Categories
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.

Categories
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.

Categories
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.