders of “democracy” is disappointing, but predictable.

After the ruling was released, I was sure I heard the sound of hands rubbing together in Olympia, as the Governor and the Democrats in Olympia are making plans for the next session when the Senate can’t stop them, and they can tax to their grubby little hearts’ content, and then fail to defend a trumped-up lawsuit against an initiative telling them “No.” It will be even less trouble than having the courts do them a solid on overturning our $30.00 license tabs…again, and again, and again.

Then we have the “Tale of Two Apologies”. The first is Paula Deen, a southern cook, with a show on the Food Network and various franchises and a pending cookbook, who admitted in a deposition to having used a racist slur 30 years ago, driving the grievance pimp and race hustling industry into overdrive. Within a week, she lost her show, every business relationship she had, and her publisher dumped her on the cusp of publishing her latest cookbook, despite having given an unnecessary apology for the sin of saying a word frequently used and glorified by members of the supposedly aggrieved class. Incidents like this, and the now infamous Imus incident are proof that Eric Holder was right about us being unable to have an honest conversation about race in this country. When words are only off-limits to one class of persons, and the ones who aren’t restricted are allowed to destroy the careers of those restricted class if they admit to uttering “Voldemort” in the distant past, no honest conversation about race is possible. But at least Jesse Jackson got a few extra moments in the limelight when he offered to help Deen with her “rehabilitation”, so at least his lucrative franchise preserving this perverse status quo will be maintained.

On the other hand, we have Noted Thoughtless Pig, Alec Baldwin, once again launching himself on a gay-slur (I refuse to say “homophobic”, as it would indicate fear, and given what he said, I don’t think he fears gays, I think he holds them in contempt) laden Twitter tirade against a Guardian reporter who made some unflattering allegations about Baldwin’s wife’s behavior at James Gandolfini’s funeral. This isn’t the first time that Baldwin’s Tweeting thumbs have caused him trouble, as he’s tweeted racist slurs before. However, unlike Deen, who said “Voldemort” 30 years ago, when I last checked, Baldwin still had a cushy gig with Capital One, and hasn’t been fired by any of his other employers. While Anderson Cooper and Andrew Sullivan noted the apparent lack of outrage for Baldwin’s rhetorical diarrhea, he seems largely to have gotten a pass, despite the apology which makes claims that are incongruous with his tweets.

I’m not in favor of people having their lives and careers ruined over things they say. That doesn’t mean I’m adverse to speaking out when I think what they say is wrong, dangerous, stupid, etc. I do think that DEMANDING that people being cut off from their means of making a living because they said something that offended someone smacks just a little too much of thought policing for me to be comfortable with. It’s one thing to have no truck with people who offend you (or those who employ them), but it’s quite another to have the expectation that others must share your outrage, and participate in a particularly brutal (and arbitrary) form of collective punishment, which is to be arbitrarily and selectively applied by those who set themselves up as the judge and jury of such socially criminal acts. My contempt is reserved for the deciders who pretend to be guided by such principles as “civility” and a cockeyed notion of “fairness” that only they can mystically discern, according to a subjective standard that we mere mortals are terminally incapable of recognizing, let alone grokking. This contempt is also reserved for the mindless numbers who surrender their own discernment with nary a taxed brain cell to these morally bankrupt clods who have usurped an authority that they prove themselves too hypocritical to objectively wield when they allow such a disparity of outcome in two such similar public faux pas. I could be crass, and suggest that the lesson here is the same one more artfully demonstrated by George Orwell so many years ago in the classic “Animal Farm”, when he observed that “Some animals are more equal than others.”, a concept that seems to have escaped (I hate myself for even using this terminology) “the gay community”, which has struggled so long to enact a dubious and dishonest notion of “equality”, and was given a major victory in this campaign this week by the courts. Instead, I will say that an apology IS owed to someone, and in the great progressive tradition of claiming authority not conferred upon me, I will speak for America when I say:

“I am sorry, Paula Deen. I’m sorry that you believed in the notion of a “post-racial America”, uttered by a President that you voted for, when what he, and many in his party meant was a “Reverse-racial America”, where only white people can be racist, and any excuse to render such a verdict and execute sentence will be pursued by our “betters” in the media, and where your celebrity won’t be enough to protect you, since you failed to write checks to the “right” interest groups. Welcome to Bizzaro World.”

