Is This Why We Have School Shootings?

I know this will sound over the top, and it’s more of a presumptive rant than analysis.

I began this post as a joke. I was listening to a YouTube video as I was doing paperwork and “Intersectionality” was mentioned. I know what that is but I looked it up on Wikipedia just to be sure. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality).

The article is filled with all this Leftist gobbledygook and it struck me as funny. But, on reconsideration, this isn’t funny at all. I agree with at least one sentence in the article: “Alan Dershowitz derided the theory of intersectionality as the ‘phoniest academic doctrine I have encountered in 53 years” in academia…’

“Intersectionality and it’s cousin Postmodernism are the most vile academic ideas since the concept of a master race. Intersectionality posits that a person’s position on the victim-privilege hierarchy can’t be determined by one factor, such as race or gender, but requires we account for all of the usual, superficial (my word) attributes. From the Wikipedia article:

“Proponents claim that racism, sexism, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and religious or other belief-based bigotry and persecution—do not act independently of each other. Instead, these forms of oppression interrelate, creating a system of oppression that reflects the “intersection” of multiple forms of discrimination.”

No proof is offered. No proof is possible. The concept is motivated by Marxism and, therefore, we have an upper bound on it’s correctness, nearly zero. And yet, Postmodernism and Intersectionalism dominate the humanities and social sciences including literature, journalism, sociology, philosophy, psychology and even law. Intersectionality is a deterministic philosophy, predicting your success in life based on your identity. Intelligence, perseverance, education and free will have no place in the theory.

The theory, along with Postmodernism, is so wacky that other academics have spoofed it with “scholarly” papers that passed peer review. The first of these was, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” which claimed that quantum gravity is a “social construct” followed by, “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct.”

Intersectionality and Postmodernist thinking produced the Pussy Hat feminists wailing after Trump’s election. It created conflict between cake bakers and gay couples. It even created the violent Antifa and, consequently, can be blamed, in part, for the attacks in Berkley and the death in Charlottesville.

The phraseology of Intersectionality includes accusations of “white privilege” and “toxic masculinity.” One’s position in the victim-privilege hierarchy determine if one is a protected minority or a target of relentless bullying by those with more victim points.

Now imagine the effect of all this pervasive, toxic brainwashing on the psyche of children and young adults, especially fragile children who may be awkward or learning disabled or neurotic. There is no redemption or salvation for the Intersectionalist. Your position on the victim hierarchy is what it is and no amount of pleading will get a blue-eyed white kid accepted or forgiven his “privilege” by the lesbians of color. I suspect that rather than seeking forgiveness, some of those on the privilege side of the hierarchy give up and go full-on identity politics themselves by joining groups of White Nationalists, supremacists and other distasteful organizations.

And while the majority of Intersectionalist victims grit their teeth and bear the abuse, I also suspect that a small minority goes off the rails and becomes violent, as do people bullied for other reasons. Perhaps the ones that go off the rails do so because they are on psychiatric drugs. Still, maybe it’s time for academics to stop teaching hate.

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The Paris Climate Con

President Trump has announced the US will not be participating in the Paris Climate Accord and the world went wild. According to Weather.com, 150 mayors and 10 governors have denounced the President.

Image from NOAA

It never occurred to these public officials that they are violating their oath of office to defend the Constitution. You see, the Paris agreement is a treaty that isn’t a treaty. It was never ratified by the Senate as required by the Constitution. President Obama didn’t want that pesky requirement to get in his way of a milestone so he did an end run. He also didn’t bother to negotiate in the best interests of the US so the accord puts punitive requirements on the US while letting countries such as China slide by not requiring them to reduce carbon dioxide emissions until 2030. According to estimates from the Charles Payne program on Fox Business News, the accord would result in an estimated:

• 400K overall shortfall of jobs
• 200K manufacturing shortfall of jobs
• $30K total income loss for a family of four
• $2.5 Trillion aggregate GDP loss
• 13-20% electricity expenditure increase

So, this agreement is un-Constitutional and a bad deal to boot. Moreover, the claim is the agreement will reduce global temperatures by 0.02 degrees Celsius over 50 years. Even if this prediction, based on junk science, were accurate, it’s pretty inconsequential for climate. But the consequences for humans are great, requiring that we reduce our standard of living significantly for the benefit of international fat cats who benefit from scams such as carbon credits.

