Wokery – Page 6 – Maverick Philosopher

Two Termites: Bergoglio and Biden

I sometimes refer to the current pope as Bergoglio the Termite to underscore the destructive effect he is having on a once-great institution. Early this morning it occurred to me that I might write a post comparing the various termites undermining our institutions. Of course 'President' Joe Biden immediately came to mind. Just now, an e-mail crossed the transom pointing me to an article in which William Kilpatrick, whom I have often approvingly quoted, does part of the job for me, comparing the termitic attributes of Bergoglio and Biden. I recommend it for your perusal.

Needless to say, when I refer to Bergoglio as a termite, that is a figurative use of language: I am not suggesting that he is literally an insect or ought to be 'rubbed out' by chemical or other means. People who cannot distinguish between the literal and the figurative show a lack of intelligence. Most recently, Joe Scarborough of MSNBC and others of his scrofulous ilk have shown this lack of intelligence when they failed to grasp that Donald Trump's recent use of 'bloodbath' was figurative, not literal.*

Joey B struggles with the distinction as well. Remember his “The American people literally stood on the brink of a new Depression”? That was around 2013 if memory serves.

It is worth noting that not every term of abuse is purely abusive: 'termite' as applied to Jorge and Joseph (both of whose initials are 'J. B.') is not purely abusive in that it contains a factual core: both of these clowns are in fact working to destroy their respective institutions. Wittingly or unwittingly? I am inclined to say wittingly in the case of Bergoglio, unwittingly in the case of the demented Biden.

There is of course a serious moral question connected to the use of abusive language meant to express contempt for fellow human beings. But in a war against such anti-civilizational forces as we now face, different rules of engagement are permissible. Or so it seems. A hard nut to crack.

___________________

*You could of course respond to me that Scarborough and Co. understand the literal-figurative distinction and also understand that context is crucial in the interpretation of anyone's oral or written remark. They probably do. But then it is even worse for them: they are trying to bamboozle the American people. This is a moral defect, which is worse than a failure of understanding. Dripping with intellectual dishonesty and disregard for truth, these people warrant our contempt

Soaring Auto Insurance Rates

I received the bill for my 2013 Jeep Wrangler Sport the other day: $302.89 for six months. For the preceding six months I paid 274.09, and the six months before that 260.42. So yesterday I paid my agent a visit and reminded him of my stratospherically high credit rating, my lack of claims, my sterling driving record, my low mileage, my loyalty to the company, the whole shot.

He explained that rates had gone down during the Great Covid Scare (my term not his) due to less driving but now were headed up again; Biden-flation (my term not his); and because e-vehicles are much more expensive to repair than gas drinkers (my term again). All true. So I paid the bill and left.

On arriving home I flipped on Jesse Watters who had a segment on young people and how they are getting hammered on rates. His focus was on onboard surveillance technology. Now if old people are unduly cautious on the roads and dangerous for that very reason, young people are worse, being impetuous, reckless, ignorant of physics, bereft of a proper sense of their mortality, without experience of life automotive and otherwise, distracted by their devices, distractive of each other, etc. So they do stupid things at the wheel, the data gets sent to the insurance companies, and their rates skyrocket.

For example, I'm 'hauling donkey' in the fast lane doing 75-80 mph and some punk in a compact death-trap is on my ass. I'm doing everything right, driving my Jeep as if it were a motorcycle: exercising due diligence, maintaining situational awareness, cycling through my mirrors and gauges, planning escape routes, staying out of blind spots, keeping my distance from other vehicles and especially from overloaded junk wagons. I am engaging in automotive profiling. So the punk in the crapmobile tries to get around me, endangering himself, his passengers, and everyone around him.

The punk's high rates are the just wages of his automotive sin.

Of course, this is a deep and vexing topic. I don't want to live in a Sino-styled, omni-surveillant, Stasi-redolent police state! Damn you Dementocrats! Liberty trumps security! If you don't agree you are axiologically unfit to be an American. Go live in China or board the next time machine back to the USSR. Or the DDR. On the other hand, when the people lack virtue, automotive and otherwise, and will not govern themselves, then the plutocratic-pathocratic-totalitarian thugs have a plausible justification for their clamp-down and 'plausible deniability' of their malfeasance.

