Two Stupid Statements

We've had some doozies recently for dumb statements.

For example, Kathy Griffin and the whole "severed Trump head" thing. Stefan goes into some serious detail here:

Then there's the uproar over Bill Maher, which finds Razorfist going to bat for him. Sortof.

I'll leave you with these for now - but I'll be going into why, despite both having free speech, these cases are different.

Soft Targets

A long, long time ago, I read a book by Dean Ing called "Soft Targets."

In it, an interesting solution to terrorism was proposed. Laugh at them.

No, nut just laugh at them of course, but stop treating them in the news/etc. as monsters, but as fools, dunces, etc.

Of course, in the story, several agents were nonetheless doing their best to prevent attacks, and if not entirely successful at first, caused enough issues with various attempts to make it easy to label the terrorists losers, clowns, etc.

Why do I bring this up?

Well, today, Scott Adams noted a new bit of persuasion unlimbered by the God Emperor.

As you know, “annihilation” of the Losers in Loserdom won’t stop the loser’s ideas from spreading. You still have to kill the ideas. And that takes persuasion, not bullets. President Trump just mapped out the persuasion solution: Evil Losers.

Quickly, name one other way you could label/insult the Losers that would be as powerful as the word Loser. You can’t do it with any other name or insult that is also repeatable in polite company.

What kinds of people join the Losers? Mostly young males. And you know what brand young males do not want on them? Right: Losers.

If you call them monsters, they like it. If you call them ISIS or ISIL they put it on a flag and wave it around. If you call them non-Muslim, it just rolls off their backs because they have Korans and stuff. Almost any other “brand” you can imagine is either inert or beneficial to Loser recruitment.

Loser is different. No one joins the Loser movement.

Know Your Enemy

We've all seen it before. The left, especially SJW's, like to call their enemies stupid, ignorant, bigoted, etc.. The old gag goes that "racist" is what a liberal calls you when he lost the argument, and Scott Adams certainly puts his own spin on it, and expands on it a bit.

The problem is that eventually, you start to believe it, and I certainly know a few people who sincerely believe Trump goes around grabbing pussies, etc., as if they never heard of groupies, or parsed the actual words.

So, again, the NY Times and David Brooks...

We've got this perverse situation in which the vast analytic powers of the entire world are being spent trying to understand a guy whose thoughts are often just six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar.

There's the Sun Tzu saw about if you don't know your enemy... well, not being aware of an enemy's strengths or actual weaknesses is not knowing one's enemy. The problem with narcissistic/borderline "splitting" is that once someone is bad, they're all bad, and there's no "good" or respectable traits - thery're all seen as defending the indefensible.

The literally cannot imagine Trump is smart, because he doesn't talk like them, despite having gone through Wharton school of business at U Penn in a day and age that it was absolutely, provably, a challenge.

The Didact, on the Ascension

Some joyful commentary:

His victory is a victory for men everywhere who are tired of being spat upon, sick of seeing our masculinity being torn down and derided, fed up of watching our most cherished principles and ideals being buried under the landfill of modern culture, and enraged at seeing the country that we love being treated like an abused crack-whore.

Go read the whole thing.

The God-Emperor Ascends the Cherry Blossom Throne

Today, we mark a moment of hope. The cultural war is far from over - we have only, finally, begun to fight - but it is the first step.

All of your safe space as well.

The next is far more important. Even if TGE drains the swamp, builds the wall, butchers the government back into sensible size and scope, the SJW's and "tolerant" left will double down. They will work harder to contain us, destroy us, ruin our lives, and not see the false progress they've made reversed. I've recently posted my own considerations of the hazards involved, and in either case we must be strong, resourceful, and set aside fear.

And so...

Lord. May the God-Emperor do your will. May we find the strength to as well to follow your will, to vanquish the foes of humanity - those which deny it and anyone but themselves as gods above us - to set freedom across the land, and at the end, to show mercy to those who deserve it, and justice to those who do not. May our resolve be unwavering, our aim be true, and souls find contentment in just righteousness.

All Your Base

Tom Kratman, in his regular column delivers a meme laden post which starts out with TrigglyPuff setting us up the bomb, and comes up with an indecently funny proposal for inauguration day.