That last part is why the squeals are so loud. Bravo to the President.

Shut Down the Government – Forever!

We are told that if the Republican majority in Congress doesn’t cave to the demands of the Democrat minority, it is the Republicans who will be responsible for shutting down the government when the Democrats filibuster the spending bills needed to keep the government open.

First off, the whole government shutdown hysteria is nonsense. The government shuts down every weekend when “non-essential” employees go home. When there is a budget related shutdown only the non-essential services are curtailed and only the non-essential employees are sent home. After the shutdown all back wages are paid to those employees. Services like delivering Social Security checks goes on unabated during a shutdown.

Democrats scream they are opposed to a shutdown. But wait! Haven’t Democrats and Leftists in particular, told us, for many years, that the Constitution is illegitimate, that it was written by old white slave owners and was created to enshrine slavery and protect the privileges of the rich at the expense of the poor? And, besides, we are told, it is obsolete because the Founders used muskets and we have rifles and the Founders couldn’t anticipate the Internet or the airplane. (All of that is false in many ways of course.)

Why can they have it both ways? If the Constitution is illegitimate and irrelevant and anachronistic, why oppose cutting down it’s creation? Let’s tear it up and, with it, the government it established. Let’s give the Left what they claim to want, no slave-owner, obsolete Constitution and, therefore, an un-united states without a federal government.

Sure, there are some, few, negatives. But if we sell off the national parks and the military, another organization the Left hates, to the people or the states, we may be able to pay off the federal obligations to current Social Security recipients. The remaining debt can be apportioned among the states with the “blue” states getting the lion’s share, since they are such fans of spending.

But, think of the benefits of a permanent government shutdown, a real one, not the fake ones we have been having: No income tax, no alcohol tax, no regulations, no federal mandates to schools, no bailouts of banks or cities. The plusses just might outweigh the minuses, such as no federal military.

I suspect my idea will fail to take hold. As a compromise, I propose we have sanctuary cities and sanctuary states where I can go to be shielded from federal taxes and regulations. That idea is so very modest I’m sure it will be supported by both Democrats and Republicans.

 

The DNA of the Left

The election of Donald Trump has brought the crazies out of the woodwork, from the “nasty” Ashley Judd to the Madonna terrorist threat to shutting down airports and riots at Berkley. This was predictable by anyone who understands the history and philosophy, that is, the DNA, of the Left.

Karl Marx

The Left has many factions. In part, that’s to give them the ability to morph into whatever form they need to take for a particular situation. But there are commonalities among them all. The first and foremost is their root philosophy of Marxism. Key elements of Marx’s and Engels’ thinking surface regularly in statements made by Leftists.

For instance, when preaching about the minimum wage, we are told that business owners have excess profits. In debates about international affairs we are told the US is imperialist or exploiting resources of other countries.  We are regularly told the Left is “scientific” while the Right is made up of “science deniers.”

All these claims were made by Marx in his exposition of Scientific Socialism (a tem coined by Engels to describe Marxism) where we are told that all value is created by labor and Capitalists exploit labor by taking profits that, morally, belong to labor. Moreover, Marx lectured us that the Capitalist, to survive, must exploit foreigners through imperialism and war. This is why the Left is anti war during Republican administrations (but not so much during Democrat ones). And finally, Marx posited that his system was scientific and all other social theories were not.

Furthermore, Marx and other socialists theorized that history was determined by class struggle between the various “classes” throughout history. In Marx’s time the classes were the Capitalists and proletarians, or workers. This is why the Left once marched in lockstep with the union movement.

