Alternative History

Good reads

Posted on October 9, 2020October 9, 2020 by Mike

Since I first read Bill’s fantastic Lightning Falls, I’ve gotten into PAW (Post-Apocalypse World, for the uninitiated) fiction in a big way, thanks to the indispensable Kindle Unlimited virtual lending library. There’s some great, entertaining stuff to be found in the genre, although some books on the topic read like little more than overlong shopping and honey-do lists for survivalists and preppers. Useful for some in a purely practical sense, maybe, but not exactly what I’m looking for in a work of fiction.

NC Reed’s Fire From The Sky series—now up to volume nine or ten, I believe, every one of which I’ve read—is particularly gripping stuff, as is everything else he’s written…all of which I’ve also read and loved.

Reed is an extremely skillful writer, especially so when it comes to creating believable, very human characters and exploring the relationships between them. He’s a Tennessee boy, as are the characters in the Sanders saga, and his dialogue is as real as hot cornbread in a cast-iron skillet. Southern dialect is actually a surprisingly difficult thing to pull off convincingly; many otherwise fine authors have tried and failed embarrassingly at it. Reed’s only real problem is by no means an unusual one these days, one that isn’t really his fault either: the editing is a little, ummm, off here and there. It’s by no means horrible or frequent enough to set your molars a-grinding in fury over it, mind, but it can be a mite distracting occasionally. That minor quibble aside, though, I can’t recommend Reed’s stuff highly enough.

Matt Bracken’s Enemies Foreign And Domestic trilogy, which I’ve mentioned enthusiastically here before, certainly deserves another mention. If you aren’t familiar with his excellent work, well, you need to fix that. Fran Porretto’s brilliant Spooner Federation Saga books are worthy of mention too, although they don’t fit so neatly into the PAW pirgeonhole as the others.

The past few days I’ve found myself totally engrossed in what’s looking like a real masterpiece of the PAW genre: Dogsoldiers, by a fella yclept James Tarr. Tarr, it turns out, also co-authored Carnivore, a good Gulf War memoir by Bradley IFV commander Dillard Johnson. I was sent a copy of Carnivore for review purposes when it first came out, although I can’t recall now if I ever did get around to posting a review here or not.

Dogsoldiers is some damned tasty stuff, a truly outstanding book. The tale is set in near-future Detroit, centering on a pivotal battle in the decade-long civil war waged by a slowly-weakening US federal tyranny against the ragtag, mostly disorganized, and chronically underequipped resistance of freedom fighters referred to in the title. Tarr’s writing is top-notch; the story isn’t marred by any of the uneven or downright sloppy editing that frequently blunts the impact of ebooks for some reason.

In fact, the reason I brought all this up in the first damned place is because the book struck me as plenty good enough to post some excerpts from it here. Our first passage has one of the Good Guy characters—Early, a grizzled, hardcore veteran originally from JawJa—enlightening a shavetail Dogsoldier volunteer, Jason, on some of the harsher realities of life during CW 2.0:

“Early?”

“Yeah?”

“Why don’t we take prisoners? Why were Weasel and George killing their wounded?”

Early looked and saw the teenager was seriously bothered. “Well, there’s two answers to that. First one is…where would we take them? It’s not like we’ve got a base. Or vehicles to transport them. We wander around, causing trouble, living in empty houses and borrowed basements, and then when the cold rolls in either do more of the same or we hol’ up with friends or relatives or in our own houses, far away from the trouble.”

“We could let them live, let the Army treat their injuries.”

Early nodded. “And that’s the other part of it. At the start of the war we let them be, tried to do the civilized thing. Let the Tabs recover their wounded. Not now. Not after ten years. Because they just keep coming back, like the tide. At this point we’ve all realized we’re in a war of attrition—that means neither side is going to surrender, the war only ends when one side has been ground down so much they’ve got no one left who can fight. They’ve had their chance. Any Tabs still fighting are either too mean or too stupid to know they’re on the side of evil.”

“And after the war? In any other war, you capture POWs, at the end of the war you send ‘em home. Which is somewhere else, a whole ‘nother country. Over there somewhere.” He waved his hand vaguely. “After World War II the Germans were sent back to Germany, where they could be Germans, and be nowhere near us. That’s not what this war is. The Tabs live here; win or lose, they’re not going anywhere. Even if they’re not fightin’, and we’re all peaceable and neighborly, they’ll still believe the same things that caused the war in the first place—socialism, communism, vegan grocery bags, twenty-seven genders, guns are evil, America has never been great, never hit back, government should be in charge of everything, all of it. That’s not peace or victory, that’s just a temporary ceasefire. Their beliefs aren’t just evil, they’re a poison, a cancer, a rot. Winning doesn’t just mean the war stops, we want to have a healthy country after all this.”

“It ain’t pretty, son. It ain’t even nice. Maybe it’s our own brand of evil. You don’ like it? Good. That means you’ve got a soul. But it’s the only way we not just win the war, but win the peace afterward.”

Naaah, THAT doesn’t sound like it has any contemporary relevance at all, does it? Pure escapist fiction, no practical reality to be found there, nossir. But this next excerpt cuts even closer to the bone that that, if you can believe it. It’s gonna be a long ‘un, so I’ll tuck it down below the fold and out of the way.

Continue reading “Good reads” →

In the groove

Posted on September 9, 2020September 9, 2020 by Mike

So I’ve been jamming out in the car recently to a mix CD of some late 60s-early 70s classics I burned a while back—songs I loved as a kid, but had been sorta neglecting of late. And suddenly the responsibility—nay, the solemn, sacred duty—to share some of this good stuff with y’all weighed heavily upon me.

The above, of course, would be the legendary Buddy Miles, just doin’ his legendary Buddy Miles thang. In the unlikely event you don’t know of him, please allow Wikipedia to hip ya some.

George Allen “Buddy” Miles Jr. (September 5, 1947 – February 26, 2008), was an American rock drummer, vocalist, composer, and producer. He was a founding member of the Electric Flag (1967), a member of Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys (1969–1970), founder and leader of the Buddy Miles Express and later, the Buddy Miles Band. Miles also played and recorded with Carlos Santana and others. Additionally, he sang lead vocals on the critically and commercially acclaimed “California Raisins” claymation TV commercials and recorded two California Raisins R&B albums.

Yes, THOSE California Raisins. Of course, most people who DO know of Buddy will surely know of his stint as drummer for Hendrix’ Band Of Gypsies. Yes, THAT Band Of Gypsies. But then, who from that wondrous, magical era DIDN’T Buddy play with, anyway? That would probably make for a shorter list, one a hell of a lot less burdensome to tot up.

Miles played with a variety of rhythm and blues and soul acts as a teenager, including Ruby & the Romantics, the Delfonics, and Wilson Pickett. In 1964, at the age of 16, Miles met Jimi Hendrix at a show in Montreal, where both were performing as sidemen for other artists.

In 1967, Miles joined Hendrix in a jam session at the Malibu home of Stephen Stills. They also went on to play together again in 1968 in both Los Angeles and New York. In the same year, Miles moved to Chicago where he teamed with guitarist Mike Bloomfield and vocalist Nick Gravenites to form the Electric Flag, a blues/soul/rock band. In addition to playing drums, Miles sometimes sang lead vocals for the band, which made its live debut at the Monterey Pop Festival in mid-1967.

