Holiday Discussions and Observations

One comment I stumbled into was an Ezra Klein article that Democrats Won the Most Votes in the Election. They Should Act Like It. The title pretty much says it all. I ran into that courtesy of Daring Fireball - a pro-mac tech commentary site where the blogger further decided to state:

We lost the election, but we’re the plurality. That’s the truth. It doesn’t change the results, but it’s so uncomfortable for Trump that he’s just making shit up that he somehow actually won the popular vote.

That "making shit up"? It links to the following tweet:

In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016

It's been observed before. Despite ample evidence of illegal voting in the past, despite Democrat operatives tearing up republican voter registration cards on video, SJW sympathizers like Colbert snickered about the possibility of election rigging (unless of course, Russia "hacked" it). Even after the election with affidavits filed of rooms where stacks of ballots were being filled out - and the judge told, when asking, that the people were "correcting" the ballots - shenanigans caught on video of driving out poll watchers and blatant violation of poll site electioneering law, people discovering they had "already voted", and people receiving stacks of ballots with other people's names at their houses, we are told over and over again that there is nothing to see here.

They can't or won't see it. It's a theme we will return to.

As an aside - that's one site I'm stripping out of my feed. While an Apple partisan, Gruber did a damn good job of observing business trends and explaining why Apple was making the choices it did, and the pros and cons. His second biggest weakness was that all of the free market insight and long-term strategy he discussed was something he could not apply to the political and governmental realm outside of pure business.

His biggest weakness was that he'd keep dragging politics into his site - often enough that I've been tempted in the past to stop paying attention, much like I had stopped paying attention to Gawker-related properties or to the Verge (beyond using it to track the SJW cause du jour).

Oh well.

Additionally, on Saturday I was hanging out at a brewery local to my Dads house with my youngest brother, my wife, and my mom, and the discussion finally, after avoiding it most of the weekend, turned to politics. It was interesting, as I was the only non Democrat at the table - though in fairness my brother was more Bernie than Rodan Clinton. We kept it civil by mostly sticking to philosophy rather than specific issues, but something else became clear.

Let me make it clear, my brother and most of the liberal end of the family - basically everybody but one of my brothers and my Dad - are liberals but not SJW's. The discussion stayed polite. That said, I had never seen a clearer demonstration that Haidt, in his discussions of axes of values, while there's arguments to be made about the axes he chose, was on to something. Namely, as a generalization, that conservatives make decisions by using a broader mix of six different virtue axes, and liberals mostly on three.

We had discussed, among other things, the vilification of conservatives in the media, and how it had driven voters away. I brought up how it could be career ending - using Brendan Eich as an example. The conversation somehow turned to North Carolina and into a discussion of freedom of association, with me taking the position that people had just as much of a right to deny a wedding cake to a gay couple as a hipster had to deny service to someone wearing a rebel flag shirt. I also mentioned Bruce Springsteen cancelling concerts in NC, and while my brother stuck to his guns that it was perfectly OK for him to decide that, he still believed it should be illegal for a business to "discriminate" against gays.

Interestingly, my mom actually backed me up on that after hearing about the various cancellations - either everyone had the right to decide who they'd do business with based on moral belief, or no one should, even if that meant people would make the "wrong" choices.

We also delved into the precinct by precinct breakdown, and that the vote was effectively urban vs rural, and why. I pointed to Eric Raymond's "Ethics From The Barrel of a Gun" - one of my favorite essays - and to Haidt's points about virtue axes and how conservatives could predict liberal responses but not vice versa.

And I was told, flat out, that he had no idea why gay marriage, feminism, etc. affected their livelihood, their feelings, etc., because he couldn't see why the sacred was important. 

I told ya the theme would come up.

I figured at that point that trying to get into "the future belongs to he who shows up" and second-order consequences of the greater acceptance of gay marriage, female careers, later marriages, disparagement of families and housewives, etc. would be futile without a lot more time.

That said, I did leave him with Antifragility and Taleb's article on the dictatorship of the minority to look at, and that may cause him to rethink of how those principles apply in a broader sense.

And being family, but family that considers being family more important than yelling over politics, we went home on good terms and hung out some more.

Back in Town

The holiday travels and time with family - being in a household of very liberal, but rarely SJW, Hillary and Bernie supporters excepting my Dad - was good, all in all, and also fodder for a number of thoughts that will come out in the next week or two.

I hope all went well for everyone, and also, prayers to the people losing their homes and escaping the fires in the southeast. It will certainly be a while before Gatlinburg will recover, and that was a favorite spot to spend a week in a rented cabin, hiking the trails in the Smoky Mountain park.

Girl Friday

I couldn't find any Thanksgiving-themed pics I liked, so I decided to simply provide a little bit of beauty in a weekend I hope you're getting to spend with family.

Sci Fi I Was Never Interested In

Looks like they're doing a TV version of the Snowpiercer, a movie based on a French graphic novel.

Supposedly it will "fix" some of the problems with the movie because it didn't have enough time.

insofar as I'm concerned, there are two problems with the movie that made me never want to go see it.

The first is, obvious from the trailers, a heavy handed class warfare message.

