A world of double standards

I wonder how many calls we’ll hear for Hillary Clinton to distance herself from Harvey Weinstein by returning his many campaign donations over the years, now that his serial harassment of women has finally been made public by the New York Times. Then again, it may be hard for those two to put distance between each other. Weinstein even blames his current troubles on Hillary’s favorite boogeyman: the “vast right-wing conspiracy.”

It’s amusing how the Left likes to talk about a Republican “war on women,” but seems to have as much, if not more, trouble in their own camp.  After all, it wasn’t a GOP president who was impeached for receiving oral sex from an intern and then lying about it under oath.   (Hmmm… that was Her Hillaryness’ husband, too.  Wonder if she has judgment issues?)  The famed Kennedy brothers didn’t exactly create a woman’s paradise, either. Meanwhile, it turns out Senator Fauxcahontas is only concerned about the alleged gender “pay gap” when it’s somebody else’s payroll that seems to show it.

When Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot a few years ago, liberals screamed about the harmful effects of “eliminationist rhetoric,” as though the use of crosshairs in a political pamphlet equated to calling for public executions.  That outrage became rather muted later when Floyd Corkins opened fire at the Family Research Council in part because the Southern Poverty Money Racket Law Center labeled the FRC a “hate group” for their stance against gay ‘marriage.’  Now that there’s been another mass shooting, it’s apparently OK for the Left to call openly for the death of several million Americans who had nothing to do with Las Vegas:

Sinatra’s tweet was merely a small part of the outpouring of murderous invective.  Dana Loesch, a conservative commentator who’s become an NRA spokesperson, received scores of comments on her Twitter account essentially wishing death upon her and any who associated with her.  (I have to admit she handles these with grace, replying “God Bless” more often than any other response.)  As Kurt Schlichter pointed out in response to similar comments on his account and others, “I, for one, am not super inclined to give up my ability to defend myself in response to demands by people who eagerly tell me they want me enslaved or dead. Literally dead.”

So when the puritanical Left screams “have you no decency?” remember that it mostly likely seems to be projection.  That’s the challenge of Alinsky’s rule to “make the enemy live up to his own standards.”  Because if they didn’t have double standards, the institutional Left* would have no standards at all.  

* I use the term “institutional” because there are individuals who identify as left-leaning who do not necessarily agree with the shenanigans listed above.

Escaping the collective

Between them, Google, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo and Twitter carry enormous power to shape the public conversation.  What’s worse, all of those companies have shown themselves willing to censor and eliminate speech they dislike.  It’s time to find alternatives:

DuckDuckGo may never become a verb the way “Google” did, but at least their search engine doesn’t track your every move.  I moved to the Pale Moon browser after Mozilla threw out their highly successful CEO for having donated to the cause of not recognizing gay “marriage” in California. That same CEO has now created a new browser, Brave, which I use for most web work. You may also have noted over the past few months that some of my links go to Infogalactic, not Wikipedia anymore. And yes, Jemison Thorsby has a Gab account, though I use it to listen, not to broadcast. (Yet.)  I’m still looking into some of the email platforms noted in the video.  If I have recommendations later, I’ll pass them along.

Vox Day and his fellow travelers who have the chops to do so are trying to create content-neutral platforms as an alternative to the gulag-inclined monopolies that exist today. I don’t have the tech skills to help them, but I CAN contribute by using and promoting these alternate platforms.

And so can you. Silicon Valley needs to be overthrown as the biased gatekeepers of the national discussion.

Why CNN is now a target

Since the election of Trump, CNN has gone completely out of its way to distort reality to support its preferred narratives.  See recent example below (helpfully recaptioned at the bottom to bring us back to reality):

Full disclosure: I personally scrolled back through CNN’s Twitter feed to confirm that yes, they did in fact Tweet that message and image.  I also visited EuroNews to confirm the quote that was added to the bottom of the image above. (Due diligence is more important today than ever before).

This is how little respect CNN has for the average viewer’s intelligence.  (To be fair, even the college-educated aren’t necessarily prepared to think critically these days.)  It took me less than five minutes to confirm both parts of the meme above, and to cross check with other news sites that noted the more violent aspects of the G20 Summit protests.  Yet CNN boils it down on Twitter to a “we are the world” gathering of “peaceful” protestors.  Even in their own photo, the question should come up “why so many police officers there?”  But answering that question would mean looking at the long history of Leftist violence at such international meetings (such as the “Battle in Seattle.”).  There are many like me who also distrust the globalist agenda for different reasons, but you don’t (yet) see us acting like this on a regular basis.

Angry at the deception yet?  In the event you think this is just an isolated instance of malpractice on CNN’s part, here’s some more reading for you.  This isn’t new for CNN — or, for that matter, most of the corporate media world (I include Fox in that as well, for what it’s worth).  The divide between reality and their reporting has been growing for some time.  With the election of Obama, however, most of what was left of the pretense of objective journalism was jettisoned in order to enable the Anointed One’s “fundamental transform(ation)” of America.

