Understanding MAGA

Silverfiddle Rant!

The US press is a rotting shell of its former self.  It is a monoculture of self-described elitists for self-described elitists where diversity of thought is verboten.  Witness media grandees like Anderson Cooper hobnobbing with the plutocrats at the "Billionaire Summer Camp" in Idaho. They no longer investigate and report on big business and government; they are on the inside, coming out every now and then to blow their propaganda trumpets.

Meanwhile, real journalists (mostly liberal) like Abigain Schrier, Kevin Drum, Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi are no longer welcome, so they now do real reporting from Substack or other independent platforms. 

By and large, the Intellectual Dark Web and the independent journalists like those I just described have refrained from the official propaganda calling all Trump voters white supremacists who want to overthrow the government. 

Then came The Thread...

I think I've had discussions w/enough Boomer-tier Trump supporters who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent to extract a general theory about their perspective. It is also the perspective of most of the people at the Capitol on 1/6, and probably even Trump himself.

Here are the facts - actual, confirmed facts - that shape their perspective: 1) The FBI/etc spied on the 2016 Trump campaign using evidence manufactured by the Clinton campaign. We now know that all involved knew it was fake from Day 1 (see: Brennan's July 2016 memo, etc).

The intel community spying on a presidential campaign using fake evidence (incl forged documents) is a big deal to them.

Everyone involved lied about their involvement as long as they could. We only learned the DNC paid for the manufactured evidence because of a court order. Comey denied on TV knowing the DNC paid for it, when we have emails from a year earlier proving that he knew.

Trump supporters see that the Regime is not partisan. They all know that the same institutions would have taken opposite sides if it was a Tulsi Gabbard vs Jeb Bush election.

Many of them don't know for certain whether ballots were faked in November 2020, but they know for absolute certain that the press, the FBI, etc would lie to them if there was.

They watched the press behave like animals for four years. Tens of millions of people will always see Kavanaugh as a gang rapist, based on nothing, because of CNN. And CNN seems proud of that. They led a lynch mob against a high school kid. They cheered on a summer of riots.

We know as fact: a) The Steele dossier was the sole evidence used to justify spying on the Trump campaign, b) The FBI knew the Steele dossier was a DNC op, c) Steele's source told the FBI the info was unserious, d) they did not inform the court of any of this and kept spying.

Glenn Greenwald (who detests Donald Trump but who does not detest Trump voters or blame them) gave Darryl Cooper--the thread's obscure author--his substantial platform to elaborate on this observations.

Author of the Mega-Viral Thread on MAGA Voters, Darryl Cooper, Explains His Thinking

Greenwald ends his introduction with this refreshing testament to toleration and open debate:

As Cooper notes, he does not share all of the perceptions and beliefs he is conveying, although he shares many of them. Instead, based on the recognition that most media outlets are incapable of understanding let alone accurately describing the views of a group of people they view with little more than unmitigated contempt, condescension and scorn, he believes it is imperative that people understand the actual reality of what is motivating so many Trump voters in their views, perceptions and beliefs — regardless of whether each particular belief is accurate or not.

We also believe this understanding is vital, which is why we are happy to publish Cooper’s essay. It should go without saying that, as it true of all of our articles published on Outside Voices -- which we treat as an op-ed page -- our publishing of this article does not signify agreement with all of its claims, but only our belief that it is a viewpoint worth airing.

Where I've Been

(For politics, please scroll down)

On top of continuing The Big Clean Out (someone in my family has lived on this property since 1947), I'm in the throes of selling my residence here in Virginia and buying another home in Indiana.  This move is a truly daunting task: I've never moved before, and I'm tackling a long-distance move.

The first deal fell through on both ends!  Never mind that, after hours upon hours on the phone, I had everything coordinated with movers, including kitty boarding for about two weeks.  

I've had to start over!

Meanwhile, along came my local government, effective July 1, lopping off 1600 square feet of my property, thus making my "buildable" lot worthless on its own.  No prior notification, no warning whatsoever.

So much for the lifetimes of investment here.

I'll be back to my usual blogging in the fall after I get settled.  

Thanks to my good friend Silverfiddle for keeping this blog going in my absence.

Critical Race Theory is Illiberal

Silverfiddle Rant!

Andrew Sullivan makes the best argument yet contra Critical Race Theory (not the narrow academic theory but all the Ibram Kendi/Robin DiAngelo pop-psychology pseudo-science racial dogma that has sprung up like stink weeds around it).  The Crux of Sullivan's unassailable argument?  

Critical Race Theory is incompatible with the classical liberalism upon which our Western civilization is founded.

He starts by listing some characteristics of classic Western liberalism:

Fallibilism, the belief that anyone, especially you, can always be wrong; 

Objectivity, a rejection of any theory that cannot be proven or disproven by reality; 

Accountability, the openness to conceding and correcting error; 

Pluralism, the maintenance of intellectual diversity so we maximize our chances of finding the truth.