But then, in the 20th Century, Marxist determinism started to break down. First off, the biggest Socialist state, the Soviet Union, did not grow out of a Capitalist society, as Marxists predicted, but out of a Feudal system. Second, Socialist economies did not out-preform Capitalist ones, as Marxists predicted, but the opposite occurred. Finally, the workers of the world did not unite, at least not behind the Marxists. Knowing where their bread and butter came from, workers, even union workers, opposed Socialists, for example, in the conflicts between “hard hats” and protesters in the ’60s and ’70s in the US.

What oh what was a good Commie to do? Salvation came in the form of a group of German dissidents who formed the Frankfurt School. Their big contribution to Socialism was “Critical Theory” and how it changed Marxism to explain the 20th Century failures.

This new thinking is responsible for all modern Leftist dogma. Instead of claiming that Capitalists and workers constituted the struggling classes, we now have the Capitalists versus women, minorities and the LGBTQ individuals. The more recent morphing is white men, versus the aforementioned groups. This explains some of the nuttier Leftist positions, such as defending suicide bombers, choosing Hamas over Israel, and so forth. The Left, true to Marx and Frankfurt, classify all people into tribes and then mark these tribes as good guys or bad guys in the great Class Struggle. So terrorists, because they are not Europeans, must be classified as the good guys.  Violent Black Lives Matter members considered good guys, only because they are not white, and Berkley rioters are justified only because Trump ran as a Republican.

Normal people have trouble understanding how the Left, that still claims a monopoly on science, can defend the indefensible and advocate for riots and atrocity. Simple. We only have to turn to a prominent member of the Frankfurt School and inventor of Critical Theory, Max Horkheimer, who said, according the Wikipedia:

‘The facts which our senses present to us are socially performed in two ways: through the historical character of the object perceived and through the historical character of the perceiving organ. Both are not simply natural; they are shaped by human activity, and yet the individual perceives himself as receptive and passive in the act of perception.”

The translation is that there is no objective reality. More specifically, a “wise Latina” on the Supreme Court is expected to judge differently than a black justice (Clarence Thomas doesn’t count) or a white one. A man cannot discuss women’s issues, a white can’t discuss black or Hispanic issues, a straight can’t talk about gays and so forth. We each, thanks to our tribe, our group, our class sees a very different reality. Except that the reality of the “ruling class” the rich, the white, the corporations, is corrupt, and the reality of ethnic minorities, gays, women Palestinians is virtuous. So the “news” media can make up stories and Democrat Party operatives can fund demonstrations and riots. Because, after all, what’s true for me isn’t what’s true for you.

In this world of class struggle and polylogism all bets are off. There can be no conversation, much less agreement There can be no justice except “social justice” which is just tribal warfare, not justice. There can be no rules when we each have our own reality. In fact, there can be no science without objective reality. And, of course, there can be no successful “reaching across the aisle.” So the Constitution, the law in general, is moot. All that remains is the great Class Struggle. And since there can’t be a conversation between radically different realities, all that is remains is lies and violence.

The peace and prosperity, the live and let live attitude, that was once taken for granted in America, is not the norm. It’s the exception in human history. Peace, prosperity and freedom are a result of Classical Western philosophy, the Scottish Enlightenment, and the concepts of individual rights, limited government and the rule of law enshrined in the Declaration and Constitution. What the Left delivers, instead, is brutal collectivism, dictatorial tyranny and mindless mob rule, a throwback ideology from a thousand years ago.

 

 

Democrats, Obama Admit Veracity of Wikileaks

President Obama, the Democrat Party and their underling “news” media have been playing up, for days, an alleged Russian computer hack claiming it tilted the election toward Trump. Their evidence is summarized in a document released by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI about current Russian hacking. Hat tip to Slashdot News, my source of the story about the 13 page document which outlines Russian computer exploits in 2015 and 2016, including breaking into the systems of a US political party and into one or more individual computer accounts as late as November of 2016.