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Not Paying Attention, Or Simply Hoping We Weren’t?

That’s my question to Representative Marcia Fudge (D), The new Chairperson of the Congressional Black Caucus, who in an expression of her bona fides last week held a press conference to let the world know that the opposition to the appointment of Susan Rice as Obama’s Secretary of State by some Republicans was both racist and sexist, despite having been predicated on incompetence and a marked lack of qualification.

“All of the things that they have disliked about things that have gone on in this administration they have never called a male unqualified, not bright, not trustworthy. I don’t recall it ever happening,” Fudge said.

Really?  I guess Turbo Tax Timmah Geithner doesn’t count, right?

The micro issue of Geithner’s taxes was enough to make him unfit to address the country’s macro economic issues, according to some Republicans and Democrats.

Most of the opposition, however, came from Republicans. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., who said he spent part of the weekend puzzling over his own taxes, said on the Senate floor, “Here we are making an exception to the rule and I, for one, think it’s not the time to make an exception.”

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a middle-of-the-road Republican who often sides with Democrats, opposed him.

In a speech prepared for the Senate floor, Collins said, “Throughout the state of Maine and, indeed, throughout the nation, millions of hard-working Americans pay their taxes on time and in full. Our taxation system is essentially an honor system that depends on self-assessment and honesty. When taxpayers make mistakes, they are expected to correct them promptly and completely. How can we tell the taxpayers that they are expected to comply fully with our tax laws, when these laws have been treated so cavalierly by the person who would lead the Treasury Department and, ultimately, the Internal Revenue Service, when he was applying them to himself?”

Hmmmmm.  I guess memory isn’t what it used to be.

Still, Representative Fudge wasn’t the only one trying on the mantle of victimhood that day.  Representative Gwen Moore also seems to have forgotten that politics is a bare-knuckle sport.

“What unmitigated gall for these men to attack the permanent representative to the United Nations Susan E. Rice,” Moore said.

“We all understand that all of us have been disappointed in one way or another about the results of the election – but to batter this woman because they don’t feel they have had the ability to batter President Obama is something that we, the women, are not going to stand by and watch.”

Yes, of course.  It is “gall” to be angry that she stepped up to the plate and lied to the American people repeatedly about Benghazi.  As a high-ranking State Department official, she certainly didn’t have access to information in the week between the attack and her Sunday morning appearances to at least form a reasonable suspicion that the youtube justification was crap.  And as someone who has been a high-ranking State Department official for years, she certainly shouldn’t have been able to come to the conclusion that the “insulting video” excuse was insulting to the American People.

And to call her “unqualified” after a brief review of some of her actions over the last 10+ years certainly rises to the level of “battery”.   In fact, not only is this OUTRAGE!!!111!!! justified, I wish that the same models of this year’s victimhood could have found the same voice and outrage when Condolezza Rice was under attack.

But then, these defenders of the flower of womanhood embodied by Susan Rice are the same people who hurl venom and vitriol even today at Sarah Palin, and cheered at Sandra Bernhard’s racist rape fantasy for her.

If we keep accepting lies, we will continue to get them. 

As long as that happens, an honest conversation is impossible, and we are all screwed.

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We Obviously Are In The Best of Hands…

During a late-night, 20-minute phone call, Mr. Obama warned Mr. Morsi that relations would be jeopardized if Egyptian authorities failed to protect American diplomats and stand more firmly against anti-American attacks.</blockquote>

Oh.  A phone call.  I feel sooooooo reassured.

Meanwhile…

Its almost like…they are coordinated or something!

But its about a video that 99.7% of them have never seen. Right. Just like the spokesclown Jay Carney keeps saying that it isn’t about US Policy.

