Loudon schools to make bathrooms co-ed to accommodate trannies. Nothing is too demented for a Dementocrat.
Category: Wokery
The Accelerationist Option
I wrote recently that the only way out is through, but Malcolm Pollack's most recent offering is much better; it is indeed brilliant. It divides into three parts. There is first a litany of what ails us. The second part explains why the ills listed are upon us. The general answer is that
. . . an aggressive, secular pseudo-religion, which denies all transcendent order and natural categories, has seized control of the minds of scores of millions of Americans, and of the levers of political power and information dissemination. This ersatz religion holds as its highest principle the flattening of every natural distinction, and all social hierarchies, except of course the hierarchy that places itself in the position of commanding power over every institution, and over all of civil society.
This general answer is then fleshed out with a list of the specific truths that the secular pseudo-religion brands as heresy.
The third part of the essay raises the question of what we can do about the miasmic mess we are in. Pollack rejects as hopeless three ways out that quite naturally suggest themselves: voting, a return to federalism, and armed revolt.
And then comes the startling suggestion:
Perhaps, then, it is best in the long run not to slow this process by incremental and ineffective political resistance. It may be that such an approach, by making the decay more gradual, will also make it somehow more bearable, day by day, and might turn it from an acute and intolerable affliction to a slow and chronic decline — a creeping Brazilification, a great national frog-boiling. Perhaps we would be wiser simply to let the cleansing fire of fever run its course, and burn itself out. It will be painful, and surely debilitating for a while, but then it will be over. And then, at last, we can awaken, blink our eyes, and get back on our feet.
Another term for the Big Guy might be all it takes. Four more years!!
In sum, the only way out is through, and the best way through is pedal-to-the-metal, balls-to-the-wall, lets-go-Brandon! Let Biden finish the job, as he intends to do, and thereby finish us off. After an ignominious death, resurrection, a new Phoenix from the old ashes.
Might I suggest an historical parallel? Germany gone mad had to be destroyed before it could be rebuilt into sanity. It is perhaps a good thing that Hitler, drunk on his initial success, and consumed with hubris, overextended himself, thereby bringing to an end National Socialist totalitarianism. And so it may also be a good thing to allow the totalitarian-globalist-'woke'- race-delusional-culturally Marxist scum now in control of our once-great Republic to bring her to her knees where she will repent, suffer, and die to be reborn.
The Demented Dems: Anti-Reality and Anti-Virtue
House Republicans voted Thursday to ban transgender female athletes from taking part in girls’ and women’s sports by amending Title IX protections to only apply to biologically female athletes.
The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act passed 219-203, with no Democrats supporting the measure.
Homebuyers with good credit scores will soon encounter a costly surprise: a new federal rule forcing them to pay higher mortgage rates and fees to subsidize people with riskier credit ratings who are also in the market to buy houses.
You see, self-control, self-reliance, deferral of gratification, financial responsibility and the like are 'white' virtues, and therefore 'racist.' 'Racists' whether white or black need to be punished with higher mortgage rates. 'Equity' demands it. In fact, credit ratings as such are 'racist' and 'white supremacist' and need to go the way of the SAT.
A New Budweiser Joke
One of the old ones goes like this. "Ah had me a coupla Buds, but ahm none the wiser." I suggest as part of the punch back against the Anheuser-Busch Dylan Mulvaney wokery, the following:
I had me a couple of Buds and my schlong's no longer a riser.
But I am sure you can do better than that; combox open.
The logically prior question, of course, is why anyone of taste and discernment would drink the swill served up by Anheuser-Busch when you can drink some such fine German brew as St. Pauli Girl the poster 'boy' of which is a buxom wench (in sense 1) who is not only unambiguously female but also stacked and packed to the nines and hence in violation of all canons of wokery known to man.
If your head is screwed on Right, you will enjoy DeSantis' take on this brew-haha (I'm punning on brouhaha, as I'm sure you've noticed.)
Time to man up and bone up on your political ponerology the better to punch back against the 'woke' kakistocracy and all its works. Not much is at stake, of course, except the survival of civilization.
Globalist-Capitalist Woke Leftism II
On 26 January I wrote:
The new global-capitalist woke leftism (GCWL) is very different from the old socialist-humanist leftism (SHL, which I take to include both the Old Left and the New Left). I want to understand the similarities and the differences.
GCWL versus SHL
1) Both are secular and anti-religion. Since 1789 the Left has been virulently anti-clerical and anti-religious. Nota bene: an ersatz religion is not a religion! So stop calling leftism a religion, Dennis Prager.
2) Both target the middle class.
3) Both are internationalist and anti-nationalist.