No ultimate authority; just inquiry and provisional truth. No final answer: an endless conversation. No single power, but many in competition.

In this open-ended conversation, all can participate, conservatives and liberals, and will have successes and failures in their turn. What matters, both conservatives and liberals agree, is not the end result, but the liberal democratic, open-ended means. That shift — from specifying a single end to insisting only on playing by the rules — is the key origin of modern freedom.

My central problem with critical theory is that it takes precise aim at these very core principles and rejects them. By rejecting them, in the otherwise noble cause of helping the marginalized, it is a very seductive and potent threat to liberal civilization.

CRT Rejects Western Liberalism

This is what makes CRT different. When it began, critical theory was one school of thought among many. But the logic of it — it denies the core liberal premises of all the other schools and renders them all forms of oppression — means that it cannot long tolerate those other schools. It must always attack them.

Critical theory is therefore always the cuckoo in the academic nest. Over time, it throws out its competitors — and not in open free debate. It does so by ending that debate, by insisting that the liberal “reasonable person” standard of debate is, in fact, rigged in favor of the oppressors, that speech is a form of harm, even violent harm, rather than a way to seek the truth. It insists that what matters is the identity of the participants in a debate, not the arguments themselves

This debate is not about whether you are a racist or an antiracist. The debate is about whether, in your deepest heart and soul, you are a liberal or an anti-liberal. And of those two options, I have no doubt where I stand. Do you?

Read Andrew Sullivan's excellent essay here: Removing the Bedrock of Liberalism

See also:  Political Tea Leaves - Andrew Sullivan, "White Supremacist!"?

Pushback

Silverfiddle Rant!

Is it too much for a woman to ask to not see penises in a women's only section of a spa?

What part of Andy Ngo's reporting do you object to, and why?

If it bullies people on the street like a fascist, screams at people like a fascist, then it must be antifa fascism. 

A naked man walked through a women-only dressing room at a Korean spa, a women complained:

But it's California, so it all good! 

People protested, and Andy Ngo provided raw, on-the-ground reporting supported by mainstream news outlets

Drooling leftwing sub-morons pushed back at Andy Ngo's reporting.  They really "roasted" him with this!

The group SoCal Antifa had promoted a counter-protest beforehand and footage shows people who wore items associated with the Antifa movement at the scene. However, officials have not attributed the violence to any particular group, despite Ngo’s assertions.

What say you?

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down) 

We live in a time of turmoil. Turmoil everywhere! People of all stripes have their hair on fire. 

Relax for a few moments by turning down the turmoil and the temperature by enjoying this harp arrangement of Canon in D by Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706):

 

Read details about the above piece HERE.

A Win for the Good Guys

Silverfiddle Rant!

Its a depressing reality:  Someone makes a sincere comment regarding race, gender or some controversial subject, and the person is dogpiled and cancelled for her irresponsible outburst of WrongSpeak.  Reasonable people who value their jobs and their social standing lapse into repeating approved phrases from the Little Red Book, or more depressingly, self-censor or completely remove themselves from the increasingly unhinged "dialog."

Fortunately, there are good people out there fighting against this neo-Maoist crap, and some of them are winning!

Britian's Royal Academy of Arts featured the works of German-born textile artist Jess de Wahls, until the digital Red Guard dug up an old post of hers...

 "in which de Wahls wrote that “a woman is an adult human female (not an identity or feeling),” and that trans women are “biological males [who] choose to live as a woman, or believe they actually are women.”

The Royal Academy removed her items and fired off an Instagram repudiation of the German ogre. Sometime after that, the Royal Academy pulled a 180:

“We have apologised to Jess de Wahls for the way we have treated her and do so again publicly now,” read the RA communiqué. “We had no right to judge her views … This betrayed our most important core value—the protection of free speech.”

You can read the whole story here:  Quillette - Standing up to the Gender Ideologues

After reading this, it occurs to me the band Mumford and Sons missed a golden opportunity.  If the whole band had stood up for the right of one man to comment on a book, they could have dealt a major blow to the Outrage Tyranny gripping the west.  

What say you?

Anti-Racists: In Their Own Words

Silverfiddle Rant!

This is Marjory Tailor Greene on the left, cloaked in academic robes:

“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” - Dr. Kendi

We discussed CRT last week, and I am learning along with all of you.  I now think that what is being taught in schools, corporations and government bureaucracies is not textbook CRT, but rather CRT's pop psychology crack baby.  Whatever you call it, an increasing number of Americans don't like it.  Having said that, I still think CRT is a good handle.

"Critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law." (Critical Race Theory - An Introduction)

Followed up by their nods to Gramsci and Derrida, it is clear the Critical Race theorists are all about tearing down a system where in the span of 160 years, black people have gone from the chains of slavery to university graduates, professors, doctors, decorated soldiers, generals, CEOs of major corporations, etc. 