In early 1968, the band released A Long Time Comin’, its first album for Columbia. The Electric Flag’s second album, An American Music Band, followed late the same year. Shortly after that release, though, the group disbanded. In the same year, Hendrix used several guest artists, including Miles, during the recording of the album, Electric Ladyland. Miles played drums on one long jam that was eventually split into two album cuts, “Rainy Day, Dream Away” and “Still Raining, Still Dreaming”, with a different song, “1983… (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)”, edited in between.

At age 21, after the breakup of the Electric Flag, Miles put together a new band with Jim McCarty, who later became the guitarist for Cactus. This new group performed and recorded as the Buddy Miles Express. In 1969, Hendrix wrote a short poem as a liner note for Expressway To Your Skull, the first studio album recorded by the Buddy Miles Express. Hendrix went on to produce four of the tracks on the group’s follow-up album, Electric Church. The title of the latter LP was taken from Hendrix’s poem on the first.

In 1969 he appeared on British jazz guitarist John McLaughlin’s album Devotion.

Exressway To Your Skull might just be the greatest album title in all of history, I’m thinking.

And while we’re groovin’ to the classics here and all, allow me to bring forth another true great: Lee Michaels. Yes, THAT Lee Michaels.

Michaels, who I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned here before at least once, is another fascinating study. A generally-acknowledged keyboard virtuoso, he did most of his live shows accompanied only by a drummer—covering that complex, fluid bass line his own self via the pedals on the Hammond B3 he ran like a boss. This, whilst also ravaging the keyboards, and crooning his little heart out to boot.

For me, it’s that distinctive, passionate singing voice of his that really sets the hook in deep. Occasionally raspy and whiskey-raw, then a croon smooth as smoothest velvet; a banshee’s wail with a desperate, out-of-breath sob hot on its heels. He gulps and gasps along just behind the beat, like every good bluesman should.

The real bones and sinew of the singer’s art, though, is phrasing. Proper phrasing can cover a multitude of other sins, while clumsy phrasing can rubbish an otherwise skilled performance entirely. Michaels’ phrasing may sound somewhat haphazard, even confused and/or anarchic, to the uninitiated. But it’s actually note-perfect, rivaling that of even Sinatra in the way he makes the attentive listener WAAAAIIIIIT until he’s about to fall over anticipating that next crucial syllable.

The above tune has an interesting little history of its own (bold mine):

Lee Eugene Michaels (born Michael Olsen, November 24, 1945) is an American rock musician who sings and accompanies himself on organ, piano, or guitar. He is best known for his powerful soulful voice and his energetic virtuosity on the Hammond organ, peaking in 1971 with his Top 10 pop hit single, “Do You Know What I Mean”.

Michaels began his career with The Sentinals, a San Luis Obispo, California-based surf group that included drummer Johny Barbata (later of The Turtles, Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship). Michaels joined Barbata in the Joel Scott Hill Trio, a group led by guitarist Joel Scott Hill. Michaels later moved to San Francisco, where he joined an early version of The Family Tree, a band led by Bob Segarini. In 1967, he signed a contract with A&M Records, releasing his debut album, Carnival of Life, later that year with David Potter on drums. As a session musician, he played with Jimi Hendrix, among others.

Michaels’ choice of the Hammond organ as his primary instrument was unusual for the time, as was his bare-bones stage and studio accompaniment: usually just a single drummer, most often a musician known as “Frosty,” real name Bartholomew Eugene Smith-Frost, who was a member of Sweathog, and whose bare handed technique was an inspiration for John Bonham, or with Joel Larson of The Grass Roots. This unorthodox approach attracted a following in San Francisco, and some critical notice. (Sounds Magazine, for one, reported of Michaels that he had been called “the ultimate power organist.”) But Michaels did not achieve real commercial success until the release of his fifth album.

That album, titled 5th and released in 1971, produced a surprise US Top 10 hit (#6 in the fall of 1971), “Do You Know What I Mean.” It was an autobiographical homage to the loss of a girlfriend. Michaels’s Top 40 follow-up, a cover version of the Motown standard, “Can I Get a Witness,” peaked at #39 on Christmas Day of 1971, eight years to the week after Marvin Gaye’s version peaked at #22. Billboard ranked “Do You Know What I Mean” as the No. 19 song for 1971. Michaels recorded two more albums for A&M before signing a recording contract with Columbia Records in 1973. But his Columbia recordings failed to generate much interest, and Michaels had gone into semi-retirement from the music industry by the end of the decade.

“Do You Know What I Mean” always brings the salt tang of an ocean breeze to mind for me, and there’s a good reason for it. See, back in the day when Myrtle Beach was still a place worth visiting, they had the late, lamented Myrtle Beach Pavilion (now unforgiveably torn down for no good reason at all, damn their eyes) on the beach side of Ocean Blvd, with the Pavilion Amusement Park directly across the street from it. We vacay’ed at MYB every year without fail, whiling away a goodish chunk of my misspent youth in the Pavilion and its Amusement Park both.

And ‘long about 71 or 72, the Amusement Park installed a great ride yclept the Himalaya, which my brother, my cousin, and I loved all to pieces. We’d ride that thing over and over again, round and round and up and down, until we were literally nauseous from it. And one of the things that attracted the Younger Generation to it was the fact that, unlike many of the other, older rides, they played that summer’s rock and roll hits loud as thunder over the installed speakers, to our endless delight.

There are two songs I heard on the Himalaya that really rang my bell but good, and never did forget. One of them was, of course, “Do You Know What I Mean” by Lee Michaels. The other, funnily enough, was a ditty whose origins I strived long and hard to unearth, only years later finding out that it had been Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Sweet Hitch Hiker.”

Now in my defense, I was exclusively a hard-rock kid back then. I was all about Iron Butterfly, D-Purp, Black Sabbath, and such-like in those days, see, and didn’t really give too much of a rip one way or the other about CCR; they weren’t on my radar until much later, I confess. But I did love me some “Sweet Hitch Hiker.” It hit me right in the sweet spot, for whatever reason.

And I had not the vaguest clue who it might be performing it on vinyl. Nor, it seemed, could I find out, not for love nor money.

What’s most curious about the whole saga is that I went around asking absolutely everybody I came into contact with that summer—grown-ups, young ‘uns like me, teenagers, teachers, the mailman, everybody—if they had any idea whose damned song that was…and not ONE of them knew either. Or if they did, they weren’t saying. Hell, I even called the local radio station (Big WAYS, 610 AM on your dial) and asked about it, all to no avail. The vexing conundrum was finally resolved when I stumbled across the song in the track listing on back of the album cover, tucked into the stacks o’ wax for sale down at my uncle Gene’s drug store in Mt Holly a cpl-three years later.

Ahh, them were the days for sure.

Let’s follow the science a bit further

Posted on August 2, 2020August 2, 2020 by Mike

I hereby demand MY reparations check.

Welcome to 2020. The New York Times wins a Pulitzer Prize for its “1619 Project,” which depicts slavery as a distinctly American phenomenon and as the very foundation of American civilization. For several weeks, a half-dozen all but unreadable books seeking redefine the concept of racism hover at or near the top of the bestseller lists. Meanwhile, the cities of America become battlegrounds in a race war waged by young people, many of whom think that America invented the institution of slavery.

