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Analysis/Commentary

Governing With Science

The Religion of the Left

Those who demand we ‘govern with science’ understand neither science nor governance. Science is not some magical oracle that craps out solutions you blindly follow like some retarded lemming. Rather, it’s the process one follows in pursuit of information about the world that can then be used to craft solutions. Importantly, it’s a process that requires QUESTIONING EVERYTHING – not blindly deferring to the consensus opinion.

Unfortunately for some, the scientific method involves more than blindly doing whatever this man says.

Furthermore, the information it does provide isn’t some revelation given on Mt. Sinai in final, perfect form. It comes in the form of data that can be misinterpreted by idiots, as proven on a near-daily basis by journalists. Even for those of us with a brain, it’s often difficult to make sense of. It’s not uncommon (or unreasonable) for experts to disagree* on how to interpret a given study’s results. There’s not always a consensus on what’s right and what’s wrong, but even where there is, that’s only step one.

From Science to Solutions

Pretend, for the sake of argument, that we actually have an issue like climate change where there’s broad scientific agreement as to the basic facts. All this tells us is the world is getting warmer due to CO2 emissions – it says nothing about what to do to solve it. Identifying a problem doesn’t necessarily offer solutions. After we have the science, we have to decide how to use it to craft policy solutions to the problem in question.

So, should we just, “Ask the experts”? Hell no. Experts are, by definition and design, very limited in their purview. They are people who know a whole lot about very little. Unfortunately, you can’t govern in siloes. Policies just don’t impact the area in question; rather, their impacts are spread across a variety of fields. Governing is about balancing interests – we’ve seen this in the past year as we’ve prioritized disease control at the expense of economics and education. Listening to an expert in one field often means ignoring experts in another.

The Politics Problem

Let’s pretend you have an issue where there’s consensus on the science and the solution – for example, that reducing carbon emissions is the best way to combat global warming**. You still face a couple of problems – notably, the fact that environmental regulations have an economic impact. Politics requires finding a balance between economic sacrifice and environmental protection. How, precisely, you strike this balance and what policies you use to do so are the questions politics is meant to solve. They don’t have answers that can be taken verbatim from some scientific tome.

Furthermore, you need to get everyone on board and compliant. It doesn’t do the US any good to cut carbon emissions if China turns around and increases theirs by an equal amount. The issue presents a ‘free rider’ problem in which every nation has an economic incentive to continue polluting while allowing other nations to bear the brunt of carbon reduction. This problem doesn’t go away by screaming “SCIENCE” repeatedly at the top of your lungs. Even if the science on any given issue is clear, you can always count on politics to screw the solution up.

A Word on Experts

It’s also important to note that these experts don’t come to their conclusions in a vacuum. Most of them work in academic environments – not exactly the most ideologically tolerant environments. Experts are people first and foremost – people who want to be accepted by their peers and thought of as experts. Their primary incentive is to preserve their status as an “expert” which usually means supporting the policies and opinions of the powers that be. Furthermore, once an “Alpha-expert” has spoken, any dissenting opinion will be met with ridicule – and possibly demands for the heretic’s job.

Where they aren’t maintaining their status, they’re expanding it. Take Dr. Fauci. A year ago, very few in the country had heard of the man. Since then, he’s become a household name and one of the most influential people in the nation. Do you think he doesn’t like that power, that control? At some point, you have to ask how much of an expert’s advice is designed to increase their own importance, power, and profile as opposed to straightforward advice intended to guide policymakers.

Pictured – a possible confounding factor influencing Dr. Fauci’s advice.

Finally, experts often have direct conflicts. Experts are experts because they work in a certain field – they often have built-in interests. Most military experts come from the military. Environmental experts become environmental experts because they care disproportionately about environmental issues. Hell, teacher’s unions can be considered education experts if you want. The point is not that experts are bad. Rather, it’s that expert advice should be one of a number of factors going into policy decisions rather than something we blindly follow.

Disclaimer

None of this is intended to dismiss science’s critical role in the policy-making process or to insult experts (well, maybe some of them). Rather, it’s to put expert advice – often portrayed in the media as edicts sent from above – into perspective. It’s also to argue that ‘govern with science’ essentially means ‘obey without question’ and is used to avoid debate in favor of bullying, insults, and mockery.

*And all this is assuming the study was designed properly and that data has been confirmed through replication – both of which are major issues worthy of their own article

**For the record, population control and reduction is the BEST solution and also demonstrates this political problem – despite its merits, it’s impossible to achieve without massive human rights violations

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Analysis/Commentary

Bibi, Biden, and the “Defenders of Democracy”

Biden Prioritizes Ideology to Alliances

Like President Obama, the early indications are that the Biden Administration will prioritize its globalist ideology over American national interests. Despite his big talk about renewing America’s commitments to her allies, Biden still hasn’t called one of our closest allies, Israel. With growing anti-Israel sentiment within the Democratic party, his foreign policy appears to be aimed at placating ideologues rather than preserving American interests. This goes doubly since – though he refuses to talk to Israel – he’s chomping at the bits to talk to Iran.

A less reliable ally than the Ayatollah according to the Biden foreign policy
The Death of Sovereignty in the Democratic World?

This also displays a disturbing trend for Western leaders to use their power to pressure voters in other countries. Though the Democrat’s anti-Israel sentiment runs beyond Bibi, I have to believe* that Benny Gantz would have gotten a call. Given the proximity of the next Israeli elections, the message from Biden to Israeli voters seems clear: vote for who I want, or suffer the consequences.

Though we expect anti-democratic nations like Russia and China to put their fingers on the scale in other countries, democracies used to be better than that. Though the right of self-determination dictates that the PEOPLE of each nation ought to decide their nation’s direction, this concept seems to be rejected by globalist leaders. From Obama threatening Brexit voters to Macron blocking Brazil’s OECD entry, globalist leaders are increasingly willing to tell voters in other countries what to do. At this point, polarization and partisanship cross borders.