In this society they want to tear down, POC students sit equally beside "white" students, POC enjoy equal status, and supervision over, "white" people in workplaces all over America, and POC are fully embedded in our military, and most importantly in our de-segregated neighborhoods. "White" people and people of color enjoy parties in each others homes, school functions, BBQs and sporting events together.

This is the system the carnival barkers, grifters, charlatans, latte leftists and Che Guevara wannabes want to tear down. Fie on them all.

CRT Critic and hate totem of the left, Chris Rufo sums it up best: 

"The game is that they want to create an essentialized racial category ("whiteness"), load it with negative connotations, then impose it on individuals through guilt, shame, and school indoctrination. This approach is reductive, manipulative, and malicious. Don't fall for it."

Chris Rufo has a website that features his Critical Race Theory Briefing Book.  Here are a few quotations:

“All whites are racist … because we benefit from systemic white privilege. -- Wildman and Davis, Readings for Diversity and Social Justice

“All white people are racist or complicit by virtue of benefiting from privileges that are not something they can voluntarily renounce.” -- Barbara Applebaum, Being White, Being Good

“Whiteness by its very definition and operation as a key element of white supremacy kills; it is mental and physical terrorism. To end the white terrorism that is directed at racially oppressed people here and in other nations, it is essential that self-identified whites and their whiteness collaborators among the racially oppressed confront their white problem head-on, unencumbered by racial comfort.” -- Johnny Williams in the Hartford Courant

“White people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview because it is the bedrock of our society and its institutions … Entering the conversation with this understanding is freeing because it allows us to focus on how—rather than if—our racism is manifest.” -- Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility

I do not want anyone to silence, ban, censor, cancel or deny tenure to Robin DiAngelo, Ibram Kendi, Nikole Hannah Jones or the rest of their fellow travelers.  I want those people to come down from their gilded pulpits and debate: State their thesis and submit their ideas to academic examination and debate with those who oppose their half-baked hokum.  

Links:

Daily Wire: It was a real quote

Josh Hawley takes on CRT

Washington Post urges Americans to set up 'white accountability groups' and force themselves into 'a period of deep shame' over their skin color

Clarence Page: Can the Left Defend CRT?

October 19th, 1781

Silverfiddle Rant!

The United States of America: Founded in Optimism

Should Independence Day be celebrated on a different day?  History buffs like to point out the Continental Congress voted for independence from Britain on July 2nd.  Some argue that July 2nd should be the day to celebrate, but I used to have a totally different date in mind.  

Somewhere in my young life, can't remember when, I was shocked when I realized the United States did not gain sovereignty on July 4th 1776: That was when the war started, not when it ended in our victory (I was a poor student).

America declared its independence in 1776, but it took another five years to win freedom from the British. That day came on October 19, 1781, when the British General Charles Cornwallis surrendered his troops in Yorktown, Virginia. (America's Library)

That we recognize the declaration rather than the eventual achievement says much about our national character: We are an optimistic people.  God grants all humans the gift of liberty.  It does not flow from a king or government.  We declared ourselves free on July 4th 1776, and that is what we celebrate.

Happy Independence Day!

What is Critical Race Theory?

Silverfiddle Rant!

I have a very-limited understanding based on cursory perusal of some CRT articles and one book. This post won't explain it to you.  I will provide here a few links to things written by CRT partisans and some quotations from those sources. 

First up, a 'Splainer from the splainiest splainers of the progressive left, Vox.  They lament the fact that CRT has morphed into a catchall category, one used by Republicans who want to ban anti-racist teachings and trainings in classrooms and workplaces across the country.

Critical race theory emerged in law schools in the 1970s and ’80s as an alternative to the mainstream discourse and classes on civil rights law, many of which held that the best way to fight racial discrimination was to enact legal reforms.

Critical race theorists...posited that racism is endemic and institutionalized in the United States.

The group was skeptical of legal theories that supported colorblindness, objectivity, and neutrality

Every analysis of the law should be grounded in historical context, arguing that “racism has contributed to all contemporary manifestations of group advantage and disadvantage along racial lines, including differences in income, imprisonment, health, housing, education, political representation, and military service.”

Critical race theory acknowledges, values, and centers the knowledge of people of color who experience racism daily.

Critical race theory is “interdisciplinary and eclectic,” meaning it borrowed from a number of traditions like feminism, Marxism, and critical legal theory.

“The interests of all people of color necessarily require not just adjustments within the established hierarchies, but a challenge to hierarchy itself.”

The Vox article tracks with the book, Critical Race Theory, An Introduction, by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic.  From the book:

The critical race theory (CRT) movement is a collection of activists and scholars interested in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power.

Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.

It also draws from certain European philosophers and theorists, such as Antonio Gramsci and Jacques Derrida, as well as from the American radical tradition exemplified by such figures as Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Black Power and Chicano movements of the sixties and early seventies.

The book's introduction lists several CRT propositions:

Racism is ordinary, not aberrational—“normal science,” the usual way society does business, the common, everyday experience of most people of color in this country.

Most would agree that our system of white-over-color ascendancy serves important purposes, both psychic and material.