This is but one of many historical facts about which they’re wrong. The truth is that fewer than 4 percent of the slaves who were transported across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa ended up in the territory of what is now the United States. More slaves were shipped to the small island of Barbados than to the vast areas that started out as British North America and then became the United States.

The same applies to Trinidad and the Windward Islands (Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Dominica, and Martinique). Ditto the Guianas (now Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana). Ditto the Spanish-speaking mainland of Latin American. Over 8 percent of transatlantic African slaves—twice the number sold between Maine and Georgia—were sold in St. Domingue, a French colony in what is now Haiti. Over 8 percent of slaves also ended up in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. The largest numbers of all are for Jamaica (over 11 percent) and Brazil (over 30 percent).

In recent years, as schools and universities increasingly focus on racial issues, young Americans’ heads are filled with heaps of information—much of it from books like A People’s History of the United States—about the American legacy of racism and, in particular, the history of slavery and Jim Crow. But virtually none of them know that the slaves who were shipped to the present-day United States were a small fraction of the victims of the African slave trade.

Ignorance also surrounds another aspect of slave history. The other day I posted on Facebook a quotation from Thomas Sowell. “More whites were brought as slaves to North Africa than blacks brought as slaves to the United States or to the 13 colonies from which it was formed. White slaves were still being bought and sold in the Ottoman Empire, decades after blacks were freed in the United States.”

Facebook users responded in disbelief. “This can’t possibly be true! What’s he talking about?” commented one, whose Facebook page identified him as a “senior research fellow.” Another, a filmmaker, wrote: “Seems dubious.”

In fact, the white slave trade was a terrifying reality for generations of Westerners from the 1400s to the 1800s. Several sovereign North African entities—the Sultanate of Morocco, and the independent Ottoman provinces of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli—were all active in the capture and sale of European and American slaves. Some whites were taken from ships on the high seas in acts of piracy; others were captured during coastal raids on the European mainland and Newfoundland.

As usual, it’s not that liberals don’t know anything; it’s that so much of what they think they know isn’t so. You’re bound to love this next bit:

During the later phase of the white slave trade, European powers paid large sums to the North African powers to protect their citizens from enslavement. After the United States declared its independence, it refused to make such payments, which resulted in the taking of American seamen by Arab pirates. In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met in London with the ambassador from Tripoli to discuss the matter. When they asked why Tripolitanians would “make war upon nations who had done them no injury,” the ambassador replied “that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

Sounds all too familiar, doesn’t it? Guess some things really never DO change. Read all of it.

Punch like a girl

Posted on July 7, 2020July 7, 2020 by Mike

Must drive ’em even more nuts than they already are, I bet. After all, he’s a white guywho beat up two black guys and a Russian.

PHILADELPHIA, PA—First, the rioters came for Andrew Jackson. Then, they came for Ulysses S. Grant. Then, they came for the Fonz for some reason. But finally, they came for the ultimate racist statue: the famous monument to Rocky Balboa in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It’s not clear why they thought it was racist, but the guy in the statue seemed to be happy, so he was probably a conservative of some kind whenever he existed, they reasoned.

But the statue survives to fight another day, as it went a full 15 rounds against rioters and was still standing after the bout.

The weak, sissy rioters charged the statue and started punching it, hurting their little man-baby hands and running away to cry to their parents, whom they probably still live with. A second wave came in, but Rocky stood strong. Things got a little dicey in the seventh round, when one rioter threw a rope around the statue and suggested everyone start rocking it back and forth, but then their soft, buttery smooth hands got chafed by the rope and they had to call it quits to nurse their wounds with coconut oil.

“Balboa was a real champion out there,” said one witness. “It was incredible.”

Finally, after 15 waves of angry rioters charged the statue, the dust settled, and Balboa won again, having gone for a full 15 rounds without breaking a sweat. Balboa was declared the winner in a unanimous decision as the judges were appalled at the rioters’ lack of form, indicating they had never punched anything before, except maybe customers’ buy-six-get-one-free cards at Jamba Juice.

Then they all went back home to Mom’s basement for a good, long cry.

Interview with a vampire

Posted on July 6, 2020July 6, 2020 by Mike

ZMan does a wicked-fine parody his own self.

The following is a fictional transcript of a negotiation between white people and black people in America over reparations. Representing black people in the negotiations is Nikole Hannah-Jones, a staff writer for New York Times magazine. She is the creator of the 1619 Project, which is an ongoing blood libel against white people. Representing white people of America is the typical white person, who has tried in good faith for generations to figure out how to include blacks in civil society.

White Person: Thank you for agreeing to begin this dialogue. Having read your latest, uh, column on reparations, we, and by “we” I mean white people, have decided that it is time to think about reparations. While we in no way accept the claim that modern whites owe modern blacks anything for the alleged crimes of our ancestors, in the furtherance of peace between the races, we are open to discussing reparations.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Yes, well, as I said in my post, if true justice and equality are ever to be achieved in the United States, the country must finally take seriously what it owes black Americans. It is time for this country to pay its debt. It is time for reparations.

WP: Presumably, when you say “the country” you mean white people. You don’t expect Asians, newly arrived Africans and Native Americans to be part of this.

NHJ: I don’t understand.

WP: What don’t you understand?

NHJ: I don’t understand what “presumably” means.

WP: Oh, I see. Well, I’m here to speak on behalf of white people. I cannot obligate Asians or newly arrived Africans, or Arabs or anyone else to reparations. You mentioned white people 197 times in your column. You mentioned black people 179 times. Asians, Jews, Native Americans, Arabs and so on were mentioned zero times, so this is about blacks and whites, correct?

NHJ: That’s right. As I said in my piece, generations of white violence against black bodies has to be addressed. There can be no peace until white people accept what they owe to black people. Going back to the very beginning….

WP: I don’t mean to cut you off, but I read your piece and I have read all the other stuff in the 1619 project. Like all white people, I have grown up hearing the long list of grievances of black people. That’s why I’m here. We agree. It is time to negotiate a settlement in order to get racial peace.

NHJ: If black lives are to truly matter in America, this nation must move beyond slogans and symbolism. Citizens don’t inherit just the glory of their nation, but its wrongs too. A truly great country does not ignore or excuse its sins. It confronts them and then works to make them right. If we are to be redeemed, if we are to live up to the magnificent ideals upon which we were founded, we must do what is just.

WP: Yes, well, that’s fine, but can you tell us what you mean by pay its debts? I’ve read all of your work. I’ve read Ta-Nahesi Coates on the subject of reparations. What seems to be missing is the dollar figure.

NHJ: As I said in my piece, generations of white violence against black bodies has to be addressed. There can be no peace until white people accept what they owe to black people….

WP: Right, I’ll stipulate that. In fact, without qualification, I’ll stipulate to all of the claims in your work. What I’m here to discuss is reparations. What number do we put on the check to make black people whole? What is the debt you expect us to pay?

NHJ: As I said in my piece, until white people atone for their crimes against black people and pay their debt…

WP: Hold up, I just said we will stipulate to all of that.

NHJ: I don’t know what you mean by “stipulate”, but white people need to accept their debt to black people. As I wrote in my piece…

WP: Sorry to cut you off again, but that’s what stipulate means. We agree to all the claims made in your work and in the work of others. We’re not here to debate it or hear another recitation of it. We are here to negotiate the check.