The “Defenders of Democracy”

For better or worse, politics is now international and can be divided (generally) into three lanes – right, center, and left. The right is what it’s always been – nationalists bent on preserving their nation’s sovereignty and security, albeit with varying degrees of authoritarianism. The left is primarily** represented by the Chinese Communist Party and its various puppets and consists of those who organize around a central ideology and use totalitarian means to enforce it. The center consists of our great ‘defenders of democracy’ – globalists looking to centralize power in bureaucratic institutions.

The problem with the center is epitomized by Time’s “cabal” – they only defend democracy when it produces the results they want. Unfortunately, true democracy means following the will of the people, not manipulating or bullying the people into doing what the elites want. Behind the window-dressing of “defending democracy” lies an entrenched elite that behaves like the nobles of old – enveloping us peons in red tape, controlling information and what we’re allowed to say, and stopping at nothing to preserve their stranglehold on power.

COVID and Control

Nowhere is this desire to institutionalize and control the population more clearly seen than in the establishment’s response to COVID. What started as “flatten the curve” and “fifteen days to stop the spread” has been extended indefinitely as people in power realized the control they could exercise on everyday citizens. Increasingly, these petty neo-nobles rushed to outdo one another, with each bureaucrat and elected official focused primarily on establishing dominance within their fiefdom through micro-regulations which they didn’t hesitate to flaunt.

It’s no small point that, once we were locked up, these same elites had almost total control of our access to information. Through the election, the center demanded more and more stringent lockdowns; at the same time, Twitter and Facebook became more and more aggressive in shutting down information that didn’t gel with the worldviews of their progressive employees while ignoring excesses and abuses from their own side.

This double standard goes against the very core of the democratic principles they purport to defend. Indeed, it reveals the true goal of the globalists – to create, through regulations, institutionalism, and censorship – a new nobility that preserves their power against the will of the people and the possibility the voters might not do what they want. In the end, it isn’t democracy Time’s “cabal” was defending – it’s oligarchy.

*To be fair, with no evidence but my gut

**American progressives also fall notably in this lane

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Analysis/Commentary

Prepare for America’s Decade of Humiliation

The Morning After

Despite Trump’s loss, the tightness of the race led a variety of elites to wonder – how could this happen again? How could a significant portion of the electorate vote for someone that they had spent four years labeling racist? Any person with an iota of intelligence or self-awareness might be inclined to examine their own role in this national fiasco. Luckily, our elites can simply blame racism, avoiding the unthinkable – that maybe, just maybe, their arrogance, pettiness, and narcissism have something to do with the problem.

Let’s be clear – Trump was always meant to be a disruptor. He was elected because a significant portion of Americans thought the establishment needed a shakeup – the bureaucrats were too entrenched, the media was too arrogant and self-obsessed, and the politicians were too corrupt. Whether Trump himself fell into these same categories was largely irrelevant. Sometimes, the best way to clear out the rats is to send in a snake. At any rate, he was pissing off the right people. For many, Trump served the same purpose as a primal scream and, if our elite classes were smart, they would have taken the hint.

At this point, it’s hard to argue the disruption worked. For better or worse, America will never be the same. Whether we move forward or collapse into racially-motivated infighting remains to be seen, but it’s clear which way the majority party will move things. With the Democrats in charge and corporate America largely on board, prepare to be served a big plate of racial self-flagellation.

Pictured- Black Oppression in America (i.e. a man who complains about white privilege to trailer-trash before taking a private jet to check in on his sweatshops and cheer the murder of Muslims in China)

Racial Self-Flagellation

America is now ruled by a party that hates it – in particular, a party that maintains power through racially-extortionist rhetoric and intersectional majoritarianism. Expect the next two to four years to consist of nonstop racial self-flagellation sponsored by corporate America in partnership with our political class. The instinct to put everything in racial terms has already begun with complaints of a double standard for the Capitol Hill riots – ironic since Republicans immediately condemned the riots whereas Democratic politicians aided, abetted, and cheer-led four years of BLM and anti-Kavanaugh riots.

It’s hard to blame these cloistered, ivory-tower elites for riding the horse that got them there – after all, Kamala Harris is the Vice President explicitly because she is black and a woman*. Ilhan Omar has made quite a life for herself after fleeing Somalia by preaching about what a racist hellhole the country that took her in and elected her to Congress is. As for LeBron James, Mark Cuban, and the rest of corporate America, focusing on racism in America comfortably allows them to keep playing the racial justice card while actively running cover for racial persecution in China, maintaining both their public image as good guys and their fragile egos.

Racism and its continuing existence in American life are also critical to leftist elites in another way. Over the past four years – most notably the past year – cancel culture has emerged as elites in media, tech, and academia crackdown on those diverging from the hard left line. Racism is the cover used by powerful progressives like Jack Dorsey to punish or silence those deemed insufficiently progressive – it’s akin to calling someone a ‘communist’ in 1950s Hollywood. After that, the evidence is moot as the antiracist mob rears its ugly head.

Anti-American Unity

It’s also important to point out that the Democrats have a razor-thin majority and relatively major differences in both policy and tactics – ranging from Manchin’s calls for new bipartisanship to Pelosi’s personal pettiness to AOC’s calls to purge anyone with a right-of-center view from public life. The policy debates don’t look much better. For the past four years, what has united the Democrats has been their collective hysteria over a fat orange guy. With Trump gone, where are the Democrats to find a common enemy to unite them?

The answer is anti-racism. Of course, if you peel back the layers of anti-racism, you’ll find it’s little more than anti-Americanism and anti-white racism. The entire gospel of anti-racism is that America – particularly white America – is an inherently racist nation that must constantly self-flagellate for its original sin of racism. Opinions are only worth as much as the oppression points of the person expressing them.