Go give him some eyeballs, but I have this ready in the spirit.

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.

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.

First South Carolina Nobly Made Her Stand...

I stole this title, from the irascible and blunt, but well read Tom Kratman, (if you have not yet read the freely available A State of Disobedience, do so. It's not his best book, but still), and his column over at everyjoe.

The short version?

an election that doesn’t see in office very soon a man or woman dedicated to obliterating the tyrannical administrative and bureaucratic state means the death of the republic, too. The difference is that, without Hillary, we may have a little more time while, with her, that would be it.

The long version? Describing, using not only Hillary's own stated preferences, but what she, and after that, Obama, have actually done or tried to ram through, will almost certainly do to render the first and second amendments a moot point, and the entire concept of America a moot point by bringing in people who do not believe in America as anything but a place to loot for goodies.

Also, very importantly, how NOT to do it.

He'll be writing more on this topic.

And do yourself a favor, go read A Desert Called Peace, and every Carrerabook since.  All his other stuff too, especially the Ringo/Aldenatta contributions, though the standalone Caliphate perhaps hits too close to home as an all-too-possible nightmare, sci fi tech excepting.

Twitter: Moral Treason

Scott Adams recently covers his ongoing shadowban, the symptoms of which match those of other shadowbans: results easily visible on a users timeline not showing up in the regular "algorithm" timeline, or more significantly, in search results. He also covers how his Periscope numbers, "coincidentally" drop to zero (though he still is interacting with viewers who can still see his stream) when he starts discussing Trump. Finally, he finishes with this:

As I said before, if Twitter is suppressing my political speech, I consider it moral treason against the people of the United States even if it is allowed under their terms of service, and even though it is technically legal. I hope I’m wrong, and that my problems are simply technical in nature. Because if Twitter is doing what people say they are doing, and suppressing certain types of speech, the company needs to die for the good of the Republic.

This goes well beyond what even Milo Y has said - that Twitter is entitled, on their service, on their servers, to allow or disallow whatever they want, but that Twitter has to own up to that, and stop saying they are part of the "free speech party". That the people at Twitter are duplicitous hacks who say one thing to bring users on, but do another when needed to support their team.

Like most leftists and SJW's, the only principle is "what helps me, right now".  And yes, "right now" is important, because Hillary, and many SJW's, are willing to take any position that gives them momentary advantage no matter the long-term consequences to, among other things, their credibility, or to those they make promises to.

Moral treason. Ponder that for a bit. Actively working to prevent voters from informing each other and being informed, thus taking from the citizens the right to choose knowledgeably.

For all of those who want to start mouthing off about how Twitter is a private entity and can do as they wish, or grant service to those they wish - something Scott not only acknowledges, but a degree of free association that flies in the face of lawsuits over wedding cakes for same sex couples by selfsame  mouthbreathers - he's hearkening to the more fundamental philosophical and moral position behind the first amendment. Again, Scott chooses his words carefully.

Sit back and think for a moment. We have an election where the Green Party, Anonymous, Wikileaks, the Alt- Right, the Tea Party, and non-establishment republicans are all working to take out Hillary (though not all support Trump, specifically), in the face of massive media, corporate, and government support and "rigging" - Scott is hardly the only voice that could be thought of as "liberal" or left that is working to sink Hillary and tacitly calling Trump the better choice.

Yeah, I've seen the recent videos from Anonymous targeting the Lizard Queen.

I'm cracking open some Jack and raising a glass to a well-deserved death on the part of Twitter, and every other SJW-converged IT outfit.

Interesting times, my friends.

Context is Everything

Before we get into the rest of this discussion, watch these two videos. Ignore the obvious checkbox demographics, because these two ads make a very clever point - the same words, delivered in different contexts, can mean something completely different.

These, among other things, makes clear the importance of "frame", by the way. Even if you wrote out these scenes, completely stripped out the body language, the intonation, and simply described the setting and who was speaking, the differences in meaning would be clear.