NHJ: I don’t think a check can cover the pain of 150 years of suffering…

WP: Okay, then what else do you want? Land, like a black homeland? A ride to the airport? What? Tell me what we have to do to close the books on this.

NHJ: As I said in my piece, until white people atone for their crimes against black people and pay their debt…

WP: I got it. We all get it. That’s why we’re here. What do you want from us?

NHJ: We want justice.

WP: Fine. What does that mean? What do we need to do in order for you to have justice? If it is not a check, then what is it.

NHJ: We still want the check.

But of course they do. Before we write it, though, we’d all better damned well understand that no check will ever be enough to shut them the hell up at last, and end their demands for moremoremoreMORE, no matter how big it might be.

The loudest silence you’ll ever hear

Posted on June 17, 2020 by Mike

Speaks volumes, too.

And the blue pilled go silent

If someone knows the source of this video please post it cause I don’t have it. Thanks pic.twitter.com/oiaS8ADoRb

— MAL (@MAL_IS_BAD_) June 16, 2020

How very odd, the way Planned Parenthood’s original mission has been so thoroughly erased from history.

(Via Megan Fox)

Ready or not, it’s war

Posted on June 16, 2020June 16, 2020 by Mike

Same as with the COVIDIOT shamdemic, the statue-toppling is NOT about what they say it is.

The Monument-Destroying Mobs Don’t Hate The Confederacy, They Hate America

Well, actually, wrong. They DO hate the Confederacy too, rest assured. But do they hate it more for all the usual reasons, or more because it’s part of American history?

To suppose this has anything to do with the Confederacy or the Civil War is to misunderstand completely the nature of what is happening right now in America. The people who are pulling down monuments, defacing statues, and demanding U.S. military bases be renamed do not have a limiting principle. They don’t distinguish between those who fought for freedom against the British Empire and those who fought for union against the slave states of the South. To them, the Union itself was a crime against humanity long before the South seceded. What kind of moral monster would ever fight to preserve it?

This is the 1619 Project come to life. If the American Revolution was fought to protect and preserve slavery then the entire history of American colonization and westward expansion is a litany of crimes that no one should celebrate. The Founding Fathers are no less guilty than Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis — not just because they owned slaves but because they founded the United States, a nation conceived not in liberty but in white supremacy.

In other words, as is always and forever the case with the Left, their position and attitude is based entirely on balls-out lies.

You will nevertheless hear, and likely have already heard, arguments for a limiting principle, a way to justify pulling down Confederate monuments while allowing monuments to Christopher Columbus or Thomas Jefferson to stand.

The comedian Andrew Schulz tries to make this argument in a recent YouTube video. Confederates were traitors and slavers, he says. Their monuments were built to glorify a treasonous and failed effort to secede from the Union.

Another bone I must pick. Many if not most of those monuments were built for a two-fold purpose: not to honor The Lost Cause itself—it’s entirely ridiculous to argue that they were—but 1) to honor what were fundamentally honorable men, accomplished and in some cases legendary soldiers about whom it might more fairly be said had varied motives for enlisting themselves in a less-than-honorable cause; and 2) to soothe the passions of the recently-conquered South, and help ease its transition back into full membership in the larger nation that vanquished and then severely abused them after the war.

There’s a reason, for example, the anarchists and Antifa rioters in Seattle’s “autonomous zone” set up barricades and hung a sign saying, “Now Leaving The United States.”

These people don’t want to improve America. Like the monuments they despise, they want to tear it down.

Bingo. In the end, this is a real war we’re in now. We can only hope the Great American Awokening to that sad fact didn’t come too late to have any hope of fighting back, and of prevailing. Because the one and only alternative scenario is too awful for any liberty-minded person to contemplate.

Update! Common ground, with some extremely unlovely bedfellows.

Destruction of art is a common theme. In the late 18th century, the Jacobins took hammers to the kingly statues that adorned Notre Dame; today, the original heads, buried by sympathizers with posterity, are in a museum. The pharaohs encouraged the defacement of monuments to their predecessors (which is why many Egyptian artifacts are literally defaced).

Moving ahead a few years, the Taliban, 20 years ago, blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, which had stood for more than 1,000 years. ISIS destroyed Syrian edifices and artworks that had outlasted millennia. Al Qaeda attacked our architecture and what it stood for (inaccurately, since the World Trade Center was a symbol of central planning, not capital).

You would think our pluralistic society would be more sophisticated. Nope: In the past decade, Yale has removed stained-glass windows depicting slavery, after an employee smashed one. Better to forget slavery?

Movies? You can’t watch “Gone With the Wind.” Nobody should watch this movie and think, “Gee, those were the days.” But a properly educated audience can understand that the movie shows the stark horror of failure, because the cause was wrong, and doomed.

We probably ought not watch “It’s a Wonderful Life,” as it glosses over black servitude, and so we should just miss its lessons about capitalism. J.K. Rowling has “incorrect” thoughts about the trans movement — so kids shouldn’t read “Harry Potter.”

“Black servitude,” is it? My increasingly-pissed off white ass, it was. Annie, the live-in maid character in IAWL, was a salaried employee, doing honest and honorable work for people that were clearly enchanted with her and treated her as fully one of the family. Anybody who perceives anything whatsoever demeaning or degrading about that once-common arrangement ought to extract their head out of their ass toot sweet, if it takes a fucking heavy construction crane to do it. And she was hardly “glossed over,” as can be readily discerned from even a most cursory viewing of the film.

The fog thins

Posted on April 1, 2020April 1, 2020 by Mike

At LAST we get some all-too-scarce facts and hard data about the Wuhan Fug, via judicious use of the tried-and-true Busting Of Myths format.

We’ve just entered an unprecedented era in human history, because although there have been numerous global plagues before, nobody had smartphones before.

And because nobody had smartphones before, nobody was nearly as dumb before.

Unlike so many, I am here to help rather than harm. I come before ye to shine the light of truth upon so many harmful myths about this dark, mysterious, and beguiling illness from the East.

Gird your loins with these facts as if they were a hazmat suit protecting you from the viral lies that have rendered online information-sharing into a petri dish teeming with deception and stupidity.

MYTH: Coronavirus is man-made.
Completely false. A woman made it. A very lonely Chinese woman with a lot of cats. She originally intended it as a love potion, and then, as we all know now, things went horribly wrong.

MYTH: Everyone should wear a mask in public.
Mostly true, partially false. Only very attractive people should be free to walk around in public without covering their faces.

MYTH: Baltimore’s mayor begged residents to stop shooting each other so they could use hospital beds for coronavirus patients.
Partially true. What actually happened is that Baltimore’s mayor begged residents to call a cease-fire on shooting each other until they’d shot all the coronavirus patients first.

MYTH: Italy currently has the most fatalities because African migrants brought the virus to Italy.
Another racist trope designed to make Africans look stupid and smelly. The truth is that Italy has so many fatalities because Italians are dirty animals who eat with their hands.

MYTH: The virus spread to humans as a result of Asian girls eating bat soup.
Partially false. Soup wasn’t involved. The virus originally spread to humans as a result of Asian girls having unprotected sex with bats.