We are so racist that we can’t even see our racism – that’s why they never have to point to overtly racist acts, they can simply claim white privilege or accuse their targets of using ‘dog whistle’ rhetoric. The nice thing about dog whistles is that you can always SAY someone you dislike is using one since, by definition, they can’t be heard outside the intended audience. Anyone not hearing the dog whistles or not checking their white privilege simply isn’t as enlightened or intelligent as the anti-racist educating them – and, of course, anyone wondering whether the racism in question actually exists is a racist who needs to be canceled.

Therefore, over the next two to four years, expect the racialized rhetoric of the Omars and AOCs to take center stage. Corporations have learned that they can use BLM messaging to simultaneously play to the racial justice crowd while humiliating ordinary Americans into overlooking their support for the Uyghur genocide/sweatshops/general sleaziness. As the Democrats fail to deliver on any appreciable policy initiatives, look to them to fall back onto the horse that got them there – racially browbeating Americans into submission.

*Sadly, whether or not Harris is qualified is irrelevant – you don’t get to say a job MUST be filled by a black woman and then cry racism when someone points out that those were the criteria used.

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Position Statements

Abolish the Academy

How Globalists Betrayed America

The ‘Defund the Police’ movement demonstrates how stupid people look for simple solutions to simple problems and still manage to mess things up. Considering that many of these individuals are college-degree-bearing intelligentsia, it emphasizes a point that’s been obvious for a while. Given the American education system’s ‘everyone is special, and nobody’s feelings should be hurt’ mantra, a college degree is, at this point, basically a certification that the recipient does NOT have donkey brains.

At this point, a degree from Harvard is worth less than certification from a mental institution that one doesn’t have donkey brains. The latter individual is at least sane.

To make matters worse, these institutions aren’t even training the next generation of Americans – they are educating the next generation of traitors. Look at the recent BLM protests. It wasn’t black people burning their own neighborhoods; it was NYU-educated lawyers. When our institutions are actively attempting to undermine our society, I think it’s fair to ask why we should continue to support them. This goes doubly considering that, given elite educational institutions’ unwillingness to upset anyone (except whites/conservatives/Americans/etc.), they aren’t even providing the value of education anymore.

College Kids are Dumb

But you can’t tell them they’re dumb because then they’ll throw a tantrum and the professor will lose their job. So, instead, they get coddled and passed through the system, “earning” a degree because their helicopter parents, school counselors, and college deans held their hands all the way through. For everyone else, it’s easier to just look the other way and go with it than it is to fight. These people then graduate and go on to run Hollywood and the New York Times.

What’s the harm? Like a herd, colleges and universities can only go as fast as the slowest student. When EVERYONE has to go to college, and EVERYONE NEEDS an education, the end result is that nobody gets educated because the smart ones get Harrison Bergeron’ed by the dumb ones, who, in turn, have had so much smoke blown up their ass they think they’re the next coming of Karl Marx.

Theoretically, the tiered university system should ameliorate this. Of course, elite institutions pack their classes with those who can afford to ‘play the game’. The remainder is filled with token diversity students to make the rich kids feel ‘woke’. And, of course, to serve the universities’ true purpose.

Academia Seeks to Maintain Its Power

This may sound obvious. However, universities SHOULD exist to benefit their students. At the very least, they should offer a service in exchange for tuition, which theoretically they do. The problem is that the service they offer could be obtained for the cost of the internet, and they charge enough to put people in debt for the rest of their lives.

They do it by creating education as a value in and of itself. From day one in school, we’re taught to value knowledge for its own sake. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that; in fact, it’s a position I wholly endorse. However, the purpose of seeking knowledge (apart from it being awesome) is to become a better, more thoughtful person. If done properly, ‘education for its own sake’ would provide some basic knowledge, the tools for one to think on their own, and encourage them to reach their own conclusions.

Instead of teaching students HOW to think, however, universities are more interested in telling students WHAT to think.

Cultlike Indoctrination of Diversity

Far from teaching students to think for themselves, most universities actively discourage it, at least on many issues. Look at the commitment to diversity and antiracism. Try to question the latest diversity initiative or any assertion of the antiracist crowd and see just how much these intellectuals enjoy an arduous debate.

If these academics’ cause is so pure, shouldn’t they be able to defend it? The problem is that these institutions, and many of the professors, have dedicated their lives to things like gender studies and fighting racism. Now that legal equality has been achieved and overt racism is taboo, what good are they to anyone? Who needs a social justice warrior when social justice has been achieved?

To avoid people seeing how worthless these people are, they need to keep upping the ante. Hence…

Intersectionality- A self-perpetuating scam

Racism isn’t dead – we just can’t see it because we aren’t smart enough. Worse, we’re racist. Sure, we love everyone and treat all races equally, but our ‘white privilege’ makes us blind to ‘microaggressions’. By pushing more and more obscure concepts (which, conveniently, they keep making up), they ensure that racism can never be defeated – thus, they will always have a role to play.

They then force this critical race theory onto our young people, indoctrinating them with the idea that America is an irredeemable, racist nation. In undermining our nation, they preserve their own social prestige. In exchange, college kids (who aren’t white/male/cis/etc.) are handed a convenient excuse for all life’s shortcomings; even the ones who don’t qualify get to be ‘allies’*.

Of course, like the parasites they are, these academics enrich themselves at the cost of the nation. They peddle snake-oil theories to keep themselves relevant and keep their students too dumb/scared to challenge them.

Conclusion

It’s not at all surprising that voices like AOC and Bernie Sanders are demanding free education for all. After all, what ideological crusader wouldn’t want the government to foot the bill for a four-year indoctrination camp?

However, for those of us who actually care about this country, this isn’t such a good deal. We’d pay for the next generation of BLM rioters convinced they’re helping the oppressed by burning down their neighborhoods. The idea that our government should pay for young Americans to be indoctrinated with anti-American ideas is absurd.

If anything, we should be tearing these ivory towers down, not helping to build them up.

*Meaning they do what they’re told, no questions asked.

