Merchants of Misery

The totalitarian left has launched another of its rampages.

The well-fed, pampered, and well-financed "woke ones" destroy once-great cities and seek to destroy Western Civilization. We witness them savaging, even killing, those who dare reject, however tepidly, the woke leftist narrative. We hear it in the over-the-top violent Marxist/Fascist rhetoric, more often than not spewing from the wild-eyed, unkempt, tattooed white harridans who dominate BLM and Antifa, and who do not shy away from physical violence--as long as men protect them. The prog-run cities of America and Europe have become disasters characterized by crowds of illegal immigrants, fleeing middle-class taxpayers, the filthy camps of "homeless" mentally ill, trash-strewn streets, boarded-up storefronts, rampant drug use, decrepit schools run by semi-literate morons, and, of course, ever-rising levels of property and violent crime. The loud voices of the Wokesters shout down opposition and try to make us all go along with the destruction.

The "authorities," such as they exist, have given up any pretext of running their cities in accord with the principles of law-and-order, and have joined the jackals. The mainstream media and big tech platforms, support them, serve as echo chambers for the leftists, and seek to silence any and all opposition.

This rampage of today does not constitute something new, well, except in its unashamed and open virulence and violence. For years and years, we have seen the left take over institutions, major and minor, gut them, and rebuild them into something quite different--think, for one, Boy Scouts. The universities, quite critically, have become a shadow of their former selves. Once great establishments of learning and preservation of Western culture, they now purvey dangerous, destructive nonsense. We have produced several generations of hostile illiterates. We see the results of this "dumbing down" not just on the streets, but in other institutions that recruit from universities: the schools, the police, the military, the intelligence services, the mass media, and, of course, the entertainment industry.

The leftists are merchants of misery. That's it. That's all they offer, misery. Anything that brings joy and pride they must sabotage, transform, and, ultimately, destroy. Confusion must rule. Even in things as harmless as sports, the Wokesters reach in and ruin them. We cannot watch a football game or a car race without getting regaled with "Black Lives Matter!" We have to watch millionaire players insult our flag and national anthem, and lecture us on "institutionalized racism" and "white privilege." Who wants to watch, much less pay for this trash? I predict that soon few will.

The Wokesters wage unceasing war on fun and joy. They wants us as unhappy and confused as they, alone, cut off from family, and seeking guidance from a government increasingly under control of those very Wokesters.

Resist. Resist. Resist.

Lunacy and Racism of Slavery Reparations

To continue with last week's theme of the wave of prog Fakery now overwhelming us, let's turn to the demand for reparations for slavery, a particularly pernicious chunk of prog Fakery. This piece, by the way, was originally much, much longer, but I cut it back: I hope I didn't do it too much violence, but I don't want to be that repetitious ol' bore in the basement; Joe Biden has that gig locked up . . ..

The topic of slavery reparations has bounced around for a long time. The call came out many years ago re the "need" to pay these reparations, but did not go anywhere. In recent days, however, the demand has grown increasingly strong and strident, and has moved steadily into the field of "respectability and possibility." We see, for example, the "woke" city council of Asheville, North Carolina, July 16, voting (no consulting of tax-payers) to provide some sort of "reparations" for slavery to its black residents--"some sort," because, as you see from the story, "reparations" actually means creating a new bureaucracy to run vague programs. In other words, it creates cushy government jobs for progs and their allies; I doubt black residents of Asheville will see much, if any, of the funds. It comprises, in another words, another delicious slice of prog Fake pie. As with so much else championed by the progs, slavery reparations will lead only to turmoil and increased government control over our lives, precisely what the prog proponents of "reparations" actually seek. As I have noted before, for the progs, black lives do not matter, except to the extent that these lives serve to advance the prog agenda.

Let's start with the simple matter of, "Who pays whom?" After WWII, we saw limited reparations paid to those, mostly Jewish, who had suffered in Nazi concentration camps, or lost immediate family or property to the Nazi regime. Friends of ours, for example, an older married couple both of whom had survived the Nazis, received a payment from the FRG as "reparations" for the deaths of their parents, loss of their home, and for the time they themselves had spent in a death camp. They used the money to move from Honolulu, where we also lived, and to help with the purchase of a small condo in Albuquerque. After we left Hawaii and moved to California, we visited them in New Mexico; they only mentioned reparations once, around 1965, to my father, "They sent us this money. We never asked anything from today's Germans. They are not the Nazis." Note, furthermore, that the Communist GDR dictatorship did not pay reparations, claiming that they were not the heirs of the Nazi regime and had no responsibility or liability for the Holocaust.