The second, though, is the premise.

You've got a goddamned perpetual motion engine - unlimited power - and instead of using it to power generators and provide heat you fucking waste all of it on a train on a global track?

No goddamned imagination, no matter how stylish the setting.

Time Out

I may or may not post over the Thanksgiving holidays as time with friends and family will come first. Love y'all, and have a happy Thanksgiving!

#OrangeList

Ken Burnside of Ad Astra games is a nice enough guy who has put together a few space combat sim boardgames like Attack Vector: Tactical, the Saganami Island Simulator (the same basic system set in David Weber's Honorverse), and Squadron Strike which, despite some seriously innovative game mechanics to translate 3D movement into something approaching a playable system, still is more the province of those who, growing up, thought Harpoon, Advanced Squad Leader and Starfleet Battles were either just right, or didn't have enough detail.

Yeah, that's me.

Anyway, he's a good enough fellow, and a sharp designer, but on the "nice guy" side of libertarianism that still buys into feminism, rape culture, etc., and anything but a Trump supporter. So imagine his surprise when (as he posted on Google+, re-shared courtesy of Eric Raymond aka ESR. Yes, that ESR.):

I've been informed that someone has created an "orangelist" of Trump supporters in the game industry, and that Ad Astra Games is top of the list, largely due to alphabetical order.

The progenitor of the list says that all entities on the list were contacted before he added them. We have no record of this contact for Ad Astra.

At least two other game companies listed on the "orangelist" have been out of business for ten years, and one designer listed has been dead since 1997.
Ad Astra's position is that we'll work with anyone who knows our products and does work we can use, and that whomever you voted for in this election is your business, not ours.

While we were going to create a Black Friday discount code that ran through the first Sunday in December...we're going to start it a day or two earlier than normal, and call it the NoOrangeList code instead.

For those of you interested in seeing the list:

So yeah.  In all their stellar competence, some SJW's not only put together a list to shame "Trump Supporters", but they didn't bother finding out if some of the people on the list were indeed supporters, much less alive. Apparently Dems and SJW's are so used to the dead voting they figure some must support the guy somewhere.

Every incident like this - SNL and their condescension, liberals sneering about people being too poor to boycott Hamilton, NY Times and Colbert and many other outlets failing to get it and doubling down on the contempt - gives me hope. For the first time in years I smile at SNL routines (except the travesty of politicizing a tribute to Leonard Cohen) because I watch how completely fucking clueless they are as to why they were so hated.

They won't listen, and that's good for us.

Girl Friday

Enjoy.

Blaming the Source - Fake News.

Recently had an opportunity to actually converse with a leftist about things, and they expressed cautious hope that some of Trumps picks were not too bad, all things considered. Didn't understand why so many people were losing their minds, and figured the position deserved some respect even if someone didn't respect the individual in office. So I pointed out that yeah, it was a shame that so many had bought into hysteria fueled by lies.

The reply was basically "what?"

I mentioned pointed out the media was full of lies during the election - colluding with the Clintons, and outright lying about what they present. I mentioned in passing wikileaks, press collusion, and laid out the CNN story about BLM where they cut a video off to present it as a "call for peace" but left off the call to burn down other people's neighborhoods.

.... and immediately was taken to task for paying attention to "angry right wing sites" and conspiracy theories.

Yup. An easily found egregious editing cut used to completely misrepresent what happened is dismissed out of hand, without checking to see if it's true.

Yes, they live in a bubble, and no, they are not interested in hearing anything else.

The Lie That the Truth Lies in between

Barry Goldwater once stated "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue."

It hardly a surprise then, that I loathe the concept that the truth is always somewhere between to views.

No, I am not arguing that compromise is not necessary, that it is a bad thing. I'm arguing that the moral relativism of assuming that neither side is right, and that there MUST be compromise, is the intellectually bankrupt position.

Think about it one moment. You think murder is wrong, and think no-one should be murdered. The guy across the table think's it's A-OK to murder 100 people a week. What is compromise?

Fifty a week?

OK, you'll allow only five people a week to be murdered by the guy across from you if he leaves you and yours alone.

Compromise, right?

SJW's and Abusers

SJW's and borderlines always project, and how often do they accuse other people of violence or abuse?

In case you're wondering, a throwaway comment by Stefan Molyneaux made me pause.

Think about the bakery lawsuits for a question. He asked if you would be willing to eat a cake, or any other meal, from somewhere that you had to sue them into serving you?

I fully agree that I would not unless I thought the people there were the model of forbearance.

It boils down to this - and this is not a useful rhetorical argument, just an observation. It's not about the cake at all. They either never get the cake, or they accept one anyway, suing knowing that said christian bakers are models of forbearance, and the bakers will not retaliate, even by spitting in the food. They know they can get away causing pain and that there will not be consequences.

They inflict petty pain because they can.

Correia Nails It

No comment necessary. No, he's not a Trump supporter. That said, he doesn't shoot the wrong way.

It's also a good overview if you are new to buyig guns, self defense law, etc.