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Analysis/Commentary

Critical Race Theory, Trump, BLM, and the Politics of Humiliation

Hearing Without Listening

Thomas Friedman recently wrote an article that epitomizes the aloofness of the cloistered elites in their ivory towers. The article (worth the read) does an excellent job detailing the humiliation and rage from Trump supporters without quite getting it. Joe Biden can’t reach out to Trump voters any more than Clinton could with overtures to Republicans like myself. Biden can’t reach out to Trump supporters because Biden isn’t the problem. Thomas Friedman is the problem.

Maybe not Thomas Friedman, personally. He seems like a decent enough fellow. Besides, just look at that face – how can you hate that face?

Photo by Charles Haynes, from Wikimedia Commons

It’s His People, Stupid

Even if you assume Biden is at full mental capacity, he’s shown no willingness to stand up to the radicals in his own party. He secured the nomination by adopting large portions of Sanders’s platform and picked a vice president based primarily on race and gender. Biden, in his prime, was a loyal party man; it’s clear that Biden the candidate does whatever his Democratic handlers tell him to. He’s shown no willingness to stray from the party line or condemn the excesses of his own partisans.

These same partisans are the ones harassing people at restaurants. They are the ones who crossed the line with Kavanaugh, they’re the ones attacking George Washington, and they’re the ones censoring our daily communications. In short, they’re the ones pushing intersectionality and critical race theory. All the nice words and peace, love, and compassion in the world will mean nothing from a candidate who fully intends to empower the exact people responsible for this humiliation.

Critical Race Theory and Social Control

Whether intentionally or unintentionally, Friedman overlooks the main factor in the humiliation of Trump supporters. Critical race theory and intersectionality – known colloquially as the “Oppression Olympics” for their tendency to award oppression points based on race, gender, and sexuality – are the main tools used to attack and humiliate Trump supporters and, ultimately, any American refusing to toe the ‘woke’ line.

Clearly, this group has upped the ante in the past few months with the tactics of humiliation. In 2016, if you didn’t want elitists talking down to you, you simply avoided academics and Hollywood. Now, by hiding behind an uncontroversial slogan (BLM), critical race theory – and its accompanying humiliation of Americans and Christians like Drew Brees and Terry Crews – has infiltrated every aspect of American life.

Today, you can’t go to a restaurant without being harassed, and you can’t watch a football game or shop on the internet (since, you know, COVID restrictions) without being bombarded with BLM messaging. With BLM messaging comes the Cultural Marxist subtext of self-flagellation, a requirement to kiss the ring to make up for the original sin of being American/Christian/white (or whatever privilege you have to compensate for).

Trump the Troll

To understand how left-wing overreach will win Trump the election, it’s important to understand Trump’s electoral strategy. Essentially, he’s a troll. He says things that get his opponents on tilt, and when they go too far it galvanizes people who may not be pro-Trump but whose hand is now forced by the excesses of the Resistance.

Remember, Trump won the primary with 41% of the vote*; 59% of Republican primary voters DID NOT vote for Trump. Yet, the secret of Trump’s remarkably consistent if unimpressive approval rating has been his historic, near-uniform approval among Republicans, most of whom preferred another candidate.

*This number is especially impressive considering it includes contests after Trump became the presumptive nominee.

A Growing Number of Deplorables

How did he go from a small group of ‘Deplorables’ to a party representing just under half of the nation? The excesses and abuses of the Resistance – most notably the Kavanaugh hearing and the Russia Hoax – galvanized Trump-skeptical Republicans to rally behind the President. Simply put, the willingness to use mobs and shady legal tactics to destroy and coerce created a threat greater than any posed by a fat orange man sitting in a room tweeting.

With the degree and uniformity with which the establishment has rallied around the anti-Trump cause under the guise of BLM, expect the number of deplorables to grow. After all, the restaurant-goers being harassed by BLM mobs aren’t necessarily Trumpers. Football fans generally go to games to escape the anger of the day-to-day world – forcing them to take a knee, which they likely already have to do in some form at their jobs, is just going to piss them off further.

As the BLM mob becomes more aggressive and liberals like Friedman feel more and more comfortable forcing left-wing politics on people trying to go about their lives, expect more and more Americans to begin to feel ‘deplorable’.

Trump the Roto-Rooter

In many ways, Trump is a mirror. In addition to his trolling tactics, part of the reason for Trump’s electoral success has been the ‘flexibility’ he touted in the debates. Having no real record or core political beliefs has allowed a wide range of supporters to look at him and see themselves. It also explains why media types like Friedman, along with academics, bureaucrats, and tech giants, have such a visceral reaction to Trump. They are obsessed with Trump’s corruption because they, themselves, are corrupt.

They constantly complain about Trump’s attacks on American institutions without asking whether those institutions deserve to be attacked. Especially in the media, many journalists have come to believe themselves so immune to reproach that they see any criticism – even pointing out mistakes – to be an attack on the First Amendment. Bureaucrats in many cases are more concerned with protecting their own power and prestige, even if it means keeping in place an outdated and inefficient bureaucratic system.

In fact, Trump’s attacks on institutions aren’t undemocratic – they are the reason we elected him. America’s elite institutions, from the bureaucrats to the media to tech giants, have become so fat, lazy, and condescending that we elected somebody to challenge them. Rather than take the message, they have doubled down on the humiliation tactics. We’ll see how that works for them this time.

In the interim, if Thomas Friedman wants to know the secret to Trump’s success, he needs only take a look around his own newsroom.

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Current Events

Red Mirage and Mail-In Fraud

Out of Labor Day and Out of the Gates

Labor Day weekend marks the kickoff of campaign season entering full swing and the Left wasted no time in taking the gloves off with what amounts to high-school gossip, i.e. unconfirmable rumors. As the polls and models continue to predict a likely Biden win, prediction markets and betting odds tell a different story. What’s the cause of this discrepancy?

Though I’ve pondered the possibilities elsewhere, perhaps the biggest flaw in both the models and prediction markets is the idea that either Biden or Trump will win. In my opinion, given the environment and posturing of both sides, the most likely outcome is a disputed election. In fact, both sides are already arming their supporters to reject the election results – the Democrats through pushing the idea of the ‘Red Mirage‘, and the Republicans through stoking fear of massive voter fraud stemming from mail-in balloting.