We, therefore, see more than a couple of bothersome issues when it comes to reparations. Holocaust reparations went to people still alive who had suffered under the Nazis, and got paid relatively soon after the event. The Bonn government of the FRG agreed to pay reparations, as noted, while the East Berlin government of the GDR did not--I am not aware that Austria was asked to pay. When, however, it comes to slavery, who pays? A number of European countries--e.g., Britain, Portugal, Spain, France--brought African slaves to the Americas. Many European enterprises, while not directly implicated in the slave trade, benefited from that slavery, e.g., Manchester cotton mills. When the USA and other former colonies in the Americas became independent, slavery existed in many of those new nations. So who pays? Europe, the USA, etc? How about the Arabs involved in the slave trade? How about the African tribes who caught and sold the slaves to the Europeans and the Arabs? Do the governments of today's African and Arab nations owe huge reparations to black Americans in both North and South America? What about the native Americans who owned slaves? What about the black Americans who owned slaves? What about white indentured servants?

In the USA's case, who bears responsibility? The US government or the government of the now deceased CSA? Southern state governments? The pro-slavery Democrat party? It was, after all, US government troops who put an end to slavery in the US with the loss of hundreds of thousands of young men--including Republican President Lincoln, himself. Will the descendants of those who fought and died in the struggle against slavery be exempt from paying reparations? Will the descendants of the Republican abolitionists in Massachusetts be exempt? And on and on and on . . .  that onion has endless layers.

Let us march on. Assuming we can figure out who would pay--and, of course, all know who would, but let's pretend we don't--to whom would they send reparations? We can safely assume that no living American ever was slave to another living American. Once again: nobody alive today in the US was a slave in America; nobody alive today, with the possible exception of some refugee from Somalia or Libya, in the US has owned a slave. Slavery, of course, ended in 1865. That means we would have descendants paying descendants. But who descends from slaves? In most cases, how do we know? Not all black people in America descended from slaves, and many black people have immigrated to the USA after 1865, and were neither slaves here nor descendants of such slaves. So that, therefore, presents a problem for any HONEST program of reparations.

Now we get into some really dangerous and crazy stuff. Who is black and entitled to reparations? Joe Biden tells us that a black person who doesn't vote for him is not "really" black. Is that the criteria we will use? Putting that aside, we still have the question before us: who is black? How many "black" people in the USA are 100% black? Not many. So will we set up South African-style panels to determine racial percentages? Will reparations get paid out in accord with those percentages? What do we do with somebody such as Obama who descends from white American slave owners on his mother's side, and black African slave owners and traders on his father's? Does he get some form of reparations? Or does he pay them?

We can go on and on with this. Do we want this discussion in our country? One that provides for constant turmoil and racial animosity? This is tailor-made for the progs and their relentless drive to create problems, confusion, conflict, all requiring the intervention of the prog bureaucrats, and necessitating evermore resources for the prog machine.  

So Much Prog Fakery . . .

We live in a time of The Great Falsehood, the Edification of the Fake. Everywhere one turns in America and throughout the West, one gets assailed by Fakery.

I "proudly" report that the USA has become the world's greatest manufacturer, consumer, AND exporter of genuine Fakery. A notable achievement. We have set the standard of Fakery for the rest of the world! While much of our Fakery appears meant solely or largely for domestic consumption, such global demand exists for high-quality Fakery that our product heads abroad where it is not only consumed but influences the development of the Fakery produced in foreign lands. Without doubt non-American readers must take a knee in awe to our ability to produce Fakery. We're number one! Bastille Day Fakery be damned!

Almost six years ago, I wrote about living awash in a sea of progressive lies (here). Since then, that sea has continued to rise. Those with at least moderate mental abilities do not, despite what the great George Orwell said, have to "struggle to see what's in front of one's nose." The problem today proves much worse: in our "cancel culture," one must struggle to state what one sees in front of one's nose. Accuracy and truth have become the enemies of the "progressive" system. That prog system's array of well-financed supporters do not want islands of truth to emerge from their sea of lies. Speak up about what's in front of your nose, and the woke "cancelers" will cut off your nose; they will get you fired, defamed, bullied, ridiculed, your property trashed, even have you and your family assaulted by a mob of cowards.

Every day we seem to find that today's Fakery makes yesterday's look minuscule and weak . . . well, that is, with one huge exception: Global warming, cooling, climate change disruption, whatever. That piece of Fakery, launched decades ago, remains a classic of Fakery, and stands on a podium of its own. The facts, the real science, do not support it, none of its dire predictions comes true, but yet, but yet, there it sits at the center of governmental and international organizations' policies and expenditures, mass movements, and hysterical outbursts throughout the world: the most holy of Fakes. Try, for example, being a university professor who offers research showing that global whatever is Fake . . . . see what happens to your research money, your job, your reputation. The science is settled! Only one opinion allowed! Global whatever remains the Gold Standard of Fakery.