A Handy Guide For Liberals Who Are Suddenly Interested In Gun Ownership

Hillary Supporters, Borderlines, Narcissists, and Child Abuse

It's oft been noted on the right that liberals and leftists, especially SJW's, commonly behave as if they are hollow inside, checking the boxes for very narcissistic or borderline behavior. In that vein, I want to bring your attention to one photo from the article "Huma's Spotted for First Time After Hillary's Loss. The 'Before' and 'After' Couldn't Be More Striking..." captioned "children consoled their mothers."

Yes, I know, it was immediately after a picture captioned - I believe of the same two - "mothers consoled their children" (which for reasons that will become clear I don't find much better."

This ties in with something seen across facebook and twitter, the number of posts - many by high profile figures - where their 8-year-old (it always seems to be one) is crying unconsolably, or "how do I explain this".

Gentlemen, that picture is a textbook fucking example of parentification. You can find more discussions over at Dr. Tara's at shrink4men.com, and here. The short version is that the parent has the child assume parental roles, often acting as confidant or even emotional support for the child.

And it's child abuse.

And in relation to the tweets - scaring the shit out of your kids about the election so that they're in tears because Trump won, instead of being enough of a parent to assure them it will be OK no matter who wins, is child abuse. And not knowing how to explain that simple line "we'll be OK"? It means no matter how many kids you've spawned, you're not an adult.

And going on witter to guilt trip others using your kids? That is narcissism, and child abuse.

You're not adults, your shitty little whiney kids who're wrecking your kids lives because you refuse to grow up and believe the world doesn't revolve around you.

Fucking Hell - Fuck You, Obamacare Edition

Well, I was expecting it, but seeing the actual numbers in black toner on white paper still pisses me off.

Look, I don't believe in whining much, but this will be a bitch session.

As a bit of background, I'm now on my second insurance company in the last ten years (and count myself lucky, some friends are on number four), because the company I'd used for most of the last ten threw in the towel last year and decided they didn't want to be in the business anymore.

Also, by way of background, my rates under that prior company, which had stayed fairly stable for the first few years (going from low $400's to the higher end) until 2008, whereupon, until they finally decided they didn't want my money anymore, they still jacked it up by over 50% to nearly $800.

Switching to a (slightly inferior) BC plan ran it up to the middle 900's.

And sure enough, I get the expected rate hike letter, the insurance next year will run an additional $300 a month.

Yes, you got that right. The change in my health insurance premiums is a car payment for a reliable used Honda or Toyota, or cheaper new car.

I'm self-employed, so I don't get this absorbed by anyone else. And I'm in that limbo where I neither make enough to shrug and go "eh, what", nor get a subsidy of any sort.

So, yeah. I can make it work. Likely by upping my billing rate, and a few cost-cutting measures - though there's damn little fat to trim. But there are going to be a lot of people for whom that money means having to move into a smaller place, or missing a needed car repair, or putting off dental work or glasses, or not saving up $3600 over the course of the next year.

It's easy to get pissed at the useful idiots who voted for Obama, but largely useless. In their own words the Democratic leadership made sure they were left ignorant by the school system and the media.

No, it's the Democrats who finally caved to the pressure of their party leaders in opposing their constituents. It's all of the "conservatives" who refused to mount an effective defense against voter fraud and got the Democrats in the senate their filibuster-proof majority. Ditto being totally unable to find a way to shut down Obamacare later, or unwilling to go to the fucking mat over reigning in the budget.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for clarity. My anger towards the GOP #cucks surpasses not only that of the useful idiots who at least had some claim to ignorance, but also the Democrats who had some pretense of sticking to party platform.

Girl Friday

Along with today's shots over at the Didact, a few shots that meet two of this weeks themes : both the electoral one and, of course, Veterans Day. Plus a little shot of USMC Birthday.

SJW's always project... and labeling.

... and SJW's treat apologies as admissions of weakness.

A comment by ResidentMoron over at Vox Day's recent post on "Two Paths for the Alt-Right":

"So, the Alt-Right will not leave them alone."

When Obama ascended to the White House, did the loony left leave off their mania about racism? Hardly. If anything their insanity deepened, they grew less connected to any discernible reality, and invented unobservables (always the sign of a failing theory) such as micro-aggressions.

Apologies are seen as weakness. So is appeasement. It can certainly be argued that a lot of the white vote for Obama was seen as a move to apologize, to finally have a black president, to say "see, you got your turn." - and the unwillingness to push back on accusations of racism, etc. seen as weakness.

So of course, just like apologizing in the face of any SJW attack, they doubled down instead of accepting the olive branch.

The third rule of SJW's, projection also accounts for something I hadn't considered when writing "Plato Would be Spinning in his Cave" .

Labels are used to either define/discriminate between two things that are not exactly the same. They are also attached to something that has an existing label to make it "bad", so that people change their opinion of it. This can simply be a derisive tone or lumping in bad traits with the current label, or creating a new, diminutive label ("gooks") to attach.

Yes, there is some truth to creating labels to negatively define, not just describe, and we all do it to a greater or lesser degree, as we are nowhere near as rational as we'd like to think of ourselves. The recent memetic warfare of #GamerGate was the alt-right and liberals who don't normally use rhetoric in arguments learning the rules of mockery, of emotion over logic to cow SJW's because, in their projection, that's how they attack, and where they are vulnerable. And the alt-right carried that into this election.

