Austere Religious Scholar?

“Austere Religious Scholar at Helm of Islamic State dies at 48” was the headline for the Washington Post announcing the death of Abu al-Bagdadi at the hands of United States Special Operations Forces.  The actual obituary referred to him as “terrorist-in-chief” but that was quickly stealth edited to “extremist leader of Islamic State.”  For those who don’t seem to recall Abu al-Bagdadi he was the founding head of ISIS.  A group known for the slaughter of innocents throughout the middle east and Africa.  He liked beheadings, torture, burning people alive, raping and just plain old killing of anyone who didn’t fall in line with his world views.

Almost two years ago the Washington Post decided its new motto should be “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”  I wrote a piece on that just the other day.  It would seem the agenda of the WP is not to preserve democracy so much as it is to cast history in any light that discredits President Trump.  One can argue the news media has always been jaded, but the current crop of woke young journalists don’t seem to have a grasp on how to use the language to do much more than present the woke version of a story.  Facts be damned.

Democracy Dies in Darkness

Or so says the Washington Post.  The news outlet made this their motto in 2017 as they ramped up their anti-Trump coverage of the Presidency.  It was not new to them, or even new to Bob Woodward who’s been using it for some time.  Bob supposedly read it in a Judge’s decision on a 1^st Amendment case and liked the way it sounded.  The interesting thing with the news media, in this case the Washington Post, is how selectively they shine their investigative lights and how little of the darkness they are actually willing to illuminate.

If they were actually concerned with the lighting up the darkness of government operations they would be editorializing for the transparency of the Congress as it decides whether or not the President has committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” worthy of removal from office.  Or they would work to substantiate the information provided by leakers to remove any political agenda either they or the leaker might have.  Rather, they are content sit back and report selectively in what can only be called an agenda-based approach.  There is usually some brief report on what the DNC wants to be pushed out to the public, with very little critical analysis.  Any challenge to the reporting is drowned out by opinion pieces on the latest political abuses by the White House, or the GOP.

Other events, some often central to the workings of government receive nary a word in the paper.  The fact the Congress cannot seem to meet even its most basic of responsibilities is passed by as a non-issue.  The responsibility I speak of is the approval of a fiscal year budget prior to the end of the current fiscal year.  As the sole authority to spend federal funds and incur debt this should be JOB ONE for the Congress, but it never is.  Where is the Washington Post on highlighting that failure?  Perhaps because it happens almost every year it is no longer considered newsworthy unless someone decides to shut down the government by not passing a continuing resolution.

In related news:

This past week I learned a new word – thruple.  Apparently, a thruple is a relationship between three people.  Among the political and media social elites thruples are an okay thing, even if there is no equality among the participants.  This comes at the same time as the #metoo movement and grievance groups are railing about how white males are suppressing the advancement of minorities through their mere whiteness.  Apparently, questioning either the morality or the ethical failure of a white female engaging in a relationship with a staffer she employs is beyond question.

Finally, I saw a meme this past week that said something like “We used to believe ignorance was a result of a lack of information.  The internet has proven that not to be true.”  How true and how sad that actually is.

Why is Due Process Important?

We are a nation of laws and a consistent process aimed at protecting the rights of the individual has been a mainstay of our national legal process since our inception.  True, it is a concept deeply flawed by the humans who are supposed to implement those laws and oversee the fair and impartial justice under them, but it is so far the best mankind has come up with.  But if that process does not apply to all our citizens then what is to say it should apply to any of our citizens?

So, we come to the potential impeachment of the President.  The question before us and the Congress is should he be afforded the same protections we are supposed to guarantee to someone accused of a felony or are his “high crimes and misdemeanors” somehow beyond the protections of the U.S. Constitution as it is amended?

From my lowly vantage point, it appears the Congress is clearly divided between political parties and this issue of national importance has been made into a political football with one side writing and changing the rules and the other side crying foul.  It has become a pure political theater with the highest possible stakes.  If it continues, as it seems likely, it will inevitably set a precedent where whoever is president will be subject to the whims of the mob, and there will be no such thing as due process. 