4) The main difference seems to be that SHL is humanist while GCWL tends toward the erasure of humanity and humanism via anti-natalism, paganism, nature-idolatrous environmentalism, misanthropy, Orwellian subversion of language, and leukophobic ethno-masochism and much else besides.
So that's a start. Inadequate, no doubt.
James Soriano responded this morning:
I liked your January 26 post on the Globalist-Capitalist Woke Leftism, as well as the comments.
Here are a couple of points on the dissimilarities of the “Woke” compared to the “Old” and “New.”
(1) Both the Old Left and the New Left were hostile to capitalism, whereas the Woke Left finds it a useful tool. Today corporations big and small have become “woke” and are friendly to the Woke agenda. Any corporation insufficiently sympathetic to the Woke agenda is bullied until it wakes up.
(2) The Old Left got a Russian assist. After WWI, Russia secretly supported Communist parties and allied organizations in Europe and elsewhere. These subversive activities continued after WWII and into the New Left period. By contrast, the Woke Left gets an American assist. It is not secretive in any way. It’s in the open.
(3) The Old Left and the New Left thought of “revolution” as something that originates in society and then goes on to take over the state. But “woke” attitudes have already penetrated into the state. To a “woke” leftist, a revolution can also be something that moves from the state back into society for the purpose of stomping out pockets of resistance.
——
On this last point, we can make a distinction between a revolution BEFORE power and a revolution AFTER power.
Revolutions taking place before the revolutionaries consolidate power: Americans in 1776, Mao in China, Castro in Cuba, and Khomeini in Iran.
Revolutions taking place after the revolutionaries consolidate power:
— 1917. A small group of Bolsheviks take over the seat of government in St. Petersburg. The Russian Revolution took place after that event; there was no Bolshevik uprising prior to it.
— 1932. The National Socialist German Workers' Party came to power by democratic means. The Nazi transformation of Germany took place after that event; there was no Nazi uprising prior to it. [It was 1933 — BV]
— Historian Martin Kramer makes this revolution-before-and-after distinction regarding “moderate” Islamists. Many people in the Arab World fear that “moderates” like the Muslim Brotherhood would use democratic means to take over the state. They would then go on to Islamize society after they take power. Wokesters are like that, too.
Wokeassery Update
Alex Berenson on mRNAs
Black Female DEI Director Cancelled by DEI. De Anza College, Cupertino, California. Not 'woke' enough, not 'diverse' enough to be 'included.' No 'equity' for her! Insufficient 'wokeness' = white supremacy.
From the beginning, efforts to obstruct my work were framed in terms that might seem bizarre to those outside certain academic spaces. For instance, simply attempting to set an agenda for meetings caused my colleagues to accuse me of “whitespeaking,” “whitesplaining,” and reinforcing “white supremacy”—accusations I had never faced before. I was initially baffled, but as I attended workshops led by my officemates and promoted by my supervising dean, I repeatedly encountered a presentation slide titled “Characteristics of White-Supremacy Culture” that denounced qualities like “sense of urgency” and “worship of the written word.” Written meeting agendas apparently checked both boxes.
Maybe she should move to Florida where DEI goes to die.
The Double Denial by the ‘Woke’
It is not unreasonable to maintain that there is no God and that nature alone exists. But suppose you take it a step further and deny nature as well. Then you are in the precincts of 'woke' lunacy. Call it the Double Denial.
One way to deny nature is by denying that the biotic underpins the social and that as a consequence the difference between men and women is a matter of social construction and not a matter of biology. But any sane person will grasp instantly that one cannot change one's sex by merely thinking of oneself as belonging to the opposite sex. It is also obvious that sartorial and cosmetic modifications will not turn the trick.
Less obvious, but equally true, is that chemical and surgical alteration of one's body cannot change one's sex even if the surgical alteration is of a deeply structural sort: reduction of muscle mass, heart and lung volume, bone density, size of hands, and length of limbs even unto the removal of portions of bones to make the altered person shorter.
But of course the 'transgendered' biological men who compete in, and win, women's sporting events do not and would not submit to the modern-day equivalent of the Bed of Procrustes: they are not about to be modified in the drastic ways just mentioned. And yet such men are allowed to pass themselves off as women. To add insult to injury, some of these impostors are then awarded 'woman of the year' titles.
What is going on here? It is one thing to condemn the injustice to women and overall idiocy of this, quite another to understand how it could arise and be taken seriously by otherwise sane people.