Yeah, that’s why they keep burning all of those US flags…

As long as President Present makes it to his next fundraiser on time.
If he doesn’t get re-elected, then Catholics might not have to be required to pay for Sandi Fluke’s birth control. THE HORROR!

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Reflections On The Republican National Convention

Admittedly, I didn’t watch the whole thing.

It was my first week back to work after a week’s vacation, and as any lawyer will tell you, the combination of rush projects and other work that piles up in your absence will keep you pretty busy.  Living on the west coast also means that you miss some speakers anyway.  On Day One, I only say a few minutes of Ann Romney’s speech, which I hear was good, but she seemed to be struggling with the part I heard.

I caught the second half of Dr. Rice’s speech. I especially liked the ending, which I took as the refined way of flipping the bird to all the jerks on the left who felt free to insult her in every manner possible over the last decade, including all manner of racist caricatures, centering on the insinuation and overt statement about her being a sell-out to her race.  True to form, noted racist and boy who cried wolf, Chrissy Tingles Matthews completely missed out on that. (More on Tingles later.)

I thought Suzanna Martinez gave a good speech, and despite a few minor policy differences with him, I thought Vice President Ryan hit it out of the park.  I’m quite sure that the rude noise I heard a few moments into the speech was Joe Biden soiling himself at the prospect of having to debate someone who won’t fight fair, because Ryan will use both facts and math.

It goes without saying that I enjoyed Day 3, as well, and I felt that Mitt did a good job telling us who he is, and what his priorities will be.  While it isn’t the speech I wouldn’t have given, and it wasn’t the speech I wanted to hear, the one I would have given wouldn’t have been matching with either his style or his character.

What was more telling was what went on outside and around the convention.  Code Pink represented the Dadaist movement by dressing as giant vaginas because they don’t think women are taken seriously by Republicans or something.  I know nothing makes me take someone seriously until they dress like a sex organ that they don’t want to be defined by, and then march around in public, screaming about a “War on Women”.

And the whole “War on Women” meme?  Yeah.  While the crew at MSNBC ignored any speaker that might have caused their 3 viewers to question any of the narratives they were pushing, the fact is that I saw several female governors, lieutenant governors, governmental officials, including cabinet members, and a mother that has endured poverty and debilitating disease on an American journey to wealth, while raising 5 kids, and all of them happy and proud to speak to America from the podium at the RNC.  They were too many to be ‘tokens”, as our tolerant and respectful friends on the right so graciously referred to them as, and if it was somehow a manifestation of Stockholm Syndrome, then you should probably get in line with Romney anyway, because Obama doesn’t have that kind of mojo.  seriously speaking though, I saw smart, strong, confident women who wouldn’t be defined by their lady bits and don’t want government in them, not even to pay for what goes on in them, which is why they have an appeal someone like Sandra Fluke will never have.  For these women, it is about their accomplishments, and not about government doing it for them. 

And I find nothing more compelling or attractive.