Those who seek to remove the President have shown little regard for respecting the institution of our electoral process and are so emotionally committed to overturning the last election they see no downside to this approach of impeaching someone they despise.  I suspect this emotional approach is similar to the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, where those of the North were so outraged over the Civil War they would destroy anyone other than Abraham Lincoln who stood in the way of their exacting their financial vengeance, unity of the nation be damned. When that happens, as it must, what will be the impact of justice for the common man or woman accused of anything from a petty to horrific crime? 

If many of us distrust the fairness of the legal system today, think of how that will grow when we see not even the supposedly most powerful individual in the country can expect the protections afforded by adherence to a legal due process.

On The Wrong Side of History

The other day The Honorable Ms. Ocasio-Cortez tweeted out something or other about those who work for President Trump being on the “wrong side of history.”  I had to pause for a minute or two so as not to spit out my coffee over that deep thought.  This statement, coming from a representative of a generation who believes they needn’t study history and can rewrite the past to reflect the political thinking of today is truly laughable.

By all indications from the media who we all know they are the Guardians of Democracy (‘cause that’s what they keep telling us), the millennial generation has set themselves up as the truth givers of America’s morality, even if it means denying biological fact and indoctrinating children into the suitability of alternative sexual orientations.

You know who is on the wrong side of history?  Those who would corrupt legal processes to gain and maintain power.  They are the people who cry loudest about the abuse of power while rallying the mob to corrupt those legal processes so they may gain the power themselves.  That is unless they win.  Then they get to write the history as they would like.

If you would like a good example of how this works, I recommend watching the first episode of an old HBO series called John Adams.  In this episode, we see the Sons of Liberty, led by Sam Adams railing against the British, while his cousin John attempts to walk a centrist line based on the law.  In this scene, John Hancock calls for a British Agent to be tarred (and feathered).  That is how mob rule works.  Not so much different now then it was then.

The question for all of us in society today is who will be the heroes of tomorrow since the great moral questions and the political climate is really about control of long-standing political privilege and power.  Will it be those outsiders who attempt to use a corrupt system to turn it against itself, or will it be those party loyalists who appeal to the mob?

Climate Change Hysteria

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has the most amazing twitter feed.  She was showing one of her town hall meetings to talk with what is supposed to be her constituents when this occurred.

I'll be the first to admit I don't know whether this woman is sick or just a troll, the fact we've come to the point where anyone thinks about this as an option to solve the whole climate change debate shows how the fear-mongering of the political left, as well as the idea human life is cheap and disposable, has shaped the discussion on human impact to the climate.

Yea Us.

In my opinion, the fact the audience remained passive and allowed this woman to continue suggests they were at least considering the 
pros and cons of the idea.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez put out a few tweets afterward condemning those who mocked this woman who she says is a mental case.  The fact is the left has conditioned the opposition to these responses by their acceptance of the same thing when someone reacts to a conservative position with insane support seems to be lost on her, as it is with most self-serving politicians.

Again, yea us!

The Dumbest Thing on the Internet Today

This meme is the dumbest thing possible.  You know why?  Because it was posted by someone too dumb to figure out it is illegal to kill school children... period.  It doesn't matter if you use a shotgun with three rounds -- illegal to use to kill school children.  It doesn't matter if you use a machine gun -- illegal to use to kill school children. What about if you use something in between? -- Nope, still illegal.

If you want to argue for gun control, at least use some sense and show why your argument actually improves the safety of those you are trying to protect.  Saying geese have more protections than children just shows you are stupid.

Don't be stupid and expect to persuade anyone who's not stupid.

Transitions

Over the course of almost seven decades on this earth I’ve seen countless transitions in our society.  Some are memorable, some are laughable, and others are best put behind us.  Let’s review.

I was born at the beginning of the 1950s.  We were at war again, this time in Korea as we faced the threats we envisioned from communist expansion.  Here at home, we had Senator Joseph McCarthy attempting to improve his political fortunes by rooting out the communists in our nation.  For some context on this, in the 1930s communism was all the rage among the social elites of Hollywood and the Ivy League.  Joe played on the fears of the nation and the threat of nuclear war to ruin the lives of many good people in an effort to root out the threat of communism to our society.  As we learn in our history various industries created “blacklists” of people who had voiced their support of communism in the pre-WW2 era and during the war when the Soviet Union was an Ally.