There is a lot to discuss. Here is something that I didn't know but that comports well with the pathocratic scumbaggery of wokeassed leftards:

Not all states allow car insurance companies to take gender into account. These six states prohibit the use of gender when pricing auto insurance:

How unspeakably stupid can an unspeakably stupid reality-denying leftist be? But that is exactly what you would nowadays expect in the once great and golden State of Californication and the People's Republic of Taxachusetts.

A ‘Temporal’ Argument Against Race Change

The following excerpt is 'cannibalized' from my Substack article, Can One Change One's Race?

…………………

Can I change my race? No. I can no more change my race than I can change the fact that I was born in California. I might have been born elsewhere, of course, but as a matter of contingent fact, I am a native Californian. Despite the logical contingency of my California birth, there is nothing I or anyone, including God, can do, or could have done, after the fact, to change or annul that fact about my place of birth. And there is nothing I or anyone can do, or could have done, after the fact, to alter my place of birth, time of birth, weight, or any other contingent detail.

The same goes for race. My race is determined by my biological ancestors. Since both were white, I am white. To change my race I would have to change a past fact, namely, that I am the product of the copulation of two white parents. But that fact, being past, cannot now be changed or annulled. The argument, then, is this:

1) If I can change my race from white to black, say, then I can change some fact in the distant past, namely, the fact that I am the offspring of two white parents;

2) It is not the case that I can change any past fact including the fact that I am the offspring of two white parents;

Ergo

3) It is not the case that I can change my race.

The argument assumes that it is nomologically necessary (necessary given the laws of nature) that parents of the same race have offspring of the same race, that, e.g., white parents have white offspring. The assumption is obviously true.

Kathy Hochul, Leftist Idiot

Head over to Malcolm Pollack's place for some sensible commentary. Meat quote:

Political thinkers from Hobbes to Schmitt have understood that the fundamental principle that legitimizes the power of the State is the reciprocal obligation of obedience and protection. We cede to the State the awesome power of coercion by threat of violence, and in return we expect a guarantee of our public and personal security. This means that when the State abandons its side of that obligation, it is the right, and the duty, of the citizenry to secure their own protection.

That's right. It follows that citizens have the right to keep and bear arms. The rate of exercise of that right stands in inverse relation to the failure of the State to guarantee our public and personal security. The more the government fails to do what it is supposed to do, chiefly, protect life, liberty, and property, the more citizens will arm themselves.

From this you can see just how preternaturally stupid (or deliberately self-enstupidated) libs, lefties, and wokesters are. Presumably, they want fewer guns in civilian hands.* Their policies, however, incentivize gun ownership by Joe and Jane Citizen.

In a piece defending Viktor Orban against the mindless charge of being a 'fascist dictator,' Rod Dreher writes,

Unlike London, Paris, Washington, New York, Brussels, and elsewhere, street crime is very low in the Hungarian capital — and that’s not because the police are everywhere.

Think about it: just this week, the governor of New York [Kathy Hochul] ordered the state’s National Guard troops to patrol New York City’s subways to crack down on violent crime there. This never, ever happens in Budapest. Ever. A British friend traveling this week in New York said the scene outside his lodgings in Manhattan is appalling, with scores of African men — illegal aliens who came through Mexico — loitering on the street and urinating in public. That doesn’t happen in Budapest either, because Hungary is a country that controls its borders.

Read it all.

__________

*And so do I. It can't be good to have all sorts of untrained people packing heat. I defend 2A rights, but I would never try to persuade people to arm themselves. Gun ownership is a grave responsibility. You have to get training, you have to practice, and you have to know the law. Before you even think about buying a gun, you need to develop situational awareness. As the noted trainer Steve Tarani says, "If you have to go to guns, there has been a failure in situational awareness." That is a very slight exaggeration, but not by much. Another trainer, retired Navy SEAL Chris Sajnog here discusses ten ways to improve your SA.

What is the worst enemy of SA? The smartphone. Don't be a dumbass with a smartphone. Don't walk around with your head up your app!

How Censorship Drives the Woke Revolution

Nick Short at Tom Klingenstein's place quotes from Tucker Carlson's interview of Mike Benz:

Benz: You had this new power within DHS to say that cybersecurity attacks on elections are now ‘our purview.’ And then they did two cute things. One, they said mis-, dis-, and mal-information online are a form of cybersecurity attack; they are a cyber attack because they are happening online. And they said, well… we’re actually protecting democracy and elections. We don’t need a Russian predicate after Russiagate died.