MYTH: Black people don’t get coronavirus.
This racist falsehood spread like wildfire until black actor Idris Elba, who tested positive for the virus, wrote a touching editorial debunking it. Black people are fully capable of getting coronavirus. What they actually have trouble “getting” are things such as the value of deferred gratification and a two-parent household. What’s interesting, though, is that white people who act black are immune to the virus. For example, Tom Hanks’s son Chet is, for better or for worse, still perfectly healthy.

MYTH: OK, then, but if that’s true that COVID-19 doesn’t discriminate against blacks, why are there so few infections in Africa?
Because there aren’t many Chinese restaurants in Africa, especially not ones that serve soup containing bats that had unprotected sex with Asian girls. If you’d ever been to Africa, you’d realize this.

I think we should all print a copy of this entire article and keep it handy in a pocket for use as a reference when needed to prevent ill-informed debates from degenerating into bare-knuckle brawling, which is uncouth and unhelpful. Heartfelt and humble thanks to Jim Goad for clearing all this up for us.

Dammit, I thought I had a SCIENCE! category around here someplace, which would be the perfect place to file this post. Gonna need to make one, looks like.

Coronavirus coinkydinks

Posted on March 31, 2020April 1, 2020 by Mike

Ain’t no such thing.

Time bombs are innocuous until the fuse is lit, counting down to an explosion at some predetermined future time. Did the fuse on this current novel virus just happen to light itself? Or was it lit on purpose? And why now?

Here is where the coincidences begin. Wuhan, where the virus originated, just happens to be the location of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, China’s only level 4 biosafety lab.

Could the virus have originated in that lab? The “consensus of scientists” say no, that this is just a conspiracy theory. Perhaps, but other consensuses of scientists tell us President Trump is mentally ill and that man-made global warming is melting the polar icecaps.

Plus we have that whole Chinese scientists pretty much admitting to it thing, too.

Chinese scientists believe the deadly coronavirus may have started life in a research facility just 300 yards from the Wuhan fish market.

A new bombshell paper from the Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology says that the Wuhan Center for Disease Control (WHCDC) could have spawned the contagion in Hubei province.

Let’s not forget about this, either:

What’s more, the People’s Liberation Army’s top expert in biological warfare, a Maj. Gen. Chen Wei, was dispatched to Wuhan at the end of January to help with the effort to contain the outbreak.

According to the PLA Daily, Chen has been researching coronaviruses since the SARS outbreak of 2003, as well as Ebola and anthrax. This would not be her first trip to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, either, since it is one of only two bioweapons research labs in all of China.

Does that suggest to you that the novel coronavirus, now known as SARS-CoV-2, may have escaped from that very lab, and that Chen’s job is to try to put the genie back in the bottle, as it were? It does to me.

Does to me too, and to anybody else who knows anything about Commie regimes in general, and China in particular. Back to the first article for more on how the “coincidences” do keep piling up.

Move from science to politics for more coincidences, under the backdrop of the Trump presidency and upcoming election. The Chinese Coronavirus was first noted in China in December 2019. What was happening politically here at home at that exact time?

The House was holding impeachment hearings over President Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president, alleging election interference, obstruction of justice, quid pro quo, and anything else Reps Schiff and Nadler could fabricate.

The Ukrainian allegations coincidently originated shortly after the Mueller Special Counsel investigation came up empty in their efforts to remove Trump from office. Articles of impeachment were passed on a partisan basis in December but not acted upon until January, despite the “urgency” of removing the “existential threat” from the Oval Office.

Hmmm. Most peculiar, innit? Perhaps. Then again, perhaps…not so much.

Note the sequence of events, each failed plan was followed by another scheme, all with the same goal of destroying President Trump. Why was the impeachment trial delayed until January? It’s almost as if that was the perfect time to distract the president, the media, and American people while a viral time bomb was beginning to explode.

January was when the Chinese virus was spreading. The intel agencies briefed Trump and Congress. Trump took notice and instituted a travel ban on arrivals from China. Congress ignored the warnings and plowed on with a Senate impeachment trial, guaranteeing no media interest or reporting on the new SARS-like Chinese virus. Was the fuse of the time bomb lit when it was apparent that the Ukraine phone call was a dud, with impeachment a good cover for the burning fuse?

Another way to look at this is to ask: who stands to gain by the economic and social destruction this virus is wreaking?

You’ll want to read all of this one. He makes a pretty tight case, and ties it all up in a neat little bow at the end.

Flatten their curve update! Everyone who played a role in engineering and driving this catastrophe needs to face a serious reckoning. Starting with the ChiComs.

The facts are clear. China is not our friend or ally or even a responsible business partner. Right now, between 30 percent and 40 percent of world national economic output is affected by the coronavirus shutdowns, calculated the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in a report for the G20.

China’s President Xi is petrified that after this inferno the U.S. and others will turn their backs on globalization. In a March 26 letter to the G20, Xi pledged to increase active pharmaceutical supplies and implored G20 nations to cut tariffs and keep up the unfettered flow of trade.

Xi’s words don’t match his actions. In the face of this global crisis, China has hunkered down. China has tried to pin the origins of the coronavirus on the U.S. Army and on Italy. These inept, Communist Party responses show China is not ready to act with honesty or compassion. China wants to claim victory in their “peoples war,” as Xi called, it but they don’t want to change anything. Yes, Beijing has sent doctors and face masks. But the Communist Party’s two-month cover-up attempt cost lives around the world.

It’s time for a total reconsideration of China’s role in the world and specifically, the U.S. economic relationship with China. Decoupling won’t happen all at once, but pharmaceuticals, 5G wireless, agriculture policy and of course imports and exports all need a new look post-coronavirus.

We can do this, folks. Canada and Mexico were America’s top two trade partners in 2019, with China ranked third in total value, which is exports and imports combined. Our neighbors Canada and Mexico really are the most important partners, accounting for a combined 30 percent of U.S. total trade vs. just 13.5 percent for China.

While Washington will have much to consider, its increasingly clear that coronavirus ended globalization as we know it: the phase dating from the day China joined the World Trade Organization on Dec. 11, 2001, until December 2019, when China fumbled its response to the Wuhan virus outbreak.

I can’t say I expect much if any of this to happen; with such a huge percentage of US manufacturing now based there, we’re much too completely enslaved to China to be able to exact a proper toll from them for these heinous crimes anytime soon. But it’s still a pleasant topic to ponder while we’re all locked in our homes indefinitely, watching it all burn.

Religion versus pseudo-science?

Posted on March 30, 2020March 30, 2020 by Mike

The pseudo-science-pimping Left isn’t as anti- or a-religious as they like to think.

All pseudo-science models have one thing in common: They are essentially deeply religious, accompanied as they are by apocalyptic end times scenarios that goad the public into actions fomented by panic and despair. The use of mathematics and charts adds an air of legitimacy to apocalyptic predictions that are almost the exact duplicate of end time scenarios prophesied by cult leaders. Such prophets have used biblical verses, gnostic numerology, guilt and fear to panic their followers into selling all their possessions, buying white robes and heading to the mountains or digging shelters underground in hopes of surviving as the chosen remnant.

In a similar panicked manner, there are those whose disruptive plans are now being put into play while they appeal to “science” and to their higher moral discernment; wisdom that is hidden from the rest of us mortals.