The Truth in Each (Potential) Lie

On the surface, both claims are believable in that they’re both prognostications about what might happen. Neither claim can be disproven or proven since both are claims about events in the future which, by definition, haven’t happened yet. Trump’s voter fraud claim is pretty straightforward; almost every candidate trying to question the results of an election claims fraud. This isn’t to say the claims are unfounded (sometimes those claims are true). It’s simply to state that disputing an election based on fraud is nothing unique to America in 2020.

The Red Mirage is considerably more interesting. It’s based on data and projected voting habits and makes a convincing argument of how a Biden victory could, initially, appear to be a victory for Trump. This is a contingency worth exploring and seems possible. It’s speculative, of course; at its core, the Red Mirage is nothing more than crystal ball prognosticating masquerading as data science. However, it’s convenient that the Red Mirage is also what would appear if local (Democratic) officials tried to put their thumb on the scale for Biden or steal the election outright.

The Red Mirage ‘Conspiracy’

Given the Left’s tendency to dismiss anything remotely pro-Trump as a conspiracy theory and parade ‘experts’ like Brian Stelter and Jeffrey Toobin out to ‘debunk’ them, the idea I’m proposing certainly reeks of a far-fetched, right-wing conspiracy theory ala Alex Jones. Technically, it’s not. A conspiracy, and hence a ‘conspiracy theory’, relies on conspirators – i.e. those working in coordination to achieve a common aim. What we’ve seen from the Resistance (and what the Red Mirage Conspiracy entails) are groups of similarly motivated but operationally independent local officials acting towards a common goal.

In other words, the model for the Democrats to steal the election fits the decentralized ‘non-conspiracies’ we’ve seen repeatedly throughout the Trump administration. Normally, I’d be somewhat skeptical of claims (especially pre-de facto) that either side is trying to steal the election. However, between spying on a presidential campaign, Judge Sullivan’s conduct during the Flynn episode, and the selective prosecutions of Soros-backed district attorneys and mayors, local election officials using their official capacity to serve partisan interests is no longer ‘beyond the pale’. It’s now par for the course.

As such, I’m no longer inclined to give anybody (right or left, frankly) the benefit of the doubt.

Removing the log

Of course, it would be hypocritical to criticize Bloomberg’s boys for trying to project the future with their ‘Red Mirage’ conjectures while simultaneously trying to project a Democratic attempt to steal the election. The future is the future – nobody knows how this election will play out, and thinking about the future deterministically (i.e., this WILL happen) as opposed to probabilistically (i.e. there is an X % chance this will happen) causes more harm than good. With any predictions about the future, there is only one correct response – maybe.

What’s interesting about the competing claims of a Red Mirage and voter fraud is that they operate independently of one another. The existence of a Red Mirage on election day could occur without voting fraud, and voting fraud wouldn’t necessarily result in a Red Mirage. Essentially, the combination breaks down into four scenarios.

1- Voting Fraud Results in a Red Mirage

Basically, the mess to end all messes. The early election results show a sizeable Trump victory; however, over the next days and weeks, the map slowly turns blue as the Democrats – supported by progressive activists masquerading as local officials – ‘find’ votes for Biden. Maybe they get caught, maybe they successfully steal the election, but given that Trump likes to complain about fraud when there is none, I doubt he and his supporters are going to fail to notice ACTUAL fraud.

2- A Legitimate Red Mirage

This happens exactly as the Bloombergites predict (hey, a broken clock and all that). Biden voters, probably still hiding in their basements, all mail their ballots in while Trump voters all vote in person. Election night results look good for Trump, but it quickly becomes clear that Biden will overtake him. This is similar to how CA-39 played out in 2018 – election night looked good for Young Kim, but Gil Cisneros overtook her with late-arriving ballots.

With absolutely no evidence of fraud, Donald Trump probably claims fraud anyway. Depending on the margin of victory (and the conduct of election officials), his supporters may or may not listen.

3- Voting Fraud with no Mirage

Though we have results on election night, there are widespread accusations of fraud and/or other reasons to dispute the results. With no clear winner, the fight goes to the courts and, likely, the streets. The aftermath starts out like 2000 on steroids, and it’s anyone’s guess where we go from there.

4- No Fraud, No Mirage

For all the bluster and pessimism, I still think this is the most likely option. The election provides an answer on election night, and there is no evidence of widespread fraud. The election plays out a lot like 2004, with both sides preparing for an extended fight only for the voters to provide a definite answer to preempt the bluster of the political class.

Whether the political class accepts the results this time, however, would remain to be seen.

Conclusion

Though the idea of a Red Mirage sounds (and is) a legitimate possibility, given Bloomberg’s “Stop-Trump-at-Any-Cost” mentality, it’s difficult to overlook that it also serves as a convenient smokescreen for more sinister actions from Bloomberg’s allies.

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Position Statements

Destroying the Democrat’s Deep State

Bolton’s Book and the Deep State

For all of Brad Pitt’s Academy Award crocodile tears, everybody seems to have forgotten that John Bolton still exists. The book that caused so much pre-publication consternation has been published without making much of a splash. It’s not surprising considering that everyone who isn’t an idiot (i.e. not Brad Pitt) knew from the get-go that Bolton had nothing new to offer. Trump’s childish impatience at demanding a quick end to the impeachment fiasco (rather than calling Bolton and exposing impeachment for the sham it was) simply gave the Democrats a convenient talking point to muddy the waters. Republicans, on the other hand, don’t want to read anything by a “Trump Traitor”.

Above – An ‘enlightened’ individual, if enlightened means ‘capable of blindly parroting left-wing propaganda’.