Race and races are products of social thought and relations. Not objective, inherent, or fixed, they correspond to no biological or genetic reality; rather, races are categories that society invents, manipulates, or retires when convenient.

Intersectionality

The voice-of-color thesis holds that because of their different histories and experiences with oppression, black, Indian, Asian, and Latino/a writers and thinkers may be able to communicate to their white counterparts matters that the whites are unlikely to know. Minority status, in other words, brings with it a presumed competence to speak about race and racism.

You can search and read the entire book on-line here.

What say you?

CRT Sematical Jiggery Pokery

Silverfiddle Rant!

Critical Race Theory is under sustained attack by grass roots Americans all across the ideological spectrum.  

The CRT grifters are fighting back with one of the pseudo-intellectual left's favorite tactics:  Semantical Jiggery Pokery.  Like when a good American scorns a progressive policy by calling it socialist, and a thousand sneering pedants emerge to tie you up in dorm room sophistries involving the differences between communism, marxism, socialism, etc and mock you as ignorant for not knowing all the terms.  

Common sense people lose patience with this.  It's like pornography.  I don't need to be steeped in the theories and history of porn to know it when I see it.  

Leftists are shouting down the burgeoning CRT rebellion by saying the WrongThinkers don't even know what Critical Race Theory is, or they misunderstand its terms, they are applying it to phenomena that are not CRT.  My favorite:  Imperiously stating one cannot argue against CRT until one has slogged through thousands of pages of turgid CRT "theory," which is at best a hodge-podge of writings with no foundation of facts, data or quantitative analysis one can use to judge the validity of its many claims.

One of the tenured high lords of Anti-Racism compares his science-free area of study to astrophysics. He has built his career on either-or fallacies like this...

The cause of racial inequity is either racist policy or racial hierarchy. The racial problem is the result of bad policies or bad people.

Either Black and Latino people are the least likely to be vaccinated against COVID-19 because there’s something wrong with them—or the inequity stems from racist policy. Either Black girls are six times as likely to be expelled from school as white girls because they misbehave more—or the inequity is caused by racist policy. To believe in racial hierarchy, to say that something is wrong with a racial group, is to express racist ideas.

Leftwing partisans like Joy Reid (why are the two crabbiest, most joyless women on TV ironically both named Joy?) respond by using their control of the medium and microphone to shout down anyone making sense.  See:  RCP - Joy Reid v Chris Rufo

So is it really CRT that has parents all across the US in revolt?  

Technically, probably not, based on my limited study, but that is irrelevant. In order to freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it, you first have to name it.

The National Review editors provide the best defense for calling this crap CRT, even if that doesn't technically fit what is going on in classrooms, government employee seminars and corporate training sessions:

The intellectual roots of CRT can be found in Marxist-influenced critical theory, which began in the academia of Weimar Germany. It developed into an “intersectional” ideology at Harvard Law School in the late 1980s, through Kimberlé Crenshaw and other supporters of Professor Derrick Bell. In recent years, however, it has metastasized into the pop psychology of bestsellers such as Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist and Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility as well as pseudohistory such as the New York Times’ 1619 Project.

What say you?

Music & Solzhenitsyn

Silverfiddle Rant!

“Rub your eyes and purify your heart — and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well.” — Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

Winston Marshall is leaving Mumford & Sons.  He made the mistake of praising Andy Ngo's new book, and the torrent of sewage spewing at him from the rabid left is affecting the band.

He explains it all here.  I neither praise nor condemn him.  He's been walking a thin line, and it appears he now sees what a futile effort that is.  Ideologues want all of you: Heart and soul, body and mind, and you must recite all the right words. No nuance.

He includes this quote from Aleksander Solzhenitsyn:

“And he who is not sufficiently courageous to defend his soul — don’t let him be proud of his ‘progressive’ views, and don’t let him boast that he is an academician or a people’s artist, a distinguished figure or a general. Let him say to himself: I am a part of the herd and a coward. It’s all the same to me as long as I’m fed and kept warm.”

I leave you with an appropriate Mumford & Sons song:  Hopeless Wanderer.  Apologies for not picking a classical selection for this weekend, but I am fairly ignorant of that genre...

Biden's Border Crisis

Silverfiddle Rant!

The Biden-created humanitarian crisis at the border continues.  Expanded asylum rules will keep them coming and continue this billion dollar bonanza for human traffickers and criminal gangs.

VP Harris made buffoonishly false statement about enforcing the law, don't come here, etc, when she was bumbling around in Central America, but The Spectator states the new Biden policy plainly:

"If his party believes that mere poverty creates a valid asylum claim, that real borders are morally illegitimate, that minors must be admitted immediately, that families must never be separated and that ICE must be defanged or abolished, what can Biden do besides let everybody in?"

What say you?

For Father's Day 2021

My father (June 19, 1911-January 30, 1998).  Today is your 110th birthday!

Dad in his twenties

Dad, in his sixties, is on the left.