The frame for the latest Trump scandals is that Trump is a rapist. I know personally that a lot of Hillbots are lapping up the "he's a sexual predator" line. This is because a) the press told them to, and b) despite many of them buying and enjoying "50 Shades", despite the fact I know from direct personal experience of some of them walking in on conversations that they fantasize and say incredibly crude things about sex and sexual desires and men, and that women are "like that" in general, they cannot accept that a guy wants women, will approach them, or admit that they can that easily submit to a rich, powerful, or charismatic man.

Cue up of course the followup, too-good-to-be-true, #coincidentally timed confessions of how Trump abused or groped them, despite details like time, place, or degree of intimacy with the Trump clan being under credible dispute or even completely impossible.

It's still in play, for a number of reasons, but a number of the undereducated women voters the Democrats love (unless they become noncompliant - see wikileaks) - even the churchian "conservatives" - are ready to swallow the feminist spiel about how men discussing how they want women, or brag about approaching women, or discussing the truth that anyone who understands groupies are a real thing knows, is tantamount to rape and being a predator. How this degrades women.

And it's all in the context. Sadly, we've been trained out of even seeing that context, as a recent SNL skit mocking it as "locker room" talk acted like it doesn't happen at all. The modern progressive frame is that men are not allowed to say anything that upsets women, even in private, if the women ever find out about it.

This despite another skit in that same episode only "working" as a joke on the point that women will debase themselves before the socially powerful of the moment.

Oh, and sadly, if anything, SNL is only even more predictable than they used to be. Both the "news" skit and the Stranger Things-based skit rely heavily on the tropes of white privilege.

So it comes around to "how do we deal with it.?"

Honestly, not sure. To the extent possible with not losing your livelihood, especially if you have family, etc., push back against the frame. Call them out on hypocrisy of their own actions. As much as it's tempting to point to the Veritas videos of Hillary staffers, it's not as visceral as pointing out their own conversations about men. And even then, being liberals, they will likely "feel" there's an excuse for their own behavior, but Trump is evil.

The iconic example of such has got to be the FLOTUS talking about "human decency" in regards to the Trump comments, who takes her daughters to Jay-Z concerts and raps "Get Your Freak On" alongside Missy Elliot. But hey, it's their "culture", or some BS.

Scott Adams, Persuasion, and Hillary

Scott Adams, of Dilbert Fame, had for quite some time now been endorsing Hillary for President. 

As most of you know, I had been endorsing Hillary Clinton for president, for my personal safety, because I live in California. It isn’t safe to be a Trump supporter where I live. And it’s bad for business too.

But that has changed.

Lets look into the reasons. First, he flat out admits he doesn't know enough about event current issues, much less issues that have not yet arisen, to pick either one on the basis of their expertise. Hell - the only reason he had been endorsing the psychopathic Hillbot was because his writing on Trump was being taken as endorsement, and was resulting in threats, etc.

Weirdly, even though his "endorsement" of her ("for my safety") was a slap in the face, it worked, and the uproar died down. He explains why at one point - but it has to do with the fact of the endorsement, no matter how couched, being more important than why.

So, it came down to Hillary proposing something that would hurt him and his family:

Given the uncertainty about each candidate – at least in my own mind – I have been saying I am not smart enough to know who would be the best president. That neutrality changed when Clinton proposed raising estate taxes. I understand that issue and I view it as robbery by government.

First, he dings Hillary on bullshit. Remember how HC and her supporters ding Trump on having "no policy?"

Confiscation of Property: Clinton proposed a new top Estate Tax of 65% on people with net worth over $500 million. Her website goes to great length to obscure the actual policy details, including the fact that taxes would increase on lower value estates as well. See the total lack of transparency here, where the text simply refers to going back to 2009 rates. It is clear that the intent of the page is to mislead, not inform.

So don’t fall for the claim that Clinton has plenty of policy details on her website. She does, but it is organized to mislead, not to inform. That’s far worse than having no details.

Worse than no details. Let that sink in. He's very politely saying her web page that is supposed to make clear her position is nothing but superficial bullshit.

I call this a confiscation tax because income taxes have already been paid on this money. In my case, a dollar I earn today will be taxed at about 50% by various government entities, collectively. With Clinton’s plan, my remaining 50 cents will be taxed again at 50% when I die. So the government would take 75% of my earnings from now on.