So just like that, you had this cybersecurity agency be able to legally make the argument that your tweets about mail-in ballots — if you undermine public faith and confidence in them as a legitimate form of voting, you were now conducting an attack on U.S. critical infrastructure by articulating ‘misinformation’ on Twitter…

Carlson: So, in other words, complaining about election fraud is the same as taking down our power grid?

Benz: Yes. You could literally be on your toilet seat at 9:30 on a Thursday night and tweet, ‘I think that mail in ballots are illegitimate.’ And you were essentially then caught up in the crosshairs of the Department of Homeland Security classifying you as conducting a cyber attack on U.S. critical infrastructure because you were doing ‘misinformation’ online in the cyber realm, and ‘misinformation’ is a cyber attack on democracy when it undermines public faith and confidence in our democratic elections and our democratic institutions.

It really is as bad as that. As for mail-in ballots (except for certain narrowly restricted classes of people, e.g. military personnel serving abroad) they are an open invitation to voter fraud, an invitation that has been and will continue to be widely accepted. The invitation is of course part of the overall strategy of the Left to destroy our republic.

Herewith, yet another reason why anyone who is not a destructive, hate-America leftist must support Trump, warts and all, and is a contemptible idiot oblivious to his own long-term best interest if he doesn't.

Is Leftism a Form of Mental Illness?

Wokery is the most extreme form of leftism. Some if not all elements of wokery are indicative of mental illness on the part of those who actually believe them. I will mention just four.

Thinking that one can effect a sex-change by merely mental gymnastics, by 'identifying' as a woman or as a man. Cognate with this species of insanity is the notion that sex of a neonate is 'assigned' at birth as opposed to being biologically inherent in the organism that exits the birth canal. A name can be assigned but not sex. Not even an inappropriate nominal assignment has the power to alter the sex of the nominatum. The boy named 'Sue' remained a boy.
The bizarre notion that permitting or minimizing the consequences of criminal behavior will lead to less crime.
The astonishing conceit that mathematics is racist. Why exactly? Because blacks as a group are not good at it?
The knuckleheaded notion that wholly legitimate criticisms of a 'person of color' such as Alejandro Mayorkas may be deflected by hurling the slur 'racist,' a word which wokesters never define the better to use as an all-purpose semantic bludgeon.
Et cetera ad nauseam.

‘Racism’: Supply and Demand. ‘Cultural Appropriation’

Because the demand exceeds the supply, new variants of 'racism' have to be invented by leftist race-hustlers. One of the latest is digital blackface. (I wrote this in March of last year.) What might that be? Here:

Digital blackface is a practice where White people co-opt online expressions of Black imagery, slang, catchphrases or culture to convey comic relief or express emotions.

[. . .]

Digital blackface involves white people play-acting at being black . . .

The complaint seems to be that whitey engages in 'cultural appropriation.' If that were a legitimate complaint, then so would the retort: but then so does blacky. Black folk regularly play-act at being white when they practice self-restraint, show respect for legitimate authority, are punctual, work hard, defer gratification, speak correct English, are self-reliant, reasonable and objective, study mathematics and science, save and invest, plan for the future, act responsibly towards themselves and others, listen to and play classical music, enjoy the fruits of high culture, and so on.

So one might ask, rhetorically, "By what right do blacks appropriate OUR culture? OUR white values and virtues?"

But I don't ask that question.

What I have insisted on, again and again in these pages, is that whites do not own the above values and virtues. They are universal and available to all. It is just that whites are better at isolating, describing, and implementing the values that belong to all of us.

Blacks will always be on the bottom as long as they think that they are 'acting white' when they practice self-restraint, show respect for legitimate authority, are punctual, work hard, defer gratification, speak correct English, are self-reliant, reasonable and objective, study mathematics and science, save and invest, plan for the future, and so on, as per the above litany. You are not 'acting white' if you live in accordance with the above values and virtues; you are acting humanly and optimally, and in a manner that will lead you to success and happiness.