This is unfortunate. Though Bolton’s book provides no new information on the Ukraine scandal, it does provide a detailed roadmap of how the “Deep State” (or the bureaucratic oligarchy, if you prefer less conspiratorial terms) operates. By showing the inner workings of the Trump Administration, Bolton proves the Deep State exists, how it operates, and how it has handcuffed this Administration.

Obama’s Unelected Oligarchy

Nowhere is the modus operandi of the Deep State demonstrated more clearly than in the description of Secretary Mattis. For a former Marine, Mattis seems surprisingly comfortable ignoring orders from his commander-in-chief. Repeatedly, Mattis not only stacks the deck for his preferred option; he fails to provide the President with feasible alternatives. At times, he goes so far as to fail to provide options the President had specifically asked for. If Mattis still didn’t get his way, he simply dragged his feet, failing to carry out the President’s commands until it was too late.

Whether or not POTUS or Mattis was right on each specific policy issue is irrelevant. President Trump, like it or not, is the man who was ELECTED to make the call. Mattis wasn’t. His job is to inform the President of his full range of options and give his opinion on which to choose. If the President chooses another, so be it. Failing to provide options you don’t like or failing to carry out orders you disapprove of* is clearly not the job of the Defense Secretary – yet it reflects a disturbing trend of behavior among unelected bureaucrats throughout the Trump era.

*Unless the order is illegal

Difficulties in “Draining the Swamp”

Mattis’s pattern of behavior appears repeatedly at lower levels of the government bureaucracy, and this is where the willingness of bureaucrats to substitute their own policy preferences becomes truly frightening (for anyone who likes democracy). As a political appointee, Mattis could have been removed relatively easily*. The frightening thing about DC at the moment is the number of career bureaucrats who are willing to use their positions to pursue political purposes.

Theoretically, these people are nothing more than bureaucrats, trained people capable of providing the political appointees (who make the policy decisions) with information and advice. Unfortunately, once in these positions, their (supposedly) apolitical nature and general government inertia make them nearly impossible to remove. When they are removed, it provides political ammunition for the opposition (see, e.g., State Department IG firing).

*Political reasons precluded this, and Trump showed uncharacteristic restraint in wisely keeping Mattis around due to his reputation even as Mattis failed to live up to said reputation.

Embedded Activists

Of course, people like Lisa Page didn’t get into government to do their jobs. They did it to make a difference – which, to them, means promoting liberal policies. They are activists first; their actual jobs come in a distant second if they’re considered at all. The ends justify the means, so if you can use your position to send a political adversary to jail (as Comey and Judge Sullivan did to Flynn) or use your access to classified information to lie and mislead the media and the public (ala Brennan), so be it.

This, of course, is not the proper role of the American bureaucracy. However, it’s not just improper. It undermines democracy. Democracy means sometimes the person you don’t like wins, and you have to accept it. Obamaites don’t like this, so they decided to replace the will of the American people represented in the election of Donald Trump with an unelected, unaccountable oligarchy of elitist bureaucrats.

We Need Bureaucracy…Right?

Not necessarily. It would be reactionary and unadvisable to simply say abolish the various agencies and organizations responsible for the “Deep State”. Keep in mind that the purge of East Asian experts during the McCarthy Era left a gap of expertise that helped this country bungle its way into Vietnam. American bureaucracy provides an important source of information for political appointees with a lot on their plate (and, at times, a lack of expertise).

At least, it did. During the Industrial Age of human development, our behemoth of bureaucracy provided an invaluable source of expertise and information at a time when both were difficult to come by. Things moved slowly and deliberatively, and that was a feature at a time when information moved across the globe slowly. It’s become a bug in the reality of our present Digital Age. As businesses have quickly learned, the Digital Age requires slimmer, more agile solutions. Our government should adopt the same approach, updating our bureaucracy to respond more quickly by streamlining and modernizing its approach.

At the same time, we can kill two birds with one stone by using this streamlining to purge our government of political activists masquerading as career bureaucrats. Simply put, if the bureaucrats won’t follow orders from Presidents they don’t like, then we won’t have bureaucrats. Simple.

Keeping Tabs on Trump

The really unfortunate thing about all this – pretty much regardless of political ideology – is that, by muddying the waters, these bureaucratic oligarchs have made it near impossible to check Trump’s corruption. Take the firing of the State Department IG mentioned above. Normally, Pompeo firing an IG who was investigating him would be a major red flag. Because of the history of using baseless investigations and prosecutions as political weapons and the prevalence of people like Comey, Page, and Strzok in the executive branch, it’s more than reasonable to believe the IG was fired for abusing his office for political purposes.

I’m not taking a position on who was right – Pompeo or the IG. What I can say is that what should be cause for alarm has turned into a footnote – nothing more than a messy ‘he-said, he-said’ situation that no person can make sense of. It’s Pompeo’s word against the IG’s, and the IG’s credibility is shot because of the actions of other relative unknowns in the executive branch. All I can say about this case with confidence is that, if you can say with confidence which party you believe, then I can say with confidence that you’re an idiot.

Categories
Analysis/Commentary

The Ivory Motte

On the Backs of Giants

When I initially developed the conceptual framework for this analysis, it rested on the idea of concept creep. However, John Murawski at RealClearInvestigations recently wrote a thorough detailing of “Motte and Bailey” argumentation and its emergence in online debates. Since this is a much more detailed description of a parallel occurence, I will use his framework here to describe the ‘forking’ of the BLM movement.

Basically, the BLM Bailey refers to the extended version of BLM that is being pushed by Google, Facebook, and the NYT – the totalitarian, cultural Marxism that is seeking to destroy the livelihood of all who don’t embrace its ideology. The Ivory Motte is the simple, impenetrable stronghold of the movement – the undeniably true statement that “Black Lives Matter.”

By keeping the slogan uncontroversial and attacking abstract concepts like ‘racism’, they can bully skeptics into compliance and attack anyone who crosses their cultural revolution as ‘racist’ and destroy them socially and financially. By muddying the waters, they can use BLM to push more and more radical policies, such as trans rights, giving benefits to illegal immigrants, and eliminating police departments.