Nothing is more tempting to potential tyrants than utilization of a panic stoked to white heat in order to reinforce and extend state control. The use of partial truth — yes, the virus is real — can be inflated and massaged in order to achieve nefarious ends. Alas, the fact is that the final writhing of a diseased system built on lies can still create havoc. Some ideologues just like to see things burn. Some see ways to profit from societal collapse. Some see the possibility that society can be fundamentally transformed.

We need to consider what will happen if our entire nation is shut down. We need to consider that what is happening in our own country goes far beyond an attempt to take down Donald Trump and is rapidly morphing into hysteria that if unchecked, could change our entire nation beyond recognition.

Don’t look now, bub, but I think maybe it just did.

The coronavirus madness puts before Americans a choice: Revive the progressive/leftist Frankenstein monster or immolate it at last.

Let’s hope America chooses the latter and doesn’t accede to embracing an ideological vision that has long relied on deathly visions of apocalypse now, visions bound to destroy the flawed but redeemable peoples and institutions of the West.

All the while, hope and pray that the panic engendered by an ideological paradigm bolstered by pseudo-science and errant philosophical underpinnings at last collapses; and that true reform and restoration can begin.

And now for something completely different: a look at the brighter side.

Thankfully as a nation this crisis is causing us to reevaluate our priorities: faith, family, community and freedom; and seeing the easy dispatch of liberty also reignites that oft forgotten flickering flame…

Journalists are less important than janitors. Our nations best athletes are healthcare workers rushing to assist those in need. The true heroes are not celebrities, but rather farmers, truck drivers, stock clerks, and supermarket cashiers.

The most valuable businesses do not glitter or present themselves with self-congratulatory award shows; they do today what they have always done to keep our food supply flowing. Perhaps now, at least for a few short weeks, we stop taking them for granted.

Effective right now comfortably invisible workers are recognized as critical priorities; or as the government has official designated them “essential services.” These folks form the network of our lives; they always have, but we didn’t notice. Everything else is less than.

No-one is saying this doesn’t suck; but some people know that standing around bitching about the comparative values of current life in suckdom doesn’t actually accomplish anything.

President Trump is doing what needs to be done; with far more information than me; and in the best manner he can assemble to keep America great. He does this while simultaneously swatting away thousands of piranhas biting at him on an hourly basis.

So again, ask yourself a question: what part are you to play?

Live your best life.

You only have this moment once.

That unlooked-for burst of sunny positivity comes to us courtesy of Sundance, who also steers us to this one:

Truckers are saying “fuck the log rules, I’m hauling” and they’re getting supplies to the stores. People are stocking the shelves all night and letting old people shop first. Folks are buying meals for truckers, who (obviously) can’t go through the drive-ups. Asking ’em what they want, then buying it for them.

Carnival Cruise Line has told Trump “We can match those big Navy Hospital ships with some fully staffed cruise ships”.

GM and Ford have said “hold our cars and watch this — we can make ventilators where we were just making car parts, starting next week” — by re-engineering seat ventilators which their engineers hacked together for a new purpose. In under a week.

In a project with which I’m loosely associated, a very-effective agricultural disease-control agent was re-purposed and re-labeled specifically for Corona-virus control by the FDA and EPA in under ten days, from initial request to distribution.

Restaurants and schools have said, “we’ve got kitchens and staff; we can feed the poor kids who used have school lunch.”

NBA basketball players have said, “Hold our basketballs while we write checks to pay the arena staff.”

Construction companies are saying, “Here are some high-end masks for medical staff and doctors”.

Distilleries are making sanitizer out of distilling “heads and tails” which are normally discarded. Nasty shit to drink, but effective sanitizer.

People are tipping grocery check-out clerks and thanking them for taking the risk.

Local, state, and county governments are taking control of everything the feds cannot do. Some are doing it wrong, but for the first time in decades … they’re doing it. Federalism is re-emerging, and the smallest unit of government is the individual and the family. This, too, is re-emerging after decades of dormancy.

As Japanese Admiral Isokuru Yamamoto said, after Pearl Harbor … “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

I sense this has just happened. We have a wonderful country, the greatest single force for good in all human history. We have closed our borders, with good reason, yet we have top medical people now assisting North Korea in their response to the virus.

Many things have been re-set, and will never be the same.

By microbiological accident, we are living in profoundly transformative historical times.

No denying that. It remains to be seen how that profound transformation shakes out in the end, but we must remain hopeful to whatever extent we possibly can. Horrid as it is, if the current upheaval is what it takes to achieve the aforementioned immolation of the Left at long last, it will have been well worth the cost.

AWWWW update! What the heck, two more feel-good stories—from New Jersey, of all places—below the fold.
Continue reading “Religion versus pseudo-science?” →

A new contender emerges!

Posted on March 28, 2020March 28, 2020 by Mike

A faltering, befuddled Biden makes the only sensible move left to him.

Congrats to Bat Boy on this welcome news, of course. But there’s more.

BAT BOY TESTS NEGATIVE FOR CORONAVIRUS!
RESUMES 2020 ELECTION CAMPAIGN!

WASHINGTON DC – After a tense few days, the test results have finally come in. Bat Boy does NOT have coronavirus!

Last week, Bat Boy was on Capitol Hill meeting with a number of Senators and members of Congress to discuss his plans to unify the country. Unfortunately, Bat Boy spent some time in a heated discussion with Senators Rand Paul and Senator Joe Manchin. When news broke that Rand Paul had to be tested for coronavirus, the CDC contacted Bat Boy. Out of an abundance of cautious, Bat Boy was also tested.

Bat Boy spent the week in his cave in West Virginia. He did not let any of his staff or friends near him. Bigfoot tried to visit him, but he was too big to fit into the hole leading to Bat Boy’s hideaway. The two mutants did speak to each other through a crack in the cave wall.

Vice President Pence invited Bat Boy to the podium in The White House Press Room to announce his negative test results. Bigfoot, his Vice Presidential running mate and Ph.D., Ape, his campaign advisor joined Bat Boy for his announcement.

Heartening developments all around, then. If a Bat Boy/Bigfoot administration can’t get this damned country straightened out, I’m not sure what can.

From America’s other paper of record: the Weekly World News, which rightly bills itself as “The World’s Only Reliable News.” For some reason or other I have till now neglected to put WWN into Ye Olde Blogrolle, which oversight has been corrected. Thanks to Brack for the steer on the coveted Biden endorsement.

Faltering, befuddled update! Gee, don’t go TOO far out on that limb there, fellas.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson said insiders in the Joe Biden presidential campaign believe he will not be mentally fit to be president come Election Day.

Wrong verb tense, Tucker. He isn’t mentally fit to be president NOW. Or much of anything else, for that matter.

While appearing on the Charlie LeDuff podcast, Carlson claimed that Biden insiders told him they don’t believe the former vice president has the mental fortitude to last until the 2020 election in November, speculating that the Democratic Party may revoke his potential nomination.

“I sincerely and totally believe that Joe Biden will not be the Democratic nominee on Election Day,” Carlson began.

“How does that math work?” another podcast host pressed. “It’s not about math. It’s about will,” Carlson said, saying the Democratic Party is “intent on taking power.”

“Two competing imperatives: We’ve got to win, but we’ve got a guy who can’t win. Therefore, they’re going to replace him,” Carlson continued. “He’s not going to make it, and the people around him know that. Trust me, I know them. And I know they know it, because they’ve said it to me.”