CNN’s reputation deserves the trashing it’s currently experiencing.  But while it’s fun to see the media get a well-deserved comeuppance, let’s also remember that if there’s to be a restoration in this nation critical thinking and rational discourse MUST be taught and emphasized again — even in policy areas where the facts are very uncomfortable to the individually messianic “we can save the world” worldview.

Quote of the day

Via Twitter, regarding Trump’s tweet yesterday:

Quote of the day

“… if Americans increasingly find it intolerable that their political opponents control the government, that’s because government controls too much.”  — Glenn Reynolds

Not only does government control too much; it’s been increasingly ‘weaponized’ by both parties while in power, such that it can bully and harass political opponents.  This dangerous process has been going on for some time.  Obama just dialed it up to 11.  That led to this observation on Twitter, regarding how Democrats must feel now that the IRS and other agencies have a history of “punching back twice as hard:”

(Note: “TFW” is internet shorthand for “That feeling when…”)

The true measure of Donald Trump’s success will be if the next election doesn’t feel as if everything in life depends on it, or that one side can then flaunt the law at will.  This should never be the case.

This-n-that

A few scattered thoughts prompted by recent reading…

1)  Seen online: “Next time we have a peaceful transfer of power, can there be less of it to transfer, please?”  Hear, hear!

2)  God continues to have fun with the Goreacle:

Park City is bracing for a slew of snow at Sundance Film Festival.

The festival locale sank to below-freezing temperatures ahead of Thursday’s opening-night film An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, Al Gore’s climate-change follow-up to 2006’s An Inconvenient Truth.

It’s sure “inconvenient” to keep having all those cold-weather events show up every time he tries to peddle global warming (oh, wait: now it’s just called “climate change.” How… convenient.)

3)  The corporate media, led by CNN, continues its increasingly brazen lying in order to imply Trump has less support than he does.  Click this link, then this one.  This is just another petty and underhanded way to try to make Trump’s administration seem illegitimate.  So for the record:

Hey, CNN: do you want to keep getting ignored at presidential news conferences?  Because this is how you keep getting ignored.  Here’s hoping this administration holds all press outlets accountable for every propaganda twist they try to pull.  This goes for Fox News as well, whose own narrative-pushing I have direct experience with.

4)  Remember when hundreds of protestors were arrested at Obama’s first inaugural, and how conservative activists smashed storefronts and generally made a destructive nuisance of themselves?  Yeah, me neither.  It occurs to me that if these people are so violently unhappy with the country they live in, it would be a simple matter after arresting them to revoke their citizenship and give them a one-way ticket to wherever they believe things are better.  Might be a rude wakeup.  These people are so stupid they don’t realize their antics are pushing many Americans (including me) to farther political extremes than they’d ordinarily go.  Polite society has tolerated this sort of thing for so long that I fear it will take a sustained, violent crackdown to re-establish civic norms.

These antics are a symptom of what got Trump elected.  If they continue, they’re simply helping his reelection campaign from Day One.

Unpersoning the opposition

Over the past week or so, Twitter appears to be, well, all a-twitter about removing from its online conversation voices with whom certain parties disagree:

On Friday, Twitter suspended the account of Robert Stacy McCain, a conservative blogger and dogged critic of feminism, apparently without warning or explanation. This has led, in true Twitter fashion, to protests under the hashtag #FreeStacy.

Only a few weeks earlier, Twitter had announced the creation of a “Trust and Safety Council,” to which it appointed Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist known for denouncing “sexism” in video games, a prominent figure in the Gamergate controversy—and oh yes, a frequent target of criticism from McCain. So it sure looks like the moment Twitter gave Sarkeesian the power to do so, she started blackballing her critics.

Suffice to say this is not an isolated incident, but appears to be part of a pattern of ideological banishment by the social media platform.  That, in turn, is part of an increasing tendency by the big online players to segregate out viewpoints they find ‘objectionable’ — a totalitarian tendency that should not be tolerated by any free-thinking person, regardless of political persuasion.

The real irony, of course, is this: that Twitter and supporters of its ban hammer are quick to point out that this can’t be a First Amendment issue, because Twitter is a private company and as such can run its business (and deal with its customers) anyway it likes (apparently including running its share price and market value into the ground after alienating the conservative half of the country).  The government, they say, should not get involved.

Isn’t that cute?  I happen to agree the government shouldn’t force Twitter to provide its services to anyone.  But in case the point is lost, here’s the always-sharp Iowahawk to explain:

Leftists have amassed so much power and influence they no longer see a need even to try to appear coherent or consistent in their arguments.  But as their blatant hypocrisy and will to power become more obvious, the pendulum–and the power–will begin to swing the other way. Indeed, there are signs this has already begun.  They would do well to consider that the ‘rules’ they are trying to impose easily cut both ways.  As H.L. Mencken once said, “there comes a time when every normal man is tempted to hoist the black flag (no quarter), spit on his hands, and begin slitting throats.”