In a way, I "get" his call to stop applying labels. In the bubble he lives in people do use them to divide and diminish, rather than define. And there is a grain of truth that changing a label, or "spin" can change how we feel about something based on the baggage associated with that label.

It doesn't change that in an objective sense, it's still nuts. That a label will always be used. That no matter what label is used, if the contempt is there, it will become associated with the label.

And the people who most try to define others, who most wish to redefine themselves in labels - like a cargo cultist who thinks the label creates the result rather than describing it - rather than in thought and deed, are the ones who are most likely nodding along going "yup" to his video.

Farewell

I once answered - when asked if I could only take one artist's music with me on a desert island - Leonard Cohen.

Farewell.

A Prayer of Thanks

Lord,

Thank you for granting us the breathing room that you have. Thank you for bringing us those who never gave up hope, like Vox Day, Stefan Molyneaux, and Mike Cernovich, and those who pointed out there was no need for despair even if they did not agree with us, like Scott Adams.

I pray we have the strength to take this opportunity and set things right with the time we have, and that there will be less bloodshed than the other paths we may have taken.

In your glory, Amen.

Plato Would be Spinning in His Cave

OK. I was shown this video by someone who thought it was awesome. It's "Prince Ea", a spoken-word rap performer who is all the rage in all the right circles for being philosophical and "deep".

Or as deep as anything leftist gets these days.

So, I'll look at this - original in italics, my interjections in bold.

I am not Black
I mean, that’s what the world calls me, but it’s not... me

You're going to see a lot of this motte and bailey crap - where a nearly reasonable argument is made, but then taken to a different context or scope. 

He is an individual, he is the territory, and not the map, and so the labels on the map don't necessarily apply because the map is not perfect.

I also get that he's being poetic, so at this point you could argue he's making the point that he is MORE than the label, or even not fully defined by it.

I don't believe so though. Note the rejection of grammar, of reality. "what the world calls me" - while rejecting the meaning of any of the words, and how relatively accurate, or innacurate they may be. This is NOT an argument that the label is incorrectly applied in its objective sense, it's an argument that he doesn't accept the label regardless of reality. His reality is paramount, and other people's descriptions of it are invalidated.

I didn't come out of my mother's womb saying, “Hey everybody, I'm... Black.”

Point of fact, people don't say much at all at that stage, yet some of what comes with the label "black" already applies.

No, I was taught to be black
And you were taught to call me that
Along with whatever you call yourself
It’s just a.... label

"I was taught to be black"... depends on how you define black. Your skin color, your physical construction, physical strenghs and weaknesses, statistical odds of getting certain diseases, are inborn and part of your genetics. They were not taught. The cultural expressions of your personality, yes, those were learned.

"It's just a.... label". This is where we get to the part where someone, upon figuring out the map is not the territory, decides it is the height of wisdom to throw away maps.

Labels carry meaning. Meanings which, like all human communications, are imperfect. 

Let's step back a minute. One of the core themes in Anathem by Neal Stephenson was that of the conflict between the Rhetors, and the Incantors. The Rhetors believe that we shape reality by defining reality, that much like newspeak in 1984, we can reshape the past by reshaping our understanding of it, our models of it, and how we understand language. That we create triangles by defining them. The Incantors were the Platonic idealists - the triangle exists whether or not we define it, or create a model of it. Things have an "ideal" or real form, of which we see but pale shadows, and can imperfectly communicate and realize. Just because you relabel a dogs tail a "leg" - a dog doesn't suddenly have five legs to walk on.

More importantly, you still have a category/label for "leg", and you need at least one, maybe two more labels or adjectives to differentiate between these two types of 'legs". 

Also nevermind that they already share a label - appendages.

So yes, you can treat "labels" like a computer variable in a typeless language, but eventually someone, not knowing you're operating in a different context, will not be able to communicate with you. And the program will crash.

See, from birth the world force feeds us these.... labels
And eventually we all swallow them
We digest and accept the labels, never ever doubting them
But there's one problem:
Labels are not you and labels are not me
Labels are just ...labels

Yes, we get it, the map is, indeed, not the territory. Yet he acts like there have not been decades spent trying to redefine some of these labels.

But who we truly are is not... skin... deep
See, when I drive my car, no one would ever confuse the car for.... me
Well, when I drive my ....body, why do you confuse me for my... body?
It's.... my ....body....get it? Not me

Two things. The soul, the personality, is indeed not the body. Yet we are inextricably tied to it, to our hormone and chemical balances. While we are not the meat robots some would call us, it takes effort to build a new system of habits and thought.

The body is not us, but it determines what we can grasp, where we can walk, whether we can run, and how easily we sunburn.

Let me break it down
See, our bodies are just cars that we operate and drive around
The dealership will call society decided to label mine the "black edition,"
Yours the "Irish" or "White edition"
And with no money down, 0% APR, and no test drive
We were forced to own these cars for the rest of our lives
Forgive me, but I fail to see the logic or pride
In defining myself or judging another by the cars we drive
Because who we truly are is found inside

Is a Honda Pilot a better car than an Accord? A Range Rover a better car than a Countach?