That document is very vague on important details such as which political party was hacked, which individuals were compromised and if the hack has any connection with the Wikileaks release before the election that got Conservatives and some Republicans up in arms over the nefarious activities of the Democrat party and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

So, we don’t know if the FBI report is referring to the Democrat Party, Hillary’s campaign manager, John Podesta (who’s emails went public thanks to Wikileaks) or Wikileaks itself. In addition, the legacy media swept the Wikileaks revelations under the rug, so the only people who knew about them were mostly Conservatives and others who patronized talk radio and new media and who were likely Trump voters anyway.

The public has, in my opinion, been manipulated by the media, through association, into assuming some false and some unproven claims. They include that, somehow, the Russians hacked voting machines (considered dubious to impossible)  or that the Russians were the source of the Wikileaks documents. That assumption has been denied by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Finally, the media would have you believe that the Wikileaks release or the equally unreported Project Veritas investigation of the Hillary campaign made a difference anyway.

However, neither President Obama, nor the Democrat Party, nor the Clinton Campaign, none of them, have questioned the accuracy or honesty of the Wikileaks release or the Project Veritas video evidence. The video evidence is pretty hard to dispute. But I think the reason they have not disputed the veracity of the Wikileaks information is the fear that a whistleblower will come forward to confirm it, so why even try. Assange has said he got the information from a Democrat insider concerned about a Hillary Presidency. There are suspicions that insider has been silenced. But there may be others.

Look at the bright side: The Democrats, 25 years after the end of the cold war, finally admit the Russians may be a threat. Democrats, after vehiment denials for several years, admit there could be election fraud. Democrats and the President, by focusing on “hacking” are admitting that the damning content of the Wikileaks release is truthful. That content points to a completely corrupt, malicious and dishonest Democrat Party.

A Vote for Hillary is a Vote for What?

What does she stand for except power, corruption and a talent for lying to her supporters?

The Coming Dark Age

As I write this, Hillary Clinton leads in the polls to become the next President of the United States. Clinton supporters are unaware or ignore the nature of their candidate and the machine she controls. One does not have to read Dinesh D’Souza’s books, such as “Stealing America,” or “Clinton Cash” by Peter Schweizer to suspect something dirty about Hillary Clinton. Here is a recent release by Project Veritas on the felonious activities of the Clinton Campaign:

 

Hillary Clinton was an admirer of Saul Alinsky, who, besides writing “Rules for Radicals” worked for the Capone gang in Chicago. I don’t know if Alinsky was a true believing “radical” or if that was just a con to get mindless supporters for his criminal shake-down operation.

Similarly, I don’t know if Hillary Clinton is a true believing Communist or if her rhetoric to the public is just a con job to cover her criminal behavior that includes the Clinton Foundation money laundering scheme, sales of US technology to China and others or her pay for play operation with foreign governments. Certainly the WikiLeaks email release contains strong evidence that her public pronouncements contradict her private discussions with banks and other large corporations.

But the bottom line, in any case, is this: The likely election of Hillary Clinton will enmesh a huge crime operation into the most powerful political position in the world, a position that controls the largest economy and military in the world. It’s easy to see why Hillary would be an opponent of the Second Amendment, put into the Constitution as a last defense against Federal tyranny. If tyranny is your plan, the Constitution is your enemy.

Hillary’s economic plan, if you read between the lines, is little more than a transfer of taxpayer money to special interests and has no hope of improving the economy, as this article by Peter Morici explains.

Perhaps you don’t believe that Hillary is a criminal. Perhaps you believe she is a savior, defender of women and the poor. If so, you really haven’t been paying attention. Even a superficial investigation of the public record on Hillary yields a long line of criminal scandals from her eviction from the Watergate committee for corruption, to the Whitewater scam to the Travel Office scandal and the Cattle Futures scheme, etc. The Great Defender of Women has been accused of threatening women, having their homes broken into, threatening their children and killing pets.