The other development is that someone found the absurd switch at MSNBC, and discovered that it went up past 11.  Chris Matthews’ thin veneer of objectivity was wiped completely away by him humping candidate Barack Obama’s leg in 2008; even its memory became dim in the full-on unrequited love affair he started with President Obama after the 2008 election, but this embarrassing public display of affection has made him so defensive of the object of his desire that he’s now seeing “RACISM!!11!!!” in his corn flakes in the morning.  You know its bad when even Joe Scarbourough and Mika aren’t seeing race cards in their breakfast cereal.  This is why its time to just stop talking to Chris Matthews.  All he’s interested in doing is shouting over people so he can talk about what he “hears” rather than what is said.  If I wanted to get the dispatches from a different dimension, I’d go directly to the DNC to get them, and not bother with the official propaganda arm.  And we’ve now moved so far past the ridiculous allegations of “code words” and “dog whistles” that now Crazy Larry is mystically divining what Republicans are “really” saying from words that have almost nothing in common with his sad and tragic “translations”.  While Newt Gingrich is still willing to shoulder the yeoman’s work of challenging Chris Matthews on his own inherent racism, which is screamingly evident from the conclusions that he draws daily, I don’t think that tough love is going to help.  I’m not sure that an intervention will help.  The best thing that I can say about his continuing presence on MSNBC at the moment is that at least he is helping to identify those who are also caught up in their own racial conclusions, which in his case are rooted in his belief that government HAS to help minorities, because they simply aren’t capable of success on their own.  The thing about dog whistles is that only the dogs hear them.  The fact that he, Special Ed, Crazy Larry, and some of the other on-air “personalities” at MSNBC are the ones baying the loudest should be a sobering wake-up call for them.   And the “code words” claim is silly.  There simply is no reason to “speak in code”.  If Republicans are all a bunch of racists, we wouldn’t have to skulk around about it.  The fact is that it is contrary to the stated priorities of the party.  Achievement by building it ourselves wouldn’t be the goal.  Not when it would be about denying it to others.  And while I’m sure that Tingles and Crazy Larry would say that’s exactly what it’s about, I think its simply about silencing a message that they cannot refute.  Its easier to prevent a debate when everything your opponent says is about “racism” (even when it’s not), than it is to explain to someone that they cannot possibly succeed without government taking from those that did, and then giving it to them.

In the short-term, I sincerely hope Chris Matthews gets help.  His break with reality is leading him to be unnecessarily provocative, and it can’t end well if left unchecked.  I sincerely fear for his well-being when President Obama’s reckoning day comes in November and the American people give him his well-deserved pink slip.  Matthews will either have to be put on a 24 hour suicide watch, or he will turn his bitterness on the electorate, and lecture us endlessly for the rest of his pathetic life about our ignorance and bigotry for daring to recognize the mistake that has been the Obama Presidency.

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Double Standards Are Twice As Good…

…and “leading from behind” (which was called “pushing” in more honest times) like this has permeated society, which is why President Downgrade can always blame EVERYTHING on someone else.

“On Tuesday, a cartoon ran on the Opinion page of The Daily Texan that offended many readers, and we sincerely apologize for our decision to run it.
 
The cartoonist, Stephanie Eisner, no longer works for The Daily Texan.”

What courage.  They make the decision to run it, and when the Inevitable Outrage Machine™ fires up, they sacrifice the person who created the content, rather than defending their decision. 

“Despicable” doesn’t quite describe it.  Nothing is ever anyone’s responsibility anymore, unless they aren’t the ones who made The Decision That Mattered™ or aren’t in a position to defend themselves, then it’s their fault.

And this particular “OUTRAGE!!!11!!!!Eleventy!!!”?  Get back to me when the riots start because the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People refuses to change their name.(Ben Jealous, please pick up the courtesy phone.  Ben Jealous, please pick up the courtesy phone.) 

Yeah, yeah.  I know.  Just like another word we are supposed to fear and loathe, there is nothing wrong when those with “enhanced melanin” say it.

Now Ms. Eisner can make similar drawing with the caption “…and opinions, and anything else that might be controversial or cause pain were outlawed, right before laws were passed relieving anyone of the ability to make a decision without the approval of “experts” and the guarantee of government that they will never have to suffer the negative consequences of those decisions.”

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Edging Towards Irrelevance

For a while now, the NAACP has been incrementally moving closer to irrelevance.  For most of my life, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has been seeking advancement through victimhood.  The problem with such a strategy is eventually, as the successes pile up, they become harder to attain, and as a result, the causes to champion increasingly grow absurd.

Whether it is reading a racial slur into the use of the term “Black Hole” in the context of an office in city government where things go in, and never seem to come back out, or getting their undies in a bunch about a talking greeting card that uses the same term, despite their insistence that it actually says something very different, the politics of victimhood has ill-benefitted those it was intended to help, first by selling the beneficiaries into a modern-day dependency by constantly telling them what they cannot do without the “help” of others, and then by making them look ridiculous with the progression of OUTRAGES! over the years.   Lately, this has been accomplished by acting as if being offended makes them victims, as the “black hole” episodes have demonstrated.  This still isn’t enough for them though.  Now they have taken up the habit of ridiculous hyperbole to condemn activities they find offensive.  Case in point?  A recent formal event in South Carolina honoring the Confederacy, where guests celebrated the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War.  Protestors could not wait to register their displeasure with the attendees of the Secession Ball:

As blacks and whites gathered in the twilight with electric candles and signs for an NAACP protest, a predominantly white group of men in old-fashioned tuxedos and women in long-flowing dresses and gloves stopped to watch and take pictures before going into the Charleston auditorium where the ball was taking place.