I miss you, Dad — even though these words so apply to our relationship: 

"Men like my father cannot die. They are with me still -- real in memory as they were in flesh, loving and beloved forever" (from How Green Was My Valley).

 I don't know what Dad's favorite song was, but I do know that the award-winning 1941 movie How Green Was My Valley was his favorite film. When Dad and Mom were dating, this film was the one movie which he took her to see at the cinema when the film was re-released to theaters in 1950.

 

The Insatiable Beast

Silverfiddle Rant!

Lin-Manuel Miranda is a talented La Tinks actor/writer/director of color with iron-clad progressive credentials. Now, the Neo-Maoists come for him. It appears he will survive the Struggle Session, learn from his shameful and humiliating mistakes, and go on to produce many intersectionally-correct productions that celebrate the Glorious People's Eternal Struggle.

From People Magazine:

Lin-Manuel Miranda Apologizes for Colorism in In The Heights: 'I Promise to Do Better'

"I'm seeing the discussion around Afro-Latino representation in our film this weekend and it is clear that many in our dark-skinned Afro-Latino community don't feel sufficiently represented within it, particularly among the leading roles."

Miranda continued, "I can hear the hurt and frustration over colorism, of feeling unseen in the feedback. I hear that without sufficient dark-skinned Afro-Latino representation, the work feels extractive of the community we wanted so much to represent with pride and joy."

Miranda's fellow running dog, Jon Chu, also quickly admitted fault and accepted his need for further education:

"Yeah, I mean I think that that was something we talked about and I needed to be educated about, of course," Chu, 41, responded.

"But I hear you on trying to fill those cast members with darker-skinned [actors]. I think that's a really good conversation to have, something that we should all be talking about," he added.

The actress who starred in this shameful colorist nightmare also issued profound apologies, but it gets tedious, so you can go read it all for yourself.

The Horrors of "White-Passing"

A "Black woman of Cuban descent" who writes for a progressive propaganda sheet interrogated the filmmakers about the troubling "lack of Black Latinx people represented" in the film considering the movie's main cast "were light-skinned or white-passing Latinx people."

Never worry, Miranda is "Listening," "holding space," "learning, " and promising to "do better." No doubt he will:

"I'm truly sorry," he wrote. "I'm learning from the feedback, I thank you for raising it, and I'm listening. I'm trying to hold space for both the incredible pride in the movie we made and be accountable for our shortcomings. Thanks for your honest feedback. I promise to do better in my future projects, and I'm dedicated to the learning and evolving we all have to do to make sure we are honoring our diverse and vibrant community. Siempre, LMM."

Pardon the mixed metaphors, but the guillotine's thirst is never slaked.

Video: The Mass Psychosis And The Demons Of Dostoevsky

(hat tip to DEPLORABLE Bloggers Alliance)

Worth a few moments of your consideration:

 

The desire for power, often paired with self-deception, is eternal and very nearly ubiquitous across Time. 

Also of interest...The Manufacturing of a Mass Psychosis - Can Sanity Return to an Insane World?:

 

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down) 

For this weekend, a feast for the ears and suitable for quiet reflection. Enjoy Vaughan Williams: The best orchestral works (except symphonies):

About the above:

01.Five variants of Dives & Lazarus 00:00 02.English Folk Song Suite: 1.March 12:33 03.English Folk Song Suite: 2.Intermezzo 15:27 04.English Folk Song Suite: 3.March 18:20 05.Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis 21:23 06.Fantasia on Greensleeves 37:06 07.March of the kitchen utensils 41:45 08.Norfolk rhapsody no.1 44:55 09.The lark ascending 55:13 10.The Wasps overture 01:09:50

The Left is Crazy

Silverfiddle Rant!

Yes, people on the left really are crazy.  Many on the left "ignore the science" and continue to wear masks even after getting vaccinated, and they suffer more psychosis and authoritarian tendencies.  Privileged white racists aren't performing enough hate crimes, so leftwing activists have to make them up.  By the hundreds.

People like the poor cracked woman quoted below provide a window into the hysteria-fueled progressive psyche.  She is clearly driven by irrational fear and loathing.  She performs the all-too-human act of projecting her bugaboos onto those she doesn't like and she ascribes motives with zero evidence. I pity her. 

From Real Clear Politics:

New York Times editorial board Mara Gay told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that she was disturbed to see pickup trucks with "dozens of American flags" and Trump paraphernalia during a recent trip to Long Island.

"I was on Long Island this weekend," she said. "And I was really disturbed."

"I saw, you know, dozens and dozens of pickup trucks with expletives against Joe Biden on the back of them, Trump flags, and in some cases, just dozens of American flags, which is also just disturbing, which essentially the message was clear, this is my country. This is not your country. I own this."

Pushback

Scorched earth (hat tip to 100% Fed Up): 

The above confrontation is not unique the past several weeks. Similar scorched earth is happening all over the United States as school boards prepare to implement Critical Race Theory across the curricula and across all grade levels this coming school term.