This isn't the first time she's raised this. For those of us who were around in the early and mid 90's, in addition to pushing for ObamaCare beta and Imputed Income for tax purposes, she even then wanted to jack up capital gains and estate taxes. It's one reason why anyone who remembers the Clinton presidency but thinks he can't vote Trump because Trump isn't a "true" conservative is a moron. 

And imputed income? Let's say you were smart, and didn't buy more house than you could afford, or set aside more money to pay it off faster, and now had no mortgage. Hillary wanted the IRS to treat that money you were no longer spending on a rent or mortgage as taxable income, because most Americans had that money going to a roof over their heads, and you had it free and clear.

Except for the part where you worked your butt off or didn't buy more house than you could afford. 

3. Party or Wake: It seems to me that Trump supporters are planning for the world’s biggest party on election night whereas Clinton supporters seem to be preparing for a funeral. I want to be invited to the event that doesn’t involve crying and moving to Canada.

OK, that's just funny.

Most of the job of president is persuasion. Presidents don’t need to understand policy minutia. They need to listen to experts and then help sell the best expert solutions to the public. Trump sells better than anyone you have ever seen, even if you haven’t personally bought into him yet. You can’t deny his persuasion talents that have gotten him this far.

In summary, I don’t understand the policy details and implications of most of either Trump’s or Clinton’s proposed ideas. Neither do you. But I do understand persuasion. I also understand when the government is planning to confiscate the majority of my assets. And I can also distinguish between a deeply unhealthy person and a healthy person, even though I have no medical training. (So can you.)

So - go read the whole thing.

Stefan Molyneux and Scott Adams on Youtube

It's been a long time on this rock, and I'm sure in five or ten years, I'll think I'm even wiser. Or at least learned a few more lessons the hard way. Nevertheless, I was watching an interview with Scott Adams and Stefan Molyneux, and I was floored by the number of threads that came together for me that I'd been mulling a while.

First - background - I've been through most of the political spectrum at one time or another, in search of truth. I've left most of it as well for the same damn reason. One truth I hold close is this: life is not perfect, there is no perfect choice, there is no ideal, failure modes are a constant, and that people are emotional. All of that has to be factored into whatever decision that one tries to make.

The "people are not rational one" was perhaps the hardest to suss out for me, and "failure is constant, good enough is good enough" the most difficult one for me to accept.

So I found the interview fascinating - especially Scott's discussion of systems vs goals - and my immediate thoughts of how that ties into antifragility, especially given his stated position that we are not rational (in many ways he's right). I also found fascinating his recent articles on persuasion in the light of Aristotelean Dialectic vs Rhetoric, and the greater importance in most cases of addressing the emotional state.

While it is often a broken and incomplete rationality – see again the observation that people are generally irrational – you find more of it, more often, in engineering disciplines because those require yes or no answers that are either true or false no matter how you feel. Of course, those people then can sometimes be more, compensatingly, irrational in completely different areas. Often in the belief that people are just as programmable and malleable as electronics. This last has been around since the industrial revolution.

It's interesting that Scott Adams, Eric Raymond, and yes, even Stefan Molyneux in discussions on atheist versus religious people, have now made similar points. Namely: religion in general having a self-governing set of precepts that restricts both the amount of human evil and its scope, as well offering a higher standard to live up to and judge by than "law".

I'll also be commenting more, later, on "systems", and other factors, later. In the meantime, go watch the video.

Trump Can Do No Right

The guys at the Morning Joe show their asses again.

My only real comment is on the headline: Morning Joe Rips Trump Mex Trip: ‘Flip-Flop, Nonsensical, Sociopath’

We all know SJW's project, but I've run into clinical narcissists, borderlines, and sociopaths: a spectrum of the broken, the emotionally stunted, and non-empathetic. I've also dealt with a lot of smart people who didn't get the fancy college education indoctrination, and don't give off all the higher-caste social cues. Since Trumps speech patterns aren't my current subject, I'll leave aside the snobbery involved, and simply point out this: I don't see the cues I've learned to observe.

Hillary? Aside from the wake of the #coincidentally dead in her wake, watching her scares me.

If the idiots on the Joe do know what "Sociopath", etc. means, they're full of shit.