Of course not, but if I intend to drive at 150mph I'll take the Lamborghini, if I intend to go off road I'll take the Range Rover or the Pilot, and between the two Hondas I'll take the Accord if gas mileage is a bigger deal for me than carrying lots of cargo.

Which is "better" depends on what you value in a car. And it doesn't matter which car is on the road if the idiot behind the wheel keeps ramming other vehicles.

Lady Gaga once said - I think while wearing a meat dress - that no-one was better than anyone else. I answer that it only holds true if you value nothing, as it's easily debunked by asking if they think the same of Ghandi and Hitler, or in this year, Trump and Hillary.

Listen, I’m not here to tell you how science has concluded that genetically we’re all mixed
And race in the human species doesn't exist

....and I'm sure he thinks he believes in science too. Many are mixed - but many largely are not, and we can nail down racial differences and backgrounds to a very fine degree.

Or how every historian knows that race was invented in the 15th century
To divide people from each other and it has worked perfectly...

"To divide". Motte and Bailey here. The term was invented around that time in its modern format, as part of the scientific study of biology. The sophistry comes in the second sentence. Do we label Hondas and Toyotas to be able to discriminate - to identify they are different, in the older meaning of the term - between the two, or do we do it to create differences between the two. Are they the same? If not, why do people prefer one over the other?

No.... I'm not here to lecture
I just want to ask one question
Who would you be if the world never gave you a label?

Confused. And so would everyone else be.

Never gave you a box to check
Would you be White? Black? Mexican?
Asian? Native American? Middle Eastern? Indian?

M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank. What, I don't have treads?

No. We would be one; we would be together
No longer living in the error
Of calling human beings Black people or White people

or fuschia people, or mauve, or olive drab.

These labels that will forever blind us from seeing a person for who they are

Labels, and the conceptions/statistical liklihoods that go with them, are useful when no other information is available. That said, once more data is known, there are terms for someone who refuses to let go of stereotypes or preconceptions when faced with a differing reality. Delusional, idiot, bigoted.

Those terms also apply to people who insist "we're all the same" but can't see what's in front of their face that culture - whether rooted in statistical groupings of genetic factors affecting personality traits in the population at large and affecting IQ, or cultural inertia - matters, and differs by tribal and racial groupings.

And there will always be at the very least tribal differences simply because different living environments provoke differing behavioral priorities.

But instead seeing them through the judgmental, prejudicial, artificial filters of who we THINK they are

Yes, we know, some people refuse to let go of their models when reality contradicts them. Nevertheless, I guarantee you, some term will be used to describe observed traits. 

And when you let an artificial label define yourself
Then, my friend, you have chosen smallness over greatness and minimized your.... self

This may shock you, but I completely agree.

Confined and divided your .....self from others
And it is an undeniable fact that
When there is division, there will be conflict
And conflict starts wars

Also true, and obvious. 

There-fore every war has started over labels

And we wander into bullshit fields again. This time we know our rapper has not studied history, and he is putting the cart before the horse.

It's always us... versus them

Yup. Because there IS a difference, in nothing else but tribe, if all else fails.

So the answer to war, racism, sexism, and every other -ism
Is so simple that every politician has missed it
It’s the labels...

Again, putting the cart before the horse. You label the people you already want to attack, to dehumanize them. To indicate they are bad people. Sometimes th reason is bad and you do it to make others believe without asking. See "idots" above.

We must rip them off
Isn't it funny how no baby is born racist

Really? I seem to remember babies, even hours old, can differentiate between faces of their tribe/race, and other. And this was shown to prove that we are racist from birth.

Now, I'll concede that hating someone just because they're different in appearance is something taught, but bluntly, rare. It's rarely just because we have different skin color. 

Yet, every baby cries when they hear the cries of another
No matter the gender, culture or color

So?

Proving that deep down, we were meant to connect and care for each other

So?

That is our mission, and that it's not my opinion
That is the truth in a world that has sold us fiction
Please listen, labels only distort our vision

Only if we let them, only if we forget the map is not the territory. Otherwise, labels let us know things like "is that person in my family/tribe?", or "can I take that car off-road?"

Which is why half of those watching this will dismiss it

Showing that our rapper lacks imagination to imagine other reasons.

Or feel resistance and conflicted
But, just remember...
So did the cater-pillar
Before it broke through its shell and became the magnificent butterfly

A pretty metaphor that is... irrelevant.

Well, these labels are our shells and we must do the same thing
So we can finally spread our wings
Human beings were not meant to be slapped with labels like groceries at supermarkets

We can help define new labels. But we can't stop people from applying them, or avoid the fact that they are sometimes useful.

DNA cannot be regulated by the FDA

Actually... as much as I'd like it not to be.... the FDA would disagree.

We were meant to be free

Again, we agree, but more wisdom is needed.

And only until you remove them all
And stop living and thinking so small
Will we be free to see ourselves and each other for who we....TRULY.... are

What's stopping you? Go read Maga Mindset, or Gorilla Mindset.