One thing that needs explaining is how leftists, who are supposedly for women and against their oppression by men and 'the patriarchy,' could embrace something so antifeminist as the allowance of male interference with women's sports. I suggest that what we are witnessing here is a collision of motifs on the Left. One such is the oppressor-oppressed motif. Another is the hyper-constructivist denial-of-reality motif. These motifs are in tension with each other. If men oppress women, then women need their 'safe spaces' where they can feel secure against real or merely perceived micro- and macro-aggression. Accordingly, there is obvious need for sexual segregation in certain areas such as sports competitions, locker rooms, restrooms, prisons, etc. But if everything is a matter of social construction, as per the second motif, then so are sexual differences in which case they are not innate and immutable, but malleable. A man can 're-identify' as a woman with or without chemical and surgical alteration. Add in a third motif that of expressive individualism and for good measure throw in the 'my truth' meme. If 'my truth' is that I am a woman, then I am a woman and can compete against women. (There is little or no chance that any woman will 're-identify' as a man so as to compete against them.)
The conflict of leftist motifs explains the utter absurdity of wokesters who tolerate the grotesquely unjust penetration of biological males into female spaces.
2 + 2 = White Supremacy
Are There Any Decent Democrats?
There is at least one. His name is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. I recommend his A Letter to Liberals: Censorship and COVID: An Attack on Science and American Ideals (Skyhorse Publishing, 2022). It is mercifully short, x + 110 pages long, and well worth your time. It is extremely well-documented. The text itself runs to x + 87 pp. with 239 endnotes, most of them with hyperlink info. Here is something I didn't know:
At the outset of the pandemic, most of the world's leading news organizations — BBC, Reuters, AP, AFD, CBC, CNN, CBS, ABC, Washington Post, Financial Times, Facebook, Google/YouTube, Microsoft, Twitter, and others — organized themselves into a collusive antidemocratic and anticompetitive cartel known as the Trusted News Initiative (TNI) — pledged to squelch and censor all reports about government COVID countermeasures that challenged official proclamations. (p. 52 f; endnote 153 points us to the BBC, December 10, 2020.)
I don't believe that there is any chance that RFK Jr. will 'pull a Tulsi' and quit the Democrat Party, although he should. He won't because he's a Kennedy, and I am guessing that he already has enough trouble with his extended family. (See here.) Like many old-time Dems, he fancies he will wrest the leadership of his party away from the 'woke'-left totalitarians who now control it. If that's what he thinks, he's fooling himself.
The irony is that RFK fils, despite his speech impediment and lack of charisma, has a better chance of beating either Trump or DeSantis in 2024 than any other Dem I can think of.
A Hot Sauce Rant from 2013
A hot (sauce rant) or a (hot sauce) rant? Both. Parentheses matter! Scope matters. All scope distinctions matter. Mind your p's and q's. Discriminate operators and operands. (Am I sending a coded message?)
Substack latest.
Don't complain about 'old news.' What are you, a Twitterized 'woke' presentist?
There is presentism in the philosophy of time and there is what I will call, for want of a better term, historical presentism. This, roughly, is the conceit that the present alone matters and that we have little or nothing to learn from the past. It is not so much a view as an attitude, a 'bad 'tude' if you will, one shared by adolescents of all ages. There is the punk who, ignorant of great literature, installs Bukowski in the literary pantheon. Self-insulation from the past and its achievements is one of the ways wokesters self-enstupidate.
And there are those who ought to know better, spineless university administrators in the grip of fashionable obsessions, who are thereby rendered incapable of just judgments of past times and individuals. Case in point: the Flannery O'Connor unnaming.
Anarcho-Tyranny in the USA
Here by Auron MacIntyre at The Total State (Substack):
The city of Philadelphia has announced an agreement to pay a $9.25 million settlement in connection with the police response to protests after the death of George Floyd in 2020. While dozens were killed and billions of dollars of damage were done during the riots that raged across America for weeks in the summer of 2020, it is the participants themselves who will be paid restitution by the government.
Law and order in the United States have now descended to a level of anarcho-tyranny in which the government funds rioters with the tax money of their victims. The slow death of the rule of law in America would be ugly enough, but what we are witnessing instead is the twisted, grimacing corpse of a system that was once designed to protect the safety of Americans now being used to punish us for disagreeing with our political elites.
UPDATE 3/24
This fellow and I so far appear to be 'on the same page.' Two days ago, before I had heard of him, I spoke of our time as
. . . a time when those in control of the state apparatus have forgotten, or rather willfully ignore, the purposes that justify government in the first place, namely, the tasks of securing the life, liberty, and property of those governed. But the Orwellian wokesters now in charge invert these values in the Orwellian manner and aid and abet those who aim at the opposite.
As MacIntyre points out, what we are witnessing is "more than the slow death of the rule of law," but the inversion of our founding values. And yet brazen liars such as Nancy Pelosi yammer on about the rule of law while her shills in the media intone in unison the scripted mantra, "No one is above the law," as they pervert the law Soviet-style to destroy Donald J. Trump. Thankfully, Nancy dear is no longer with us (nor against us) politically speaking; others, however, far worse and more dangerous because less stupid, will take her place.