If you think the FBI cleared her of criminal activities you didn’t hear or passed over the details of Director Comey’s talk to the nation. And you missed this exchange in Congress:

Her private email server violated several Federal statutes including the Federal Records Act, the Espionage Act, the Freedom of Information Act and probably others, all felonies, some with jail time. The obvious reason for her server was to mask her criminal activities. Had she been indicted for her crimes she would have brought many others in the Administration down with her because, obviously, they would have seen the origin of her emails to them and been guilty of violating some of the same laws she did. Defenders of the Clinton Foundation have yet to explain how, out of millions, maybe billions donated to Haiti, the county only received two to three percent of the money. That’s only one example.

The only thing I am certain of is that, under Hillary Clinton, we will descend closer to third world status, lose most of our individual rights as Americans, including free speech, religion and arms, face a Federal bankruptcy due to the $20+ Trillion in operating debt and over $200 Trillion in unfunded liabilities due by min-century. And what I am most certain of is when the calamity happens Capitalism and Conservatives will be blamed.

 

Leftist Memes – I

I’m starting a series based on the “irrefutable” posts on social media created by Leftists. Today, let’s examine one from mxviv – Mx Justin Vivian Bond – “I’ve been pretty quiet on the presidential race because I figure you’re already not voting for Trump if you’re following an agnostic transsexual gospel singer who writes for a TV show about a liberal Jewish trans parent. HOWEVER, we must must MUST support Hillary if we want to stomp out the flames of this dangerous and hateful movement.”

Show me where anyone has proposed ending all those programs, not that ending most wouldn’t be a bad idea. You would need an act of Congress first before a President could act, unless, of course, the President is Obama. But I’ll bite on a few.

EPA: Every state has one, presumable to handle the vast majority of local environmental issues. Meanwhile the Federal EPA has severely overstepped its mandate and is imposing dictatorial power over much of American commerce, including locally, outside it’s jurisdiction. The organization could be reduced significantly.

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid: They are all going bankrupt and are unsustainable with projected obligations of $200 Trillion in a $18 trillion a year economy by mid-century. If something isn’t done, they will end all by themselves through failure, and take everyone with them, especially the poor that the Left claims to represent. These huge transfer payment programs need serious reform or replacement.

The minimum wage hurts the poor and the economy and every state has one anyway. The Federal minimum wage is supposed to only apply to employers that engage in interstate commerce. The Left argues that includes everyone.

Department of Education: What does it accomplish? Are SAT scores improving? Are poor kids getting good educations? The department merely imposes Federal mandates on local school districts, to no positive result.

Federal unions: They are incompatible with the Civil Service system and were opposed by FDR because collective bargaining with politicians exploits taxpayers who have no voice in the process. The Left depends on them for funds and support, now that private sector unions have withered away, so they are big political donors with conflicts of interest.

What energy has the Dept of Energy produced? Outside of managing a few national labs they don’t help.

High Speed Rail grants: Why is it a federal function to tax all Americans and send money to well-connected communities? This kind of spending is meant to buy votes in population centers at the expense of the rural and less well off taxpayers.

Fannie and Freddy are corrupt and manipulate the housing market. Their rules were largely responsible for the housing bust. In addition they provide revolving door jobs to retired politicians.

Corporation for Public Broadcasting: Insignificant budget but why is this a federal function when there are thousands of sources of media today? Ditto funding for arts and humanities which means funding for Leftist ideology.

Citizens United is about free speech for groups of people and organizations, you know, like Unions already have as well as the New York Times, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, MSNBC, CNN, Hollywood and even the Democrat Party. But the Left is very threatened by a few folks making an anti-Hillary movie.

I guess it is about 80 years of a Progressive movement, a movement that has increased the number of Americans in poverty, reduced the number of Americans working, presided over the downward trend in SAT scores and education in general, is responsible in the recent uptick in urban violence, largely responsible for our $19,000,000,000,000 in debt and our $200,000,000,000,000+ in unfunded liabilities, mostly due to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and, now, Obamacare because buying votes for the political elite is more important than our future. The Progressive movement can also take a lot of credit for our open borders, pushing wages down for the poorest among us and introducing MS13 and other criminals into our cities. The Progressive movement spawned Barack Obama and his administration, a failed administration internationally and domestically, with the slowest post recession economic growth since the Great Depression, leaving tens of millions of Americans out of work seven years after Obama’s “recovery.”