For many of us on the Right, that time is just about here.  If it’s OK to silence online voices, or campaign to destroy someone’s livelihood or reputation simply because they hold views that don’t comport with the Left’s worldview, well… sauce for goose, gander, etc.  Bring back the Scarlet Letter and public shame, then.  Ridicule and ostracize those who insist, against all reasonable observation, that men and women are completely interchangeable parts in society.  Refuse to associate with the addled minds that still think, after more than a century and hundreds of millions of dead, that Marx has anything useful to offer to society.

Put these people beyond the pale the way they are trying to exclude the true heirs of the West.  Leftism, as I’ve said several times recently, is parasitical.  It doesn’t create; it perverts.  It doesn’t preserve; it breaks down.  It doesn’t empower; it constrains within a carefully controlled collective.  Now that this is becoming more widely recognized, its adherents shouldn’t be surprised when they are, in turn, banned from participation in Western Civilization 2.0.  Most of these agitators of various stripes and fetishes haven’t truly been ‘oppressed’ in two or three generations.  They decry ‘intolerance’ (conveniently defined as disagreement with them) while actually practicing it (‘unpersoning’ and targeting for harm those they disagree with).  As a result of their vacuous goading and preening today, they may well find out what oppression really looks like, when the inevitable backlash to their nonsense begins.

What can Brown do for to you?

The Ivy League brand is the only reason anyone would pay $65,000 a year to experience this nonsense.  But with any luck, the past year or so of public attention to what is really going on at these campuses will irrevocably destroy that brand — and good riddance!

“There are people breaking down, dropping out of classes and failing classes because of the activism work they are taking on,” said David, an undergraduate whose name has been changed to preserve anonymity. Throughout the year, he has worked to confront issues of racism and diversity on campus.

His role as a student activist has taken a toll on his mental, physical and emotional health. “My grades dropped dramatically. My health completely changed. I lost weight. I’m on antidepressants and anti-anxiety pills right now. (Counseling and Psychological Services) counselors called me. I had deans calling me to make sure I was okay,” he said…

Justice Gaines ’16, who uses the pronouns xe, xem and xyr, said student activism efforts on campus are necessary. “I don’t feel okay with seeing students go through hardships without helping and organizing to make things better.”

In the wake of The Herald’s opinion pieces, Gaines felt overwhelmed by emotions flooding across campus. Students were called out of class into organizing meetings, and xe felt pressure to help xyr peers cope with what was going on, xe said. Gaines “had a panic attack and couldn’t go to class for several days.”

And these are the well-connected supposed leaders of tomorrow?  Consider the irony of ‘students’ (can we call them that if studying isn’t the top priority?) who rally to decry “privilege,” while constantly seeking Dean’s notes that extend their academic suspenses so they can be disruptive crybullies (a recently coined term I find to be spot on) at campus speaking events featuring opinions with which they disagree.  What, exactly, are they paying exorbitant tuition for — the latitude to make public nuisances of themselves?

This surrealistic nonsense has gone on long enough.  It’s time to stop pretending these institutions produce anything but confused and quite possibly mentally damaged permanent adolescents who are incapable of dealing with reality.  These ‘future leaders’ are steeped in the warped worldviews of the self-professed ‘social justice warriors’ who now infest everything from Twitter and other tech industries to entertainment outlets and educational institutions, and who use their influence to enforce a velvet-glove version of fascist thought control.  It’s long past time to return the favor and begin the process of ostracizing anyone who supports this insanity.  Aside from social networking and trying to signal some sort of liberal virtue, what possible value could be had by hiring someone whose ‘education’ consists of the Red Guard indoctrination described in Brown University’s own newspaper?  Any business owner with a smidgeon of sense would be well advised to simply drop in the wastebasket any application from an Ivy League graduate, and to make it known they place no value on a diploma from these cesspools.  No high-performing company or organization has time for such drama queens and distractions.

And considering their behavior in recent years, it’s not as though any of “xem” have a leg to stand on to claim viewpoint discrimination.  If they want to break the truce of civility, so be it – let xem reap what they’ve sown.  Those of us who live in the real world don’t need xem… they need us, just as a parasite needs a host.

The hosts, as our current politics show, are getting a little tired of the non-productive bloodsuckers…

King-sized ego

The President’s critics (including me) frequently accuse him of acting more like a monarch than an executive charged with ‘faithfully executing the laws.’

So naturally, the ‘most transparent administration ever’ (sic) decides to have a little fun with the official White House Twitter account:

It’s one thing when the president’s acolytes openly wish he could rule by fiat.  It’s quite another when such fantasies are conveyed by official statements and gestures.  And considering the nihilistic, God-less nature of the whole ‘Game of Thrones’ world, what does it say that POTUS is role-playing ‘top of the heap’ with that motif?

Yes, I realize they’ll say it was a light-hearted jest.  It’s more of a taunt, particularly given all the scandals bulging under the rugs.  And it’s not funny.

Not even close.