And as usual the Left Coast leads the way. (Because it is closer to China?) Here is Substacker David Zweig on lockdown and surveillance Santa Clara-style.
Kato Crews: ‘Wokified’ but not Qualified
Another example of how qualifications do not matter to wokesters.
UPDATE 3/26. In the related case of the 'wokified' but not qualified Phil Washington, sanity has prevailed.
Academentia in excelsis
DEI and the collapse of the universities.
Substack latest.
American Restoration
Substack articles by Bruce Abramson. From his About page:
Suppose you think that it’s wrong to discriminate based on race. To the Woke, you’re a racist.
Suppose you say that humans are either male or female. To the Woke, that’s dehumanizing.
Suppose you champion free speech. To the Woke, you’re promoting hatred.
Suppose you think that the ends don’t justify the means. To the Woke, you’re impeding justice.
Suppose you believe in God. To the Woke, you’re an unstable superstitious bigot.
The list of such absurd defamations is long, and it grows longer every day. But it’s no joke. Once the woke have labeled you a hateful, dehumanizing, unstable racist whose mere existence stands in the way of justice, they will treat you as if that’s who you really are. They will work to destroy you—terminate your personal relationships, professional aspirations, and financial possibilities.
Worst of all, the Woke are winning. The United States is mired in a Second Civil War. The country no longer functions as either a free society or a constitutional republic. Every single one of our major institutions has been corrupted: Academia, K-12 education, the media, the civil service, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the legal and medical professions, and nearly every important professional society. Recent years have even uncovered deep Woke rot running corporate boardrooms, the IRS, FBI, CIA, NSA, and the military.
Leaders and organizations that are not Woke themselves cower in fear and fall in line. More than 60% of American report being afraid to voice their opinions; they fear woke reprisal.
This situation is neither tolerable nor sustainable. If we don’t move quickly to restore the free society America was born to be, we will slide irretrievably into an autocratic, elitist oligarchy.
We are beyond the time of timidity and prudence. We have become both the counterculture and counterrevolutionaries. Very little of what we have done in the past is suited to those roles. If we are to restore America, we will need new lessons, strategies, tactics, and priorities.
This essay series is for those who want to master the techniques we need.
Is Abramson exaggerating? I'd say he isn't. What say you?
Of Wokery and Merit
Destructive, anti-civilizational wokesters are not just against merit, they are positively for anti-merit, dysfunction, incompetence, stupidity, corruption, malevolence, and more. Qualifications don't matter; 'wokifications' matter: being black, female, lesbian, cognitively impaired, truth-insensitive, reality-denying, physically feeble, morally corrupt. Mayorkas, Fetterman, Buttigieg, practically the whole of the Biden administration. After watching this C-SPAN video will you tell me that Phil Washington is qualified to head the Federal Aviation Administration? Qualified or 'wokified'? Is being 'woke' and 'diverse' a qualification?
Suppose you question whether John Fetterman is qualified to be a U. S. Senator given his mental and physical impairment. You will be called an 'ableist.' What's next? 'Qualificationist?' "You're a white-spremacist qualificationist! You believe people need to be qualified for the positions they apply for!"
You will never understand the Left until you understand that they reliably take the side of losers, underdogs, and criminals, who comprise their clientele and path to power. And with lefties it is always about power, first and forever.
Here we read about a 78-year-old Englishman who, in defending himself against a screwdriver-wielding home invader, caused the miscreant's death and is now facing a murder charge.
Dear old England, the mother country. It is sad to see your mother, senile and decrepit, go down the toilet, having lost all her moral sense and the will to live.
Once again one sees the justification for my political burden of proof:
As contemporary 'liberals' become ever more extreme, they increasingly assume what I call the political burden of proof. The onus is now on them to defeat the presumption that they are so morally and intellectually obtuse as not to be worth talking to.
Actually, that is far too mild a statement. Perhaps tomorrow I will tell you what I really think.
UPDATE (3/17). I say above that leftists reliably take the side of criminals. More proof, as if more proof is needed:
THE AGE OF REASON?
I wrote here about Hennepin County, Minnesota’s left-wing prosecutor who let off two juveniles (the older aged 17) who murdered a woman in the course of a home invasion. This was part of her stated rationale:
[County Attorney Mary] Moriarty has said she is simply “following the science,” which she says is conclusive about adolescent brain development. According to Moriarty, the human brain is not fully developed until 25 years old.
Which is why, according to Moriarty, “we need to treat kids like kids.” As opposed to treating murderers like murderers.
Read it all. Why is 'Minnesnowta' such a hot-bed of anti-civilizational wokeassery? Does the cold clime freeze their brains unto willful self-enstupidation?