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down)

Music and images that match the overwhelming grief in my soul:

About Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6: 

The Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74, also known as the Pathétique Symphony, is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's final completed symphony, written between February and the end of August 1893. The composer entitled the work "The Passionate Symphony", employing a Russian word, Патетическая (Pateticheskaya), meaning "passionate" or "emotional", which was then (mis-)translated into French as pathétique, meaning "solemn" or "emotive". 

The composer led the first performance in Saint Petersburg on 28 October [O.S. 16 October] of that year, nine days before his death....

Interesting reading: the above piece's place in popular culture.  Worth your time.

Expertendammerung: "a Fireball of Public Anger"

Silverfiddle Rant!

"Should it turn out that scientists and experts and NGOs, etc. are villains rather than heroes of this story, we may very well see the expert-worshiping values of modern liberalism go up in a fireball of public anger."

(Thomas Frank, The Guardian)

"Lab leaks happen. They aren’t the result of conspiracies: “a lab accident is an accident,” as Nathan Robinson points out; they happen all the time, in this country and in others, and people die from them.

By the way, right-wingers didn’t dream up “gain of function”: all the cool virologists have been doing it (in this country and in others) even as the squares have been warning against it for years.

Think of all the disasters of recent years: 

economic neoliberalism, destructive trade policies, the Iraq War, the housing bubble, banks that are “too big to fail,” mortgage-backed securities, the Hillary Clinton campaign of 2016 — all of these disasters brought to you by the total, self-assured unanimity of the highly educated people who are supposed to know what they’re doing, plus the total complacency of the highly educated people who are supposed to be supervising them."

This is why normal people with common sense no longer lap up what the Inofotainment Media Complex pukes out.  As Farmer wisely reminds us, today's "experts" have no skin in the game, so we should never make the mistake of automatically trusting them.

Extra Credit:

Our Legacy Corporate Media Is Full of Liars and Propagandists

"Stealing is...reparations"

The title of this blog post is just one stupid utterance documented in the video below. Another stupid is utterance in that the pandemic has caused an outbreak of crime: 

 

Is America waking up to the insanities documented above and prepared to vote out certain feckless leaders and "cancel" their sycophantic mouthpieces in the media and in academia?

Memorial Day 2021

This Memorial Day Weekend, amid shopping for bargains, getting together with family and friends after all the months of pandemic lockdowns, and enjoying the traditional Memorial Day Weekend cookouts, let us remember the significance of Memorial Day: honoring Our Fallen, who made the ultimate sacrifice.  

Gone, but never forgotten.

American military cemeteries around the world:

For many, the concept of honoring Our Fallen holds the deepest kind of personal significance:

   

Surely we can all find time to do some reading appropriate for this weekend...2021 Memorial Day: 30 facts, meaning and history to celebrate this holiday.

The Continuing Devolution Of California

Back when Mr. AOW and I vacationed in Southern California from 1975-2006, I always looked forward to visiting festive and beautiful Venice Beach. Such a beautiful place, bustling with activity and joy! Yes, there were a few vagrants, but so few as barely to be noticed. But now:

 

Additional information (video): Venice Beach taken over by homeless encampments.

...One fed-up resident told Jones that he lives in a building near an encampment on the beach and hears the homeless people fighting "all night long." Another resident told Jones, "I’ve been in California my whole life [and] I honestly feel like this is not California anymore....

Is this problem fixable? If so, how?

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down)

Enjoy the symphonic poem Vltava (The Moldau) by Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884):

 

(Please take a few moments to read about the above selection, evoking the sounds of the flowing of one of Bohemia's great rivers and which contains Smetana's most famous tune, also the basis of the Israeli National Anthem) 

“You never know who is vaccinated or who is lying”

Silverfiddle Rant!

I detect a disturbing trend in our nation:  People are expecting guarantees and definitive answers that real life and "experts" simply cannot provide:

With no national system to check who is vaccinated and who is not, the new federal guidance leaves an unavoidable — but gaping — hole, some people said. There’s no guarantee, they said, that unvaccinated people will not discard their masks along with the vaccinated ones, potentially creating a risk that the virus will continue to circulate.

I proffer two articles that provide a snapshot into the state of America today. Please read them and share your thoughts on what a year and an half of masking has done to this nation:

Mask? No Mask? New Rules Leave Americans Recalibrating, Hour by Hour

The new mask guidance relies on an honor system. Do we trust each other enough to make it work?

This statement made me jump up and shout, Hell NO!

"Masking, a rare practice in the United States just 14 months ago, has become a normal part of American life."

God forbid we ever consider a year with diapers on our faces "normal."  My "favorite" quotes from the articles:

She said she wondered whether unvaccinated people would rip off their masks, putting her daughter at risk before she could get her shots. With no system to track whether people in public spaces have been inoculated, Garrett figured she couldn't know for sure.

“I’m thinking that until we really know more about it from empirical scientific evidence, that we should keep the mask in place, especially in public,” he said.