Now I found this turn of phrase interesting.  “Predominantly white men”.  Are they predominantly white because the reporter was too lazy to find out if indeed there were non-white men present?  Are they predominantly white because an honest accounting might reveal enough non-whites in attendance to make the protesters into the ones with the problem?  I guess we’ll never know.

NAACP leaders said it made no sense to hold a gala to honor men who committed treason against their own nation for the sake of a system that kept black men and women in bondage as slaves. They compared Confederate leaders to terrorists and Nazi soldiers.

While it would be foolish to deny that slavery was one of the issue that the Civil War was fought over, it is foolish and disingenuous to pretend that it was the only issue.  And the comparison to terrorists and Nazi soldiers?  I don’t believe that these comparisons in any way seem serious when one looks to Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, Jefferson Davis, and other prominent Confederates. Why is it whenever someone on the left doesn’t like someone on the right exercising their freedom of association or their freedom of speech, the disfavored are suddenly equated with Nazis and terrorists?  I can acknowledge that it might have been a shocking charge at one time.  Hell, it might have actually had the desired effect of “SHUT UP!!!” that certainly motivates such comparisons in the past.  However, as more and more people are painted as Hilterian, and it starts to be applied to Uncle Ron, and Great-Grandpa, Fred from down the street, and the Barber, the less it seems like an epithet, and for some people, it becomes an indication that they are pissing all the right people off.

“The Germans had a heritage too. Why does South Carolina and America think this is the right thing to do?” said Lonnie Randolph, president of the South Carolina branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The more appropriate question to ask, Lonnie, is why do you feel it is your place to question their pastimes?  Seriously.  I didn’t read in the story where the period dress included black slaves in chains, and without, waiting on the attendees hand and foot, with the “Yes, massa” and “No, massa” issuing forth from downcast faces.  I’m pretty sure if that had been the case, the event would have received far wider coverage, and in that event, I would have had some outrage of my own to spare.  But between the protest, the hyperbole, and the unflattering and untrue comparisons, it just smacks a little too much of the thought police.  And that is really the point of the politics of OUTRAGE!!!  By claiming offense, and acting as if there is a right to not be offended, the claimant is really saying “Your thinking is wrong, and you must stop before you offend again.”  Before you know it, the enablers in the Press pile on, implying that there not only is a right not to be offended, but that it also trumps other, real rights, and that if you believe otherwise, then you too, my friend, are somehow a Nazi and a terrorist.  Thankfully, it has been carried to such absurd extremes that the tactic is starting to lose its effectiveness:

Burbage said the NAACP doesn’t help its cause with inflammatory rhetoric.

“Any group that wants to call our ancestors terrorists and compare them to Nazi soldiers, we will not negotiate with. We didn’t need to get their permission to put this thing on, or will we ever seek their permission. We do our thing, they’ll do their thing,” Burbage said.

Exactly right.  And as long as these bullies keep trying to police our thoughts and actions, I foresee more pushback.  As it should be.  As long as groups such as the NAACP set themselves up as the thought police, entitled not just to question the thoughts of others, but to sit in judgment of those thoughts, and vested with the authority to prevent others from feeling the shame and anguish of being offended, the more cartoonish they will become.

I hear a timer ringing.  The time for their relevance must be up.

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Not Dead…

…just busy.

Lots of stuff, including litigation, and while there is a lot going on politically, I really haven’t been motivated to say much. Just waiting to see how much voter fraud tampers with the righteous curbstomping the Dems are getting come November 2.

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