As noted, this humble and inconsequential little blog has over the years featured examples of American-made Fakery. The American prog lies mentioned in the almost six-year-old posting, referenced above, alas, seem laughable compared to what progs produce today. Those "ancient" lies of a just over a lustrum ago would register hardly a blip on a modern Fake-O-Graph. The Great American Emporium of Fakery now proves so well stocked, that we have time to run our eyes only over a few of the products on display. Readers will find many more items than those catalogued here.

We endured years of the Russia collusion hoax, a Fake narrative which caused great damage to real people, and hurt our ability to conduct foreign policy. The proponents of that outrageous Fake never apologized, never admitted they had Faked it all along. They did not reflect on the harm done to people, key institutions, and our nation. No, they just moved on to . . . the Ukrainian hoax and the Fake impeachment! It wasn't Russia in Trump's corner, no, it was Ukraine! Those hoaxes, along with "Trump doesn't pay taxes," "hands up don't shoot," "nooses at NASCAR!," "nooses on campus," the Jussie Smollett "lynching," "the drugs go north, the guns go south," "a video by a Christian caused the Benghazi massacre," "remove the statues," all pale before the latest prog hoaxes: black lives matter and the Covid pandemic shutdown.

The progs prance, dance and screech about how much they care about black people. They Mau-Mau our feckless corporations and Hollywood "elite" into supporting the terrorist/criminal BLM movement, one run largely by white Marxists. The same "woke" multinational corporations, such as Nike, that use quasi-slave labor in China and elsewhere to make their products, fall all over themselves expressing support for Social Justice and BLM. Hollywood and the NBA, both deriving huge sums from China, fearfully bow to the totalitarian brutes running the PRC but loudly proclaim their brave commitment to Social Justice and BLM--Uighurs, child workers, and Hong Kong be damned!

Let's make it clear: the progs don't give a damn about black lives. For the progs, I repeat, black lives do not matter, at all. The progs condemn black kids to horrid, squalid schools run by overpaid, ignorant, and politically woke "teachers" and administrators. Corrupt, violent, prog-run cities slaughter black people by the dozen, nay, the score on a weekly basis, and yet vow to defund the police which provide the only hope for safety of those very black people. Prog-supported Planned Parenthood, founded by a rabid Nazi-like racist scum, runs an anti-black genocide machine in the guise of providing (Fake) "reproductive health services." Prog politicians and their Fake anti-poverty, pro-equality socio-economic policies and programs have devastated the black church, the black community, and the very structure of the black family; their "anti-racism" efforts have destroyed decades of effort to eliminate race as a factor in American life; the woke ones now even seek to reintroduce segregation into American schools and life.

The progs have done what neither slavery nor segregation could: they have kept millions of black people as a permanent underclass to be exploited by the prog urban political machines. The progs get to decide who is black and who is a Fake black; they decide what political views black people can and cannot hold; which black "leaders" will emerge and get media time. Behold, the new slavery.

American progs have managed to get goofy foreigners to proclaim the slogans of the BLM. Just yesterday, for example, I watched a soccer game transmitted from Europe; the head coach of one team, whitest man ever seen, ran about with a "Black Lives Matter" shirt. The idiot former Beatle drummer, Ringo, will hold some sort of a concert with money going to BLM. Jack-assery of the first order. Europe, once again, has become a racial battleground thanks to efforts to "fight" racism. Fakery triumphs!

I have written a great deal about the ChiCom virus, and won't repeat it. Let's just say there is a huge element of Fakery involved. Those of us skeptical from the start about the reaction to the ChiCom virus have proven correct. The "experts" and their models proved Fake. The mortality rate of this virus has continued to decline, as further testing reveals, to a rate equal to or LOWER than past flu epidemics. The media, purveyors of the Fake, cannot allow the truth to emerge. They bury it with inflammatory headlines about "spikes," new outbreaks. They deliberately merge data about "new" cases with old ones newly discovered thanks to ramped-up testing; they won't reveal how many NEW cases are, in fact, old ones from which the "victims" have long recovered, many not even knowing they had the virus.

The morgues are not filled with the dead; the hospitals are not overwhelmed. Fakery at work.