Note: Henceforth, the ‘Ivory Motte’ will refer to Twitter SJWs; the ‘BLM Bailey’ will refer to the ‘footsoldiers’, the undefined mass movement based around mutual respect and police reform. It reverses the analogy above but provides a clear explanation of what’s happening.

Common Jumping-Off Point

To be fair, these two aspects of BLM have a common starting point; namely, that black lives matter. It’s where they go from there that makes them distinct and causes the confusion that those in the Ivory Motte use to push THEIR goals at the expense of those in the BLM Bailey. It’s why liberals can’t say ‘Black Lives Matter’ without adding ‘trans’ in the middle, and it undermines those on the street simply looking to live in peace.

As a mass movement within the black community, the goals are very simple: black people want to feel like their lives are valued equally. Nothing more; nothing less. For the record, this isn’t a view almost any Republican disagrees with** and can be best achieved with some national policing reforms (that will benefit both blacks and police) and A LOT of local activism.

This could have been done years ago, and would have been but for the fact that this doesn’t go far enough for the cultural Marxists in the Ivory Motte. They need to exploit a fundamentally just movement to achieve their more radical goals.

**Now that Steve King is gone…

Cultural Marxism

Simple equality isn’t enough for the Ivory Motte; these people have been ‘educated’ by elite institutions to see the ‘systemic racism’ that encompasses all things American. Therefore, the system itself must be destroyed. It’s about ‘oppression’ – certain groups are oppressed, and ALL oppressed groups must come together to fight the oppressors*. Even if these goals are admirable, they distract from the main goal of BLM – getting cops and black people to stop killing each other.

This allows them to expand the BLM movement from one of simple human decency into a broader movement that encompasses the radical ideas of AOC-style Cultural Marxists. By starting with a common enemy – Donald Trump – and a vague goal – fighting oppression – they can piggyback on a legitimate social justice movement to push an extreme, partisan agenda.

*Donald Trump and an intentionally ambiguous group of ‘white men’.

Two-Front War

The resulting confusion allows Cultural Marxists to co-opt otherwise well-intentioned people. People take up the banner of BLM thinking they’re fighting for basic human rights; they end up fighting for men to compete in sports with women. Furthermore, the BLM slogan allows them to censor and silence any criticism or legitimate questions and gain the support of conformists and cowards.

The result is that – at the same time ‘good’ BLM-madness sweeps the nation – a backlash to the overreach of Google, Twitter, and others pushing ‘bad’ BLM is brewing. Unfortunately, this results in well-meaning activists getting caught in the crossfire since no one knows whether ‘Black Lives Matters’ means the Motte version or the Bailey version.

Exploiting Blacks -An American Tradition

Of course, keep in mind what’s important to both groups. Personally, the Ivory Motte is much more likely to have a personal interest in advancing the extremes of the LGBTIA+ movement than have a problem with police violence. Economically, they have a vested interest in maintaining illegal immigrant labor. Local policing issues are of little interest; it’s all about #TheResistance!

Since the Ivory Motte finances BLM, they get to call the shots. It’s no accident, then, that the movement quickly became the ‘Black TRANS Lives Matter’ movement, with BLM providing nothing more than a convenient cover for Cultural Marxists.

Categories
Analysis/Commentary

What’s the Matter with Black Voters?

Progressives are again blinded by their view from the Ivory Tower

It’s been sixteen years since What’s the Matter with Kansas? was released; yet, academic Marxists are making the exact same mistake with another key constituency; African-Americans. This being America, blacks are getting the worst of it, of course; Soros-supporters never tried to burn Kansas to the ground. Instead, they just talk down their noses to us at every opportunity (see, e.g., Seth McFarlane, Samantha Bee, Jimmy Kimmel, literally anyone else in Hollywood/New York).

To white progressives, the issue is simple: Trump. He’s the bogeyman; take him out, and all their problems will go away. On this, blacks and white progressive have had common ground. Trump is racist, and his policies go against those supported by black leaders and the civil rights movement. However, common ground isn’t a common raison d’etre. Getting rid of Trump won’t get rid of the problems facing the African-American communities across the country any more than their problems went away with the election of Obama.

Well, electing Obama didn’t stop Stanley’s heart attack…maybe if I let rich, white kids burn down black neighborhoods without consequence…

-Steve Carell’s real-life logic is somehow stupider than Michael Scott’s.

‘The Squad’ doesn’t care about local concerns; local concerns kill blacks

It wasn’t Donald Trump who knelt on George Floyd’s neck; it was Derek Chauvin. I’m sure we’ll be hearing plenty about the details of this case in the coming month, and that’s the point. At the end of the day, George Floyd’s death was the cause of a local individual, who may well have known Floyd, making the individual decision to kneel on a man’s neck for ten minutes. The solution isn’t banning Trump from Twitter, checking ‘white privilege’, or acknowledging the micro-aggressions blacks face from systemic racism. The solution is not having officers on the force who are as irresponsible as the three on the video. That doesn’t happen when local, progressive officials are so focused on saving the world that they ignore what’s going on in their own communities.

Nationalization = Neglect

Take a look at The Squad ™’s agenda following their election. Other than AOC costing her district jobs (because work=oppression, #fightthesystem), they have purely been focused on getting progressives elected at more local levels of government and shunning Bernie for not being progressive enough to reject an endorsement from a man who thinks that men should fight men and not women.

These progressive activists are most successful in urban districts, including black districts, where they use racial anger, coupled with the fact that blacks CAN’T vote for Trump/GOPers, to push progressive candidates into office, often replacing long-time, moderate Democrats. Once elected, these college-kid SJWs don’t want to deal with ‘little things’ like complicated, local politics; they want to save the world. This involves pushing policies involving LGBT and immigrant rights, as well as confrontational, anti-cop policies. This is what they care about, and if they want to advance, they need to establish their progressive credentials.