It's also useful to note some of the comments. "He's trying to say we're all human..."

Well, yes, and that's still a label. Science Fiction has many stories dealing with the question of just what is "human."

"...except Trump supporters." - proving that the person making the comment, while patting themselves on the back, didn't get the point.

Update: Fleshed out a couple minor points.

"I Feel Very Intimidated and Scared Right Now... I Feel Very Threatened By Your Presence"

Around the 7:30 mark of the following Periscope video, the poll worker, who's been playing a DARVO game of redirecting all questions, utters the mantra "I Feel Very Intimidated and Scared Right Now... I Feel Very Threatened By Your Presence" in an almost robotic tone of voice, as an excuse to threaten getting on the phone to call the cops. Gotta admire the reporter's calm in all of this.

.@JackPosobiec Watch on #Periscope Hillary Campaign Threatened Trump Poll Worker With a… https://t.co/FTPBkkEGYC

— LastRedoubt (@vfm_5411) November 8, 2016

Periscope video also available at: https://www.periscope.tv/JackPosobiec/1RDGloZAygNKL

As an aside, while Pennsylvania is a "all party" consent state for recording phone or private conversations, that rule does not appear to apply in this case: "Consent is not required of any parties if the parties do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy for their non-electronic communication"

A Call to Prayer

The Didact has asked for a prayer before action.

I'll add to that.

Lord, I pray that today's results meet your will, and that you give us the strength to endure what we righteously must. Today's conflict of wills is but one step, and may we not give up hope or perseverance no matter what path you set us upon, so that we may bring low the wicked and the evil, raise you up, live righteous lives, and bring your light to the world.

In your glory, as you will it.

Amen.

Deus Vult

Girl Friday, on Monday

Better late than never - Charlotte McKinney

Fighting and Winning the War

I'm back from dealing with a family issue that left me offline for the weekend and missing a few posts. I appreciate your patience.

The inestimable Col Tom Kratman, author of the Carerra books and the freely available A State of Disobedience, is up to his usual insights over at everyjoe

I’m not as enthused about the prospect as Patrick Henry was, two hundred and forty-one years ago, but that war is inevitable, more or less soon, seems to me very likely at this point. If it doesn’t begin from the right, the day after tomorrow, with a Hillary win by early Wednesday, which is to say, if she loses, it will begin in a few years or eight, and maybe from the left. Since it won’t be like the last one, with large but discrete armies maneuvering across the countryside, but a matter of small violence, bombings and kidnappings and assassinations, round-ups and gun-downs, everywhere, then one shouldn’t assume that that the left cannot learn to be effective enough.

But why is war inevitable? There are, I think, at least four reasons. One is that we’ve come to just flat hate each other so much. Another is that there are elements of our patrimony, especially navigable rivers, the Intra-coastal Waterway, and our rail net, that cannot be fully separated. A third is that upstate New York and some parts of Massachusetts have a great deal more in common with rural Alabama and Mississippi than the latter do with Jackson and Birmingham or the former with Boston, Albany, and New York City. Will a southern or midwestern Christian stand by idly when northeastern Christians are being rounded up for politically incorrect thought / thoughtcrime and ask for help? One doubts. Finally, there is the insuperable problem; this country, or these countries, if it got that far, cannot tolerate the existence of a hostile peer competitor, nor even a friendly one whose feelings may change, in this hemisphere. One or the other will have to go.

Just go read it.

Schrödinger's Election

Scott Adams recent article points out that we are seeing two simultaneous realities presented, with one that will fall away when the election happens and we can observe the final results.

So choose your reality. If you like the reality where Trump wins, you can watch it happening live on FOX News. He’s crushing it over there. But if you hope for a Clinton win, watch CNN and see your dreams come true. She’s doing great on that network. On November 8th, one of those realities will fall away. 

Sounds like a certain cat.

While he's not entirely kind to the FOX news view of reality, there's one hell of a shiv aimed at CNN.

CNN is temporarily a comedy network because it is hilarious to watch them avoid mentioning Clinton while pretending to cover a race that allegedly involves two candidates.

LIberal Bullies

They steal yard signs because they can't stand there being so many. Scott Adams of Dilbert fame notes how they've become the bully party, as well as the party of outright theft. He, of course, "endorsed" Hillary (for, as he repeatedly noted, his personal safety and that of his family). A Democrat operative who is a convicted criminal AND nevertheless meets with the president of the United States is on video bragging about how he set up Trump supporters to get beat up, or rigged encounters to make them look violent. His presence at multiple events has been documented by several people. And on colleges Trump supporters are attacked.

In the spirit of the sign stealers, some asshole proudly defaced Trumps star on the walk of fame. When a homeless black woman decided to stand guard over it because she supported him, she was set upon and beaten.

On the reporter front Esquire Magazine shames people not even for supporting Trump, but for not "clapping hard enough" and coming out for Her(pes).

Oh, yeah, and Hillary called 1/4 of the voting public "deplorable", a bunch of sexist, racist, hateful people.