“It freaked me out,” Mary Beagan, 77, said of riding the elevator in her Minneapolis apartment building on Friday and seeing a woman step on with no mask. Yes, Ms. Beagan had heard about the C.D.C’s announcement. And yes, she has had her Covid-19 vaccines. Still, after all these months, it felt kind of scary.

“I still don’t know where people have been to; they don’t know where I’ve been,” said Yamilet Rebolledo, 24, who wore a fuchsia mask to the farmers’ market and said she plans to continue covering her face even once she is vaccinated.

“I’m hyper-aware that wearing a mask or not wearing a mask says something about me,” said Annie Krabbenschmidt, 27, a gig worker and writer who lives in Los Angeles. She said she had apprehensions about giving up her mask. “They are so much more than a safety vest, at this point.”

Higher Education?

Found in a stash of blog-posts drafts in my Blogger dashboard. True then, true now?

From The College Fix (October 4, 2020), we have this "speech guide."  The list is from Virginia's James Madison University, where the 2020-2021 undergraduate tuition along with other fees, including room and board, for in-state students is $23,918 and out-of-state tuition plus fees and room and board, is $40,818.

 Dated October 4, 2020. 2020-2021 Undergraduate tuition, along with other fees, including room and board at JMU = https://www.jmu.edu/admissions/tuition-financial-aid-and-scholarships.shtml Entering Students (2020-21) - Per year In-state tuition: $7,250 Comprehensive fee: $5,080 Room and board*: $11,588 Total in-state: $23,918 Out-of-state tuition: $24,150 Comprehensive fee: $5,080 Room and board*: $11,588 Total out-of-state: $40,818 The full list of 35 “dumb” expressions is (emphases mine): 

1. “Some of my best friends are …” 

2. “I know exactly how you feel.” 

3. “I don’t think of you as …” 

4. “The same thing happens to me too.” 

5. “It was only a joke! Don’t take things so seriously.” 

6. What do ‘your’ people think.” 

7. “What are you?” or “Where are you really from?” 

8. “I don’t see color” or “I’m color blind.” 

9. “You are so articulate.” 

10. “It is so much better than it used to be. Just be patient.” 

11. “You speak the language very well.” 

12. Asking black people about their hair or hygiene. 

13. Saying to LBGTQ people “what you do in the privacy of your own bedroom is your business.” 

14. “Yes, but you are a ‘good’ one.” 

15. “You have such a pretty face.” 

16. “I never owned slaves.” 

17. “If you are going to live in this country, learn to speak the language!” 

18. “She/he is a good person. She/he didn’t mean anything by it.” 

19. “When I’ve said the same thing to other people like you, they don’t mind.” 

20. Calling women “girls, honey, sweetie pie” or other familiar terms. 

21. When people of color say, “It is not the same thing.” 

22. When people of faith say, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” 

23. When white men say, “We are the ones being discriminated against now!” 

24. Referring to older people as “cute.” 

25. Asking a transgender person, “What are you really? A man or a woman?” 

26. Referring to the significant other, partner, or spouse of a same gender couple as their “friend.” 

27. “Why do ‘they’ (fill in the blank) always have to sit together? They are always sticking together.” 

28. “People just need to pick themselves up by their bootstraps.” 

29. People with disabilities are “courageous.” 

30. “That’s so gay/queer. That’s so retarded.” 

31. “I don’t see difference. We are all part of the same race, the human race.” 

32. I don’t care if you are pink, purple or orange, I treat all people the same.” 

33. Asking a transgender person, “Have you had the operation.” 

34. Saying to a Jewish person, “You are so lucky to have ‘your’ Christmas spread over a week!” 

35. “Here’s another book on political correctness.”

The entire document is HERE, and each individual item has an "explanation" or "supportive material."

Mind you, I wouldn't utter most of the above statements.  As a young person, however, I would have.

Besides, a university is supposed to be, by definition, a place where students are exposed to new and different ideas and opinions.  

Back in the days when I attended university (1968-1973), I was exposed to plenty of different ideas.  I evaluated those ideas ("Keep the best, lose the rest") — that was my job as student.

Today, students at so many of our institutions of learning are being turned into Leftism-spouting automatons.  Weep for America. Weep for our  Bill of Rights.

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down)

Enjoy the serene Images pour orchestre by Claude Debussy (1862-1918):

Sections of the above piece:

1. Gigues (0:00​)

2. Iberia:

I. Par les rues et par les chemins (7:30​)

II. Les parfums de la nuit (14:30​)

III. Le matin d'un jour de fête (22:00​)

3. Rondes de printemps (26:20​)

Masks Off!

But only if fully vaccinated:

After a year of hard work and so much sacrifice, the rule is now simple: get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 13, 2021

Are we going to be on an honor system, or are we going to have to wear our vaccination cards on lanyards to gain admittance to certain places or if in certain situations?

Recommended Reading

People Have Gotten ‘Institutionalized’ by COVID (dated May 6, 2021). 