Whitey wants you black folks to be happy! Do you know why? Two reasons, the first self-interested: happy people don't cause trouble, and we don't want trouble in the form of criminal behavior directed against us. That happy people don't cause trouble is a generic statement. I explain what a generic statement is here: but you will need an attention span, above-average intelligence and a modicum of philosophical savvy to follow it. That happy people do not cause trouble is a Dennis Prager riff. I borrow it; I endorse it. (Always give credit where credit is due. It's the decent thing to do. Plagiarism is to be condemned, whether done by the president of the USA or the president of Harvard.)

The second reason is that most of us genuinely want you to do well for yourselves.

Cultural appropriation? What could possibly be wrong with that? Appropriate, i. e., make your own, whatever is good from any culture. Take it on board. Develop it. Profit from it, intellectually, spiritually, and morally.

What’s Wrong with Illegal Immigration?

I present a number of arguments, some 'liberal,' atop the Stack.

I am well aware of the infirmity of reason, and of the stupidity and suggestibility of people, especially in this Age of Feeling and Xed-out attention spans. And so I am well aware of just how little is accomplished by calm and careful argumentation in these dark times. But we need to have arguments at the ready for those fence-sitters, many of them decent young people, who are open to reason and have not yet been hopelessly corrupted by our decadent culture.

Reason is for the reasonable, just as civility is for the civil.

But it is not reasonable to be reasonable in all things or in relation to all persons. We live among enemies. The enemy needs sometimes to experience the hard fist of unreason, the brute rejection, the blind refusal, the lethal blow. Or at least he must be made to fear this response, and you must be capable of making it.

The good are not the weak, but those capable of violence while remaining the masters of its exercise.

Otherwise, are you fit for this world?

On the other hand, it might be better not to be fit for this world. What sort of world is it in which the good must be brutal to preserve the reign of the Good?

More grist for the mill. We blog on.

The Demand Exceeds the Supply

The demand to feel aggrieved exceeds the supply of grievances. Hence the invention of 'micro-aggressions.'

No Labels? Label We Must!

"Not Right. Not Left. Forward."

There are are real differences between Right and Left that cannot be ignored. The positions must be carefully defined and appropriately labeled. 'No labels' is itself a label, an inept one. Label we must. We ought to do it carefully and thoughtfully.

The world is a plural world shot through with distinctions and differences and diversities. Aren't lefties big on 'diversity?' Diversity cannot be denied. But neither can unity. Both are undeniable, both are valuable, and both, in their dialectical interplay, are world-constitutive. Since they go to a destructive and undialectical extreme that violates my syn- and pan-opticism I label lefties 'diversity mongers.'

May no peace be upon them.

The Greatest Risk We are Taking

Pat Buchanan warned us six years ago.

Substack latest.

Joe Biden: An Anti-Civilizational, Race-Baiting, Opportunist and Ignoramus

And as all of those things, a worthy representative of the contemporary hard-Left, hate-America, Democrat party. Ben Shapiro has his number:

More importantly, however, Biden's characterization of "English jurisprudential culture" as "white man's culture" is profoundly disturbing. English jurisprudential culture is rooted in the belief in the rule of law, due process of law, equal rights under law; English jurisprudential culture is responsible for preserving the natural rights we hold dear, rights which were imperfectly but increasingly extended over time to more and more human beings, particularly minorities. No less a leftist figure than Barack Obama explained just that in 2009, saying he sought a system at Guantanamo Bay that "adheres to the rule of law, habeas corpus, basic principles of Anglo-American legal system."

Protection of individual rights — and in particular, minority rights — lies at the heart of English jurisprudence. Yet Biden boiled down those rights to racial privilege. And the attempt to reduce the fundamental principles of our civilization to a mask for racial hierarchical power is both false and frightening. It suggests that those principles ought to be undermined for purposes of disestablishing that supposed hierarchy. Get rid of English jurisprudential law, presumably, in order to fight racism.

Word of the Day: Perseveration

Leftists want to limit your vocabulary so as to limit your thought and make you easier to control. They want total control. David Horowitz says it well on his masthead, "Inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out." (When a transgressive calls herself 'progressive,' you know there's a cesspool of mendacity up ahead.)

perseveration /pər-sĕv″ə-rā′shən/

noun

Uncontrollable repetition of a particular response, such as a word, phrase, or gesture, despite the absence or cessation of a stimulus, usually caused by brain injury or other organic disorder.

The tendency to continue or repeat an act or activity after the cessation of the original stimulus.

The act or an instance of persevering; perseverance.