The word has gone out from the epicenters of prog Fakery to keep the ChiCom virus story front and center; to keep us in a state of fear and uncertainty; to keep us from questioning the "necessary" loss of Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and rights. In other words, just another strategy by the progs to expand their power at the expense of ordinary people; another part of the strategy to throw the November 3 elections, e.g., vote from home because it's too dangerous to go to the polling booth, too dangerous to hold party conventions and debates, mustn't expose the Dems' Fake presidential candidate to any harsh truths . . . but it's perfectly fine to hold BLM rallies.

We see the political power play at work with the current furor over reopening the schools. The all-powerful teacher unions, whose members have continued to receive their salaries during the shut-down, want the schools to remain closed. Too dangerous, they cry.

Have you met the new generation of public school teachers? "Marxist morons" is too kind a description for many if not most of them. When I was a kid, teachers, overwhelmingly, were serious people, dedicated to genuine education, and lovers of Western civilization. Now? They are "wokidiots." I wouldn't let them near my kids.

The schools, truth be told, teach largely garbage in the USA and throughout the West; at best, they serve as elaborately funded baby-sitting and prog-indoctrination centers that make it possible for ordinary folk to go to work. Keep the schools closed, and you keep much of the economy shuttered. That's what they want. They want us all to proclaim the importance of the Fake schools. Don't fall into the trap; say what you see in front of your nose. Time to defund public education. Stop paying Fake teachers who won't and don't teach. Give people vouchers, we already paid for them with our taxes, and let us send our kids to whatever schools we want or make our own.

Speak up. Don't let the progs and their Fakery silence you.

Sorry. This has gotten too long. More later.

Joe Biden Emerges: Sees Shadow . . .

Just a quick note or two.

I see that America's oldest Groundhog emerged from his lair and reported to Scranton, his boyhood home. There the old plagiarist unveiled "his" economic proposal for a "Biden" presidency.

"He" ripped off the title of "his" proposal from hundreds of Trump speeches, and the contents from Bernie Sanders, AOC, Elizabeth Warren, and, of course, Karl Marx.

He stumbled through a bizarre presentation--which the MSM, of course, praised--laying out a bizarre proposal to raise taxes, end "shareholder capitalism," and "Buy American"--as long as such purchases "comply" with WTO regulations--for all sorts of infrastructure proposals, and clean cars, and medical equipment, and, and.

Pathetic. This is the best the Democrat Party can do.

The Republic is finished if this old mountebank gets the presidency.

With any luck, he will return to his cave.

Join Parler.com

As long-suffering readers of this inconsequential blog know, I got booted from Twitter for questioning the veracity of a tweet by Mark Ruffalo. Fine. Twitter is a fascist dumpster fire. In the last few days I have joined Parler.com which is a breath of fresh air. Freedom! I want free!

Sure it has some technical glitches, but those seem to be getting fewer and fewer. A surprising number of conservatives in the US and the UK have joined.

Give it a try.

The 4th: Now More Than Ever

It appears the morons seek to lead us into a dour, doubting, and grim 4th of July. Traditionally one of the happiest events on the American calendar, the 4th, and all it stands for, has come under relentless assault from "scientific experts," illiterate "academics," and an assortment of b.s. celebrities and pundits. 

The lynch mobs have learned from the old tactics of the mafia and, of course, from Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. You know, "Sure would be a shame if your business caught fire; I am sure a donation to racial equality could help prevent that . . . " The highly anti-semitic and anti-white Al Sharpton, now a regal and regular feature on MSNBC and at Democratic conclaves of various types, was a master at that. I lived in NYC during his reign of terror and his various scams--e.g., Tawana Brawley, anybody? Freddy's Fashion Mart? Nothing new under the sun, I guess, just now it's on steroids.

The President intends to hold a 4th celebration at the Mt. Rushmore national monument. Now, SUDDENLY, we hear from the NYT and other purveyors of the progressive faith that Mt. Rushmore is sacred Native American land, and that Trump's holding a 4th event there is a "celebration of white supremacy." 

Was it sacred Native American land when FDR dedicated the monument? Well, I guess that's another reason to tear down the FDR monument in DC . . . How about when Obama visited it? Or Bernie Sanders? The NYT and all other denizens of progo Manhattan might want to start packing out since Manhattan once belonged to the Lenape or Delaware Indians, and they got rooked by the Dutch for some $24. 

Defund NYC! Tear down those ugly buildings!

Don't let the bastards ruin your 4th. 

This is a great country founded by some great people on great principles. Never apologize.

Here, I present a photo of the Diplopad in Wilmington festooned by the immigrant Diplowife. Don't ever tell her that America is not a great place.

Happy 4th!