Looks like Senile Uncle Gropey ain’t the only sad, sloppy mess to be found in this election ordeal. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of assholes, if you ask me.

SAD update! Wow. I mean, just…WOW.

2020 Democrat front runner Joe Biden held a Coronavirus town hall with nurses, firefighters and emergency medical technicians.

Biden advertised his Coronavirus livestream to his 4.62 million Twitter followers.

But only 632 people tuned in to watch Sleepy Joe on YouTube.

Jeez-O-Pete. The Bat Boy/Bigfoot team has just gotta be looking better and better every day to the hapless Democrat-Socialists, don’tchathink? Salt in the wound:

The Fox News special with President Trump and members of his Coronavirus task force on Tuesday was the highest rated town hall in the history of cable news.

The virtual town hall had 4,409,000 viewers between 12:00 and 2:00 p.m. according to ratings from Nielsen. It also has over a million views on YouTube.

Oof. If Biden was at all capable of shame, he’d be burning up with it right about now. But as we already know, he isn’t.

Blago gets some

Posted on February 28, 2020February 28, 2020 by Mike

A shiv for Barky.

Convicted former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich went on Fox News in his first post-release interview and held very little back about Barack Obama’s involvement in the scandal that put him in prison, while the first black president was never held accountable.

Appearing on “Watters’ World” with Jesse Watters, Blagojevich was quickly asked about the 2008 Senate-seat-for-sale scandal, in which Blagojevich had negotiated appointing an Obama-approved candidate, in exchange for a cabinet position.

“Did you ever talk to Barack Obama about this Senate seat? Did he have any knowledge about what was going on or not?” Watters asked.

“President Obama began the whole conversation because he sent someone to me as a middleman, a mediator — not unusual in politics — on the night he was elected president to say that he’d like to talk about his choice for the Senate and to see what I might be willing to ask for,” Blagojevich told him. “Political horse-trading, not what those corrupt prosecutors said it was.”

“So it was Barack Obama’s understanding that his liaison was going to work with you to appoint the guy that was going to fill Barack Obama’s Senate seat, and Barack Obama, incoming president, wanted to know what was going to be in exchange for the seat, is that what you’re saying?” Watters asked.

“Yeah, he was basically, you know, asking whether—the emissary that represented President-elect Obama was interested in a candidate for the Senate, and he asked what would you be interested in, those kinds of things, and we began a discussion over the telephone on what we might or might not ask for as part of a horse deal. It was routine politics, not anything corrupt or illegal like they tried to say it was,” Blagojevich replied.

The host then asked whether money was involved as part of the deal.

“I never said that there was money in exchange for the Senate seat. We talked about Cabinet positions, we talked about, frankly, federal money for the state of Illinois to address some of the issues we had in our state, we talked about ambassadorships,” Blagojevich explained.

No need to be so crude as to discuss a direct exchange of money, seeing as how once you get the seat the money will follow just as surely as night follows day. Blagojevich can deny that these backroom deals are illegal all he likes; hell, he may even be right about that. No doubt they’re every bit as common as he says too, just another part of the begrimed fabric of end-stage American political decay. But such “horse-trading” is indubitably corrupt, as well as sordid and dishonorable—all in all, completely contrary to the phony “not a whiff of corruption” facade so laboriously constructed around Ogabe to cloak his squalid history.

Blago hints at plenty more dirt and old-school Chicago sleaze yet to come. Hopefully he can get it all dished up before his shocking “suicide.”

Falsehood. Deception. Propaganda

Posted on February 9, 2020February 9, 2020 by Mike

Without these things, they truly have nothing.

The “1619 Project” is described by Times editorial board member Mara Gay in the following words: “In the days and weeks to come, we will publish essays demonstrating that nearly everything that has made America exceptional grew out of slavery.” In a formal statement, the Times editorial board elaborated: “The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.”

In other words, in its very conception, the 1619 Project is an historically illiterate lie, whose self-evident purpose is to erase the actual foundation of the nation born in 1776 and memorialized by Lincoln as a “new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Hannah-Jones’ explanation of the project to make 1619 America’s Founding instead of 1776 or 1787, describes the event in these words: “In August 1619, just 12 years after the English settled Jamestown, Va.,… the Jamestown colonists bought 20 to 30 enslaved Africans from English pirates. The pirates had stolen them from a Portuguese slave ship that had forcibly taken them from what is now the country of Angola. Those men and women who came ashore on that August day were the beginning of American slavery. They were among the 12.5 million Africans who would be kidnapped from their homes and brought in chains across the Atlantic Ocean in the largest forced migration in human history until the Second World War.”

This description is a tissue of fictions beginning with the insinuation that 12.5 million Africans were shipped to America in the Atlantic Slave Trade. The proper figure is 330,000 – bad enough – but a sign that American slavery even in the Western Hemisphere was significantly less than Hannah-Jones and her enablers would like it to be. More strikingly, the statement that this was “the beginning of American slavery” is false on its face. It was a continuation of English – not American practice. And the 20 Africans brought to Virginia in 1619 were not slaves.

As the distinguished African-American Princeton historian, Nell Painter, observed in a critique of the 1619 Project, the Africans brought to Virginia in 1619 were indentured servants, meaning that they would be free within a set number of years, usually five to seven. In fact the majority of laborers in the Virginia colony were indentured servants, almost all of them white. Moreover, neither the 20 indentured servants who arrived in Virginia in 1619 nor the vast majority of actual slaves who came later were “kidnapped” by white Englishmen or any other whites. They were bought at slave auctions centered in Ghana and Benin from black African slave owners. The 20 indentured servants who arrived in Virginia in 1619 had been captured and indentured by black African warlords as spoils of war. All of these facts undermine the Times’ attack on America’s founding, so Hannah-Jones omits them.

The ideological character of the 1619 Project is manifest in the subtitle of Hannah-Jones’ historically illiterate introduction: “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true.” This claim is based first of all on a grammatical misunderstanding of the word “ideals,” and then on an extravagant distortion of the historical record. “Ideals” are by their very nature aspirations not facts. The Founders’ ideals were actually commitments they made which they and their heirs did carry out.

In the second place, Hannah-Jones characterization of the founders as pro-slavery in her introduction is just an offensive slander. In the words of C. Bradley Thompson’s scholarly study of the founders attitudes, America’s Revolutionary Mind: “Not a single revolutionary leader ever publicly praised slavery as a positive good. Benjamin Franklin, speaking as president of the Pennsylvania Society of Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, described slavery as ‘an atrocious debasement of human nature.’ George Washington, a slaveholder, told a friend, ‘There is not a man living, who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of [slavery].’ At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, James Madison told his colleagues, ‘We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.’”

Hannah-Jones’ claim that the Founders led a revolution to protect slavery is also transparently false. The year 1787 saw the passing of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which established settlement of the region that would become Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. It was a geographical area as large as the existing 13 states. Article IV outlawed slavery in this unsettled land. What rationale would the allegedly pro-slavery founders have for doing that?