Yes, hypocrites. The same people who tell us stories of "two wolves" - an Indian tale that we all have two wolves inside us, fighting for supremacy. That one is virtue, strength, patience, justice, and the other our dark side: anger, fear,, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The one that wins is the one you feed.

I for one do not believe anger to be a bad thing, but this story is not about the nuance between anger and wrath, or hunger and gluttony. It is instead like one of the true lessons behind karma, behind the statement "who lives by the sword, dies by the sword" - your choices define the circumstances you put yourself into, define who you meet, what options are left to you. What you choose to dwell on and obsess over too much consumes you. As C.S. Lewis pointed out in the Screwtape Letters, this applies even to virtues, to the point they become sins.

It also echoes the statement that one should be careful in fighting monsters.

Watch what the left obsess over. Watch that they obsess. Many are broken: narcissists, borderlines - or much closer to those states than used to be common before the heyday of the self-esteem culture - and have nothing inside to anchor them.

I can say this for a fact from my family and circle of acquaintances. The Hillary contingent, and the NeverTrump-ers, will not bend. They cannot imagine that what Trump said on the bus was not sexual assault, or a marker for one, rather than the simple truth about groupies. The left in particular will not believe that democrat workers ripped up voter registrations on camera, or bragged about beating up Trump supporters, and if they do, well, Trump and his supporters are all nazis, so they deserve it. Or it's staged - even if some of the people are easily identifiable figures.

They are people who foam at the mouth about Sarah Palin, Trump, southerners, etc., and cannot see themselves, their anger, their viciousness, their pettiness. They literally think they are superior and that their "good" deeds and beliefs earn them some karmic right to be destructive to themselves and others they hate. I've heard it from their own mouths.

In the media they obsessively mock Trump and his supporters, and as Scott Adams has noted, give others permission to do violence. They also think we're morons who cannot be trusted with complex decisions (What's the Matter With Kansas was not an outlier...). Despite the ripping apart of registration cards, video of manufacturing fake events, wikileaks releases about collusion and coordination to favor Hillary, multiple past statements by Democrats affirming the system is rigged, and proven issues with voter registrations #coincidentally favoring Democrats, Colbert recently monologued "the country is divided between those who think Trump will lose because the system is rigged, and those who are glad he'll lose because the system isn't."

They rely on a very narrow definition of rigged.

There's a running SNL joke that Trump thinks the election is on Nov 9th.

Lady Gaga cracked a joke at the beginning of one late night show, eminently predictable once she mentioned her "little monsters", that Trump rallies were full of real monsters.

Who wouldn't do violence to stop monsters? Show them clips of Trump supporters being attacked and you get, or find online, comments that they were bullying people and so they deserved it. Or - as mentioned earlier - "how do you know the videos aren't faked, staged".

Chew on that a minute, a video of an identifiable top Democrat operative seen by multiple witnesses at some of these events bragging at length how he stages violent confrontations is "selectively edited" or "staged".

Talk about projection.

This story of the two wolves, by the way, ties in with one other thing that a recent Molyneux video covered. We can't simply be defined by what we fight against, but what we fight for. What we strive to build, to create. War is a necessity that scars, and can forge, the soul, and beginning to fight against evil is a start, but we cannot be allowed to obsess over what we hate, we must instead work to ensure the survival of what we intend to build.

Or when we are done, we will have nothing around us but ruin. And nowhere to go from there.

We become what we strive to be, what we decide to be, how we decide to act. Those we oppose revel in the moment, in destruction, and rarely build. Even their art is hollow.

I fully expect riots and unrest after Trumps election.

Take care.

Day of the Dead

No. Unlike the Didacts latest bit, this is not a well written piece on the need for tradition, etc.

Incidentally, despite the name, it also does not indulge in any form of metal, death, or otherwise.

Instead, the title is a clue to the name of the band sufficient to run a train through driven by a coked up engineer, and if you still haven't figured out I'm talking about the Grateful Dead, your loss.

Look, I get it. They're not to everyone's taste. Hell, I'm not a deadhead by any stretch, never saw them in concert, certainly never followed them around, and while I certainly skimmed off my da's liquor collection I actually could tell my Navy recruiter with a straight face that I never smoked pot.

But they have some awesome music, and one of the first CDs I ever bought was because one of the wannabe hippie crowd in college I knew recommended the album to me as one of their better studio works. Since I had liked a lot of his record collection, including Dead bootlegs, excepting the Billy Bragg, I listened to it, and bought it the next time I went to the record store.

I did mention I had odd tastes, right? Rush, Moody Blues, Yngwie Malmsteen, Satriani, Iron Maiden, The Cure, New Order, Merle Haggard, etc....

So, my favorite song off of that album, "Terrapin Station"

Fate, Courage, Groundhog Day, and the Edge of Tomorrow

This isn't precisely a review as it's got major spoilers, but I felt I really had to go deeper into the story and characters of the Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow than the short review I gave it.