The Left asks how we can survive without all these laws and tax funded organizations that create tens of thousands of pages of regulations a year and, most importantly, steal your freedom. I think, without most of them, we would prosper.

Bathroom Wars II – Harassment

The basic tactic of the Left is harassment. If you are at a party and someone moves well within your personal space, you might move away from them to a more comfortable distance. What if they then not only move closer to you but begin poking you in the ribs? Perhaps you again move away from them. And, what if, again, they follow you and continue to poke you in the ribs?

This is what the Left does. No matter what concessions are made for their philosophy or ideology, they continue to push the envelope and continue to invade our comfort zone. You would think that after the Supreme Court declared gay marriage a right in all 50 states the Left would take a short break and celebrate. Nope. They came up with something else to use to poke us in the ribs.

The Obama administration on May 13th, 2016 declared that all institutions that receive federal funding must allow men who “self identify as women” to use the women’s restroom or lose funding. Let’s put the several Constitutional issues aside for a moment. Discussing the Constitution would be appropriate but would ignore the fine point, that the motivation for this edict has nothing to do with civil rights, transgender people, fairness or anything reasonable. It’s only about “fu**ing with our heads” as my crude college classmates would say. It’s about establishing social superiority by the Left and their continuously moving into our personal space, this time literally, and daring us to do something about it.

Americans are a polite and kind people so are easily preyed upon by this Leftist tactic of attacking the culture while instilling guilt. It’s past time we stopped putting up with these Alynsky tactics and stood our ground, maybe stepping into the Left’s personal space a little. The alternative is to have the rule of law destroyed completely and the social compact with it.

Just so you know I’ve thought about it, here are the Constitutional issues:

1. The Obama rule is, effectively, a law, and only Congress can pass laws.
2. The Obama rule puts conditions on existing funding and, therefore, violates a previous Supreme Court decision stating that the executive cannot put conditions on existing funding that were not put there by Congress.
3. The Obama rule violates the 10th Amendment that gives the states jurisdiction over matters not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution. (Old fashioned view I know)

However, I reiterate, this isn’t best addressed by referring to the Constitution or legal precedent. This is addressed by understanding that the Left is not well meaning, not for good, not for rights, not for gays or blacks or women. Those groups are just pawns. The Left is for raw, fascistic, political power over all of us, including transgendered people, with the benefit that we then become serfs who toil without end while they become our lords and masters who confiscate our property, our wealth and our dignity.

 

Bathroom Wars – “Don’t Sh*t and Old Sh*tter”

The Federal “Justice” department has threatened and is now suing North Carolina over it’s more than reasonable “bathroom law” which states, simply, that people with a penis should use the men’s room and people with a vagina should use the ladies’ room. The North Carolina law was in response to a law passed in Charlotte ordering all bathrooms to be “gender” neutral.

Given my complete cynicism and disdain regarding the Leftist agenda, motives and reasoning, I call the the Justice Department actions pure bunkum. I’m not saying they can’t jail people or punish them. I’m saying they don’t give two cents about gay or lesbian people or transgendered people just as they don’t care about black people or anyone else. This whole controversy is no more than a temporary tool to mess with our heads, divide us and help permanently destroy the legal basis of our Republic. The goal, of course, is political power and turning us into surfs of Leftist elites.

The proper response is not just to counter sue, as North Carolina did, but to redirect the Saul Alinsky tactics back at Loretta Lynch and Barak Obama. I suggest a “sh*t in” (Alynsky’s term) where mobs of concerned citizens, consisting of both men and women, clog Federal Government toilets. The braver men and women should go to the opposite sex’s toilet. The Robert F. Kennedy Justice building should be the first building considerd for the consciousness raising and fumigation.