Ahh, but the Left’s goal, in this and every other case, is not to arrive at honest answers via a scrupulous and impartial examination of historical fact. It is to distort, conceal, and mislead so thoroughly that such uncomfortable questions are never asked at all. Their interest has never been in advancing or spreading knowledge, but in suppressing it. Horowitz knows full well what the real point is:

The 1619 Project is an outrageous, racist, falsification of American history. A metastasizing curriculum in America’s schools, it is a dagger aimed at America’s heart, at its self-esteem and self-understanding, at its national pride. It aims to destroy America’s shield against its real world enemies. These enemies are legion because tyrannies around the globe hate democracy in general and America in particular, as the most tolerant and most inclusive nation among all nations with large internal minorities.

No American needs to bother looking “around the globe” to find those enemies; there are legions of them right here among us, mindlessly seeking to destroy the very host that nurtures and sustains the witless parasites.

For comparison, there is not a black, brown or Asian nation that has elected as its commander-in-chief a white countryman the way white American majorities elected Barack Obama – not once but twice.

Again: their argument isn’t with us, and it never really has been. It’s with reality—with history, with science, with human nature, with truth itself. It’s an argument they’re eternally doomed to lose, but they always create a lot of havoc and misery before they’re finally taken down.

A slight difference

Posted on January 31, 2020January 31, 2020 by Mike

Shark takes issue with my characterization of “FOBBITS, staff, S1, S2, S3, and all the rest of the REMFs,” which he calls misguided—a point I will happily admit just may be correct, not having ever been a member of Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children my own self, bless their stout, coal-black hearts.

I think the Shark’s take is astute and well-expressed enough to be worth bringing out front here for further discussion in a new post, should any of you CF miscreants be inclined to such. A very large percentage of Ye Olde CF Blogge’s readership has always come from the military, both active duty and retired, so I kinda figured at least some of you might like a chance to chime in yourselves.

I appreciate the heated sentiment, however misguided.

I retired from the USMC in the middle of this past decade. In my experience, it was ALWAYS the warfighters who were coming to US “JAGs” seeking assistance/guidance on the ROE, target selection, and other issues. They were very aware of the risks of creating an international incident and a very prompt criminal investigation that would make a colonoscopy preferable, should they make a mistake. After President Reagan, the staffs were quite aware of the predilection of the administration to cheerfully blame the military for any perceived offense. President Trump’s recent pardons may signal a return to sanity, but it takes time to steer a new path for a military upper echelon that was schooled in the zero-defects insanity.

I/we USMC lawyers were trained to be a combat multiplier by assisting the pointy end of the spear, and not a hindrance. But maybe that’s just the way the Corps was back then.

I’m thinking maybe that “back then” part could just possibly be at the heart of our disagreement, but perhaps not. Like I said, I am not, nor have I ever been, either a Marine or a JAG officer, and therefore could quite easily be full of shit on this one. Either way, my humble thanks to Shark for sounding off. Your contribution to the discussion is much appreciated, my friend.

FUD with words

Posted on January 28, 2020January 28, 2020 by Mike

Tangentially related to that last post, another example of how the Left rewrites history to suit its own nefarious purposes.

Serious problems exist with some of the narrative spun about (Martin Luther) King, in particular, and the civil rights struggle, in general. Part of the problem, of course, is that King died young, enabling others, as with the two Kennedy brothers, to fill in the rest of the story and use it to further certain political agendas. King died short of his fortieth birthday; had he lived longer, presumably he would have evolved and, possibly, become a very different man than he was when he died–we will never know. What we do know is that the Democratic Party and their “progressive” media and education machines have rewritten the history of the civil rights struggle. This was driven home to me some years ago while visiting a college campus. The students assumed King was a Democrat, and the segregationists confronting the peaceful marchers, and using fire hoses, snarling police dogs, and truncheons, and wearing white hoods were Republicans. They assume a Republican killed King–today’s college kids probably believe the Tea Party had him killed. That the exact opposite is true, shocks many. King came from a staunchly Republican family–his father, a prominent leader in his own right–openly endorsed Richard Nixon against JFK in the 1960 presidential election. The Democrats had a one-party lock on the South. The party of slave owners and secessionists, had become the party of Jim Crow, school segregation, anti-miscegenation laws, poll taxes, and on and on.

Many Americans, not to mention foreigners, do not realize not only that the Republican party was formed in opposition to slavery and that Lincoln was a Republican, but that the famous Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, whose rulings dismantled the legal basis for segregation and put serious limitations on the power of police, was a former Republican Governor of California. It was, furthermore, war hero and Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who sent troops to Arkansas to enforce court-ordered desegregation at Little Rock Central High School. Congressional Republicans were the main supporters of civil rights legislation; their votes ensured passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, over the opposition of a significant bloc of Democrats–let us also not forget that Congressional Democrats for years blocked Republican efforts to pass federal anti-lynching legislation. All this, of course, is history, but an important chunk of American history that is being lost, distorted, or otherwise flushed down the memory sewer–along with the fact that anti-leftist J. Edgar Hoover proved the most formidable foe of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), an organization founded and staffed by Democrats, such as long-time Democratic Senator Robert Byrd.

Before I get back to King, let me address another issue that has been badly distorted and become something of a meme among the quasi-literate left. I refer to the idea that the parties have “switched places.” This is something I have heard from some lefties who, knowing the true history of the Democratic and Republican Parties when it comes to race and civil rights, try to argue that that was then, and this is now. Since FDR or so, they argue the Democratic and the Republican Parties “switched” places on the race issue, with Republicans taking the role of protecting white privilege and keeping minorities, especially blacks, down. The truth is quite different. What happened was that the old party of slavers, segregationists, lynch mobs, and secessionists figured out that government programs and intervention were the means to deprive Republicans of a significant voter bloc. The aim was to keep black Americans dependent on the largesse of government and Democrat-run urban political machines. Anyone who doubts that should read the crude comment in which President Johnson revealed the real purpose underlying his massive social program expansion, i.e., to keep black Americans voting Democratic. The Democrats have succeeded admirably at this objective.

The truth is ALWAYS “quite different” when the Democrat-Socialists are the ones telling it. This is NOT a coinkydink, I assure you. Folding, spindling, and mutilating the very language we speak is an age-old tactic of theirs, beginning with their hijacking of the term “liberal” its very self to mean the exact opposite of the original definition. Bejamin Dierker calls it “linguistic activism,” but I prefer the more direct and concise “lying” as a descriptor, myself.

This isn’t innocent linguistic drift or slang; it is a conscious effort to reshape society. The schemes include redefining words for personal gain, using modifiers to alter the meaning of a word, replacing technical words with colloquial ones, and creating new words. Each of these is a bullying tactic, which distort effective discourse.

It starts with misusing words or defining them based on circumstance rather than objective meaning. The entire purpose of defined language is to hold constant meaning so others can understand. Situational use starts to condition how people feel about words, building up a new connotation.

The classic example is the word “liberal,” which the far-left co-opted. It was adopted because of its positive connotation, and used as a cover for imposing greater leftist control under the guise of liberty. In reality, there is nothing liberal about failing to protect life, burdening individuals with regulations and taxes, or forcing individuals to provide services to others. This is no accidental misnomer, but strategic messaging to influence people. Who doesn’t want to support a policy that is “progressive,” “pro-choice,” or “affordable”?

When they use a word it means just what they choose it to mean, neither more nor less—but the meaning is always subject to change without notice. The question is, which is to be master—that’s all.

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