Anti-Cop rhetoric escalates tensions

To make matters worse, part of the progressive ideological pissing contest involves being as anti-cop, and anti-American, as possible. It’s no accident these protesters are burning our flags and disrespecting our anthem. Black people don’t get killed by cops because of a ‘culture of racism’; they get killed by cops because of racial tensions and a culture of distrust between police and the black communities they police. Trying to overcome this distrust by attacking, rhetorically and literally, the police seems like a bizarre strategy (though it makes for a nice tweet).

Finally, anyone with half a brain can tell you that animals (which humans are) are at their most dangerous when backed into a corner. How do you think these cops feel policing a community that hates them and reporting to elected officials who side with those throwing Molotov cocktails? These cops aren’t unaccountable because of Trump; the President has nothing to do with managing street cops. They’re unaccountable because they have nobody in local government they can trust or work with. All the local officials are too busy coming up with their next anti-Trump tweet.

Academics: Too smart for their own good?

Of course, this satisfies the W of SJW, which is all these college-kid progressives wanted – to FEEL like they made a difference. Meanwhile, they can’t see that they, coming into black neighborhoods to spray paint FUCK TRUMP on some old black lady’s house and beat the local white guy to death before returning to Palo Alto, are the real problem. After all, they canceled Kanye and they voted for Hillary; they aren’t the problem, so if they want to call the cops on a bird-watcher every now and then, well, that’s their ‘white privilege’.

Categories
Analysis/Commentary

Black Voters and Democrats- Analysis

Do Democrats take advantage of black voters?

Whether or not Democrats take advantage of black voters is likely to be at the front of everyone’s mind as the Trump campaign appears prepared to make a play for this demographic, something Republicans haven’t done in earnest since Nixon’s ‘southern strategy’. It’s also something for which most people have a reflexive answer – Democrats say no, Republicans say yes. For those of us smart enough to grasp more than two degrees of complexity, the truth is much more complicated.

Say what you will about the Confederate flag debate and Nixon’s ‘southern strategy’, but they aren’t the best way to win over black voters.

Democrats DON’T take black voters for granted…

Republicans will argue, and I suspect black voters feel privately (though they may not admit it publicly), that Democrats take the black vote for granted. It’s an easy argument to make, given the treatment those like Clarence Thomas and Kanye West have received. There seems to be a sense of quasi-entitlement among Democrats that black voters are ‘theirs’ – and a corresponding violent, angry reaction when anyone threatens that dynamic by rejecting African-American groupthink. Furthermore, there certainly ARE some Democrats who do think this way – they just aren’t the norm, in my opinion.

…but they do take advantage of black voters

Still, it’s hard to argue black interests are prioritized by Democrats – their opinions and preferences tend to take a backseat to other lobbies, notably the LGBT community and the progressive left. However, it’s not racism, per se; nor is it a lack of appreciation for the role of African-Americans within the Democratic caucus. It’s simply pragmatism, and in a roundabout way, the Democrats’ mistreatment of black voters can be tied, again, to the Republicans. To understand the dynamics better, let’s take a look at Andrew Cuomo’s failure to legalize marijuana in New York, despite having complete control of the legislature (in 2019; C-19 sunk the legislation this year).

2019 New York Cannabis Legalization – A Case Study

Let’s start with a simplified summary of what happened for those unfamiliar with the debate. Passing over the procedural complexity, a major sticking point in the legislation was how much of the revenue would be given to communities disproportionately affected by the marijuana prohibition, which is a nice way of saying ‘black people’. However, the sticking point wasn’t the money, per se; both Governor Cuomo and the Assembly’s Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes agreed on the principle behind the initiative. It wasn’t even the amount that was the issue. It was control.

Cuomo wanted black voters to take, on faith, that he would distribute the cannabis revenue equitably; this didn’t sit well with Majority Leader Peoples-Stokes.

Governor Cuomo wanted control – he had no problem distributing the money to the black community, but he wanted final say. Peoples-Stokes and others wanted the money put in a separate fund to guarantee it would go to social justice causes; theoretically, Governor Cuomo could have spent the money on education, law enforcement, or any other issue he chose. However, he gave his word that a ‘fair amount’ would be distributed to ‘traditionally disadvantaged’ communities. Regardless of your thoughts on set-asides, it’s hard to blame black voters for not wanting to take a white politician at their word.

Black Voter’s BATNA

A major part of the problem is that black voters simply lack an alternative. Since Nixon, the GOP has made no real effort to reach out to black voters and turned a blind eye, or at least begrudgingly tolerated, views like those expressed by Representative Steve King. As a result, the Democrats don’t have to worry about who black people will vote for – they just have to get as many as they can to vote. This contrasts with other Democratic interest groups, such as unions (whose members voted Trump in droves) and the progressive left (who are more ‘privileged’, i.e., they’re better funded and better connected). As a result, when something has to give, it’s always the black thing that’s the first to go – they won’t leave like union voters and they lack the inside access of progressive activists. They aren’t alone in American politics.

Blacks and Evangelicals

Given the importance of the church in African-American culture, it’s fitting that they would find a political parallel in the evangelicals of the Republican party. Both lag the party proper in education and income; in a sense, they both make up the foot-soldiers of the respective parties and often find themselves on the outside looking in when it comes to policy determinations for the same reason – they have nowhere else to go.

If you really like Donald Trump, that’s great, but if you don’t, you have to vote for me anyway. You know why? Supreme Court judges, Supreme Court judges.

Donald Trump’s comments during a 2016 campaign rally, though directed at ‘Never-Trump Republicans’ epitomizes the attitude Republican elites have towards Evangelicals and Democratic elites take towards black voters.

It’s not that either party dislikes or disrespects their respective element. My guess is that, if addressed privately, most activists of both parties would acknowledge their shortcomings. However, politics is pragmatic. When you’re trying to get to fifty-plus-one, you tend to focus less on those who are solid than those on the fence.

Conclusion/TLDR

Yes, Democrats take advantage of black voters; no, they do not do so intentionally.