Excerpt:  

...As the vaccine has brought the promise of liberation from a year of masks, lockdowns, canceled travel plans, and forgone family visits, there is a contingent of Americans who are simply not prepared to move on. They have somehow gotten used to the restrictions and are wary of returning to their pre-COVID-19 lives. In short, they’ve become “institutionalized.”...

 ...[W]e are in the midst of a destructive feedback loop. Leaders make statements that overstate the current risk of COVID-19, which ends up guiding the decisions of local officials, and it also makes people more nervous about returning to normal. The people who are nervous remain less likely to pressure local officials to change irrational policies....

Read the entire essay HERE. 

As I observe all the mask wearers here in Northern Virginia all masked up even when jogging or alone in their cars, I have to wonder if we are turning into a nation of hypochondriacs and — worse — a nation of sheeple. 

And we also have the extreme vaxxers (from Facebook): 

One solution to getting everyone to get the vaccine...bar anyone who has not had a vaccine (except for those with medical reasons) from entrance to any store, restaurant, bar, airplane, resort, movie theater, etc. Maybe when we deprive them of such things will they come to their senses.

Can we somehow turn back the clock so that Americans are not running scared and willing to subject themselves to tyrannical voices?

Additional reading: CDC Changes Rules for Counting Breakthrough Cases, as More Fully Vaccinated People Test Positive (dated May 7, 2021).

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down) 

Enjoy "Be Still, My Soul" as performed by the British vocal ensemble Voces8:

   

Complete lyrics of this hymn: 

Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side. 

Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain. 

Leave to thy God to order and provide; 

In every change, He faithful will remain. 

Be still, my soul: thy best, thy heavenly friend 

Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end. 

Be still, my soul: thy God doth undertake 

To guide the future, as He has the past. 

Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake; 

All now mysterious shall be bright at last. 

Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know 

His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below. 

Be still, my soul: when dearest friends depart, 

And all is darkened in the vale of tears, 

Then shalt thou better know His love, His heart, 

Who comes to soothe thy sorrow and thy fears. 

Be still, my soul: thy Jesus can repay 

From His own fullness all He takes away. 

Be still, my soul: the hour is hastening on 

When we shall be forever with the Lord. 

When disappointment, grief and fear are gone, 

Sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored. 

Be still, my soul: when change and tears are past 

All safe and blessèd we shall meet at last. 

Be still, my soul: begin the song of praise 

On earth, believing, to Thy Lord on high; 

Acknowledge Him in all thy words and ways, 

So shall He view thee with a well pleased eye. 

Be still, my soul: the sun of life divine 

Through passing clouds Shall but more brightly shine. 

About "Be Still, My Soul": 

This hymn was a favorite of Eric Liddell, the athlete who became famous in the 1924 Olympics for refusing to run on the Sabbath (see the 1981 movie Chariots of Fire). 

Liddell later became a missionary in China, and was imprisoned during World War II. He is said to have taught this hymn to others in the prison camp (where he eventually died of a brain tumor). 

(the Voces8 YouTube channel)

Quote Of The Day

Last week, my good friend Mustang stated the following at GeeeZ:

I would not want the sun to set at the end of today with anyone on the right thinking that the reality of the present has only recently manifested itself. Have we forgotten that when the American people rejected socialism almost as frequently as they rejected William Jennings Bryan, that the socialist leaders announced, in the late 1940s, that they intended to seize our education system so that they could grow their own future socialists? Well, they have. Generation after generation has been the subject of leftist brainwashing in disguise of education. As each beguiled generation grew into adulthood and became parents themselves, they, in turn, became the willing participants of the socialist plan until presently, we are left with only a few parents who object to what is going on inside our schools. 

Generation after generation of programmed young people who grew into adulthood to become the neo-Communist members of Congress, who occupied judgeships, who led the government’s many departments and agencies, who advanced to become four-star generals, journalists, and newscasters, who became the owners and operators of America media corporations, each of whom has fed newer generations with Marxist filth, each one breaking down our society into its many parts so that people today imagines that we have a right to choose and modify our biological identity, and that anyone who disagrees with their reality is a right-wing racist, and that God is merely a figment of our imaginations. 

It is today too late to save America from herself. The misery of future generations is already guaranteed. America is already destroyed. Biden is proof of that — he and the tens of millions of people who subscribe to the foolish arguments of the new left. A new America will arise from this chaos: one whose flag will have a hammer and sickle in one corner and a raised black fist in the other. Welcome to the new Kenya, folks. The inmates have taken over the asylum. 

Is Mustang correct in his assertions, particularly that there is no hope for the future of our republic? And if there is hope to counter what Mustang informs us has taken place, how exactly can we bring that hope to fruition?

Related: McConnell wants 1619 Project removed from federal grant programs (dated April 30, 2021).

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down) 

 Please enjoy the short lecture, then Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring (hat tip to Deplorable Bloggers Alliance):

 

Happy Weekend, Happy Spring!