I really love this movie. Frankly, I think it really is a better Groundhog Day, and that's saying a lot. Bill Murray is fucking brilliant, and nice guy/blue pill romantic elements of the script aside, his portrayal of Phil, the arrogant, jaded, and cocky weatherman is awe inspiring. You start with the realization that he - apparently - has no consequences as everything resets, but he remembers his past. He takes advantage of it, mercilessly. Then he realizes that there ultimately is a consequence - he's trapped. In desperation to escape, he tries suicide. Again, and again, and again. Even stealing the groundhog to find a way out.

Eventually, tired of being stuck in the same rut, tired of hedonism, tired of self-destruction, he decides to seek self-improvement. While those who've taken the red pill may argue with some of what is portrayed as good - being helpful to people of of genuine kindness, learning to play music, and becoming an expert at innumerable practical skills are all good things to achieve, and he had a lifetime, some say dozens, to learn them.

Once his core nature changed, he got out of the rut. It's a powerful lesson.

OK, Andie McDowell is actually pretty cute too.

So why would Edge of Tomorrow be better? It too starts with a glib charmer who is, if anything, worse. Bill Murray's Phil was competent at his job even if he was a bitter and jaded human being.  Tom Cruise's William Cage is a superficial charmer, and deeply inside, a coward. It would be easy to say "because I like SF tropes more" as a cheat.

It's because while both characters are placed on a path to virtue, where Phil is placed on a path to improve himself for his own sake, Cage not only has to overcome his debilitating cowardice, improve himself, become an expert at war despite never having a background in it, but also overcomes his personal failings in the cause of something far greater than himself. Yes, this gives him additional outside motivation, but he could have just as easily lived a life of debauchery and said "fuck you", given in to his cowardice. Where Phil's suicides were played seriously, showing how selfish they were, and how they affected everyone around him not in on the gag, the nature of the time loop is played for very dark battlefield humor in Tomorrow.  Can't train because he broke his leg? Bullet to the head.

Despite the fact he - like Phil - did not control his entry into the time loop, he too embraces it. He knowingly suffers, over and over again, to find a path out through the other side by winning this war.

In the end, Chekhov's gun is respected, and instead of escaping the loop by killing the mimics, William Cage loses his ability to loop after a blood transfusion. This is the moment of truth for his character, as he is no longer immune, so to speak, from death. If he dies, he's not only gone, but there will not be another chance to stop the aliens, to put his knowledge to use.

In the end, he sacrifices himself, and yes, the day is won.

Rush on Trump

Over the last decade a lot of the conservative radio personalities have, for me, fallen by the wayside. Hannity may have his heart in the right place but he comes across as a blowhard who doesn't know what he's talking about. Glenn Beck, aka Glenn #Cuck, well - he's a crying whiner, despite what good he's done in the past.

But Rush? Ah - and oh boy. OK, I don't listen to his show but have in the past, as well as read some of his books in the 90's. He's a flawed man, but he gets it. He has his facts right, even if he tends to get meta, or even metaphorical, in translating them (with a tendency to quote the NYT and other media outlets in full context). He's often been insightful on where problems actually lie, and while he's rallied round the republican flag holding his nose, and defending Romney and McCain from unwarranted attacks, he's also been on the front lines of conservatives taking them to task.

When it comes to character flaws and bombastic style, he actually reminds me a bit of Trump.

And he "gets" Trump. He stands nearly alone among the commentariat for that alone.

From a recent transcript, regarding Peter Thiel:

THIEL:  I don't agree with everything Donald Trump has said and done, and I don't think the millions of other people voting for him do either.  Nobody thinks his comments about women were acceptable, but I don't think the voters pull the lever in order to endorse a candidate's flaws.  It's not a lack of judgment that leads Americans to vote for Trump.  We're voting for Trump because we judge the leadership of our country to have failed.  This judgment has been hard to accept for some of the country's most fortunate, socially prominent people.  It's certainly been hard to accept for Silicon Valley, where many people have learned to keep quiet if they dissent from the coastal bubble.

RUSH:  Now, folks, this is right on the money.  This explains every Trump supporter.  You know, the media and a lot of nose-out-of-joint Republicans and even a lot of nose-out-of-joint conservatives are wandering around trying to figure out why this reprobate, why this coarse, this braggart, this bombastic, this rough-around-the-edges, why this guy with no character, why do so many people support him?

And Thiel nails it here, and it's true for everybody supporting Trump.  They're not endorsing Trump because of his flaws.  His flaws don't matter right now because people have judged the current leadership of the country to have failed and failed big, and they show no signs of even realizing they've failed.  The people opposing Trump both in the Republican and Democrat Party do not sense a crisis.

How many times have we discussed this?  They do not sense a country off the rails, because to them it isn't.  They do not have to live with any of the conditions their policies create.  They're not worried about the unemployment rate; it'll never affect them.  They're an worried about open borders, immigration.  It doesn't affect them.  Their kids are not gonna be around the people that commit crimes, who have crossed the border illegally, they're not gonna be confronted by it.  They live in protected enclaves, in large part.

 I've got one quibble in an otherwise excellent speech from Mr Thiel: "Nobody thinks his comments about women were acceptable"

In what context? Would I make the comments Trump has had in a family discussion around the dinner table? No.

But is what Trump said untrue? No. And as a result, they may be crude to bring up in some contexts, but they are anything but unacceptable.