In 1952, the nation elected retired General of the Army and President of Columbia University Dwight D. Eisenhower to begin a period of relative calm, albeit with frequent nuclear attack drills at school.  We, as a nation, began to put Senator McCarthy behind us, but its damage had already been done and those identified as communist sympathizers were ostracized.  There also lurked, just below the surface, the issues of racial discrimination and abuse of the minorities in the nation.  We had a large standing military with permanent bases in North Africa, Europe, and the Far East.  The great transition of that decade was the gradual replacement of the New Deal generation leaders in positions of power under Roosevelt to the young Turks who had served in the World War.  Names like Richard M. Nixon, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and John F. Kennedy began to emerge as power brokers on the political stage.  The 1950s are characterized by critics as a “gray decade” where there were no great social upheavals, but that is a false characterization.  The men and woman who had won the World War were busy building their families and chasing the American Dream.  They began the migration of families into the suburbs that continue today.  At the same time, the NAACP successfully challenged the standing policy of “separate but equal” that made the Negros second class citizens despite the amendments specifically passed after the civil war to create a state of equality.  For the record that judgment was “Brown v Board of Education.”

With the election of John F. Kennedy, we see the passing of the torch from one generation to the next.  JFK and his wife were the clear favorites of the social elite and the media fawned over his rise much as English storytellers celebrated King Arthur and Guinevere.  In fact, with his inauguration, Washington DC was crowned the new Camelot.  For three years we had TV tours of the White House and common people across the country strove to emulate the new King and his Queen.  What the media and the nation didn’t pay too much attention to was the role the FBI played in suppressing political dissent and racial equality as J. Edger Hoover kept track of people he deemed dangerous.  Also, the President seemed to stumble from one crisis to another in his foreign affairs.  First, he approved, but failed to support, an invasion of Cuba, then we had a confrontation with the USSR over placement of Intermediate-Range Nuclear Ballistic Missiles in Cuba (in response to ours in Turkey), next the beginnings of the racial struggles of the blacks in the southern states and his rather slow reactions to condemn the political leadership of the states, which were predominately Democratic.  Like Arthur, his reign was destined to be cut short, but the movements of the time went forward under Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Under President Johnson, we saw an increase in civil rights protest and violence in the South, but in Washington, the Republicans supported the President and passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by roughly a 70% to 30% in both houses.  With a few exceptions, the nay votes were mostly by geographical rather than party lines.  The sixties also saw the development of more violent extremism in civil protest over the war and civil rights.  The baby-boomer generation was coming of age, but not yet prepared to replace the generation of the depression and world war.  In fact, it would be another 30 years until that the Greatest Generation would pass the mantle of the Presidency to the baby-boomers.

As the 1960s progressed we heard a lot about the peace movement, but as today the name was mostly an illusion.  The members of the movement weren’t all that peaceful, in fact at times they were violently anti-war.  Despite them, my generation created some great music as we moved away from the swing and country music of our parents into rock and roll and rockabilly of Sun Records, the Motown sounds of Detroit, the harmonies of the Jersey boys and West Coast surfer and car groups, and then the English invasion.  Along the way, the President, Secretary of Defense and his political advisors thought they could micromanage a war and the Asian communists would cooperate.  That war cost LBJ any hope for reelection in 1968 and brought us Richard Millhouse Nixon and the beginnings of the open media condemnation of a particular politician/political party.

One of the things an unfunded war, a race to the Moon, and the great social experiments (the Great Society) of LBJ did was to fuel an economy where inflation began to skyrocket.  By the time Jimmy Carter assumed the office of President we saw interest rates on loans and mortgages routinely sitting in the mid-teens, and prices rising on almost a daily basis.  The government, under Nixon, Ford, and Carter attempted to get control of this issue by setting price controls and price guidelines.  From my perspective, they seemed to do very little to actually improve an economy that saw the large manufacturing enterprises of textiles, clothing, steel, and automotive begin to move their plants overseas where the labor was cheaper.  This was all done with the approval, or benign consent, of the government (both Congress and the Executive) who gave little concern over the individual lives that would be impacted.  

In the 1980s we saw the President enter into a period of deficit spending as he began the process of rebuilding and modernized the military, which had borne the brunt of government spending cuts as the previous administrations had diverted funds to social program and attempted to gain control of a stagnant economy and growing inflation.  The Reagan administration’s position was if you could encourage the expansion of industry the money would ultimately trickle down to the poorer workers.  Of course, this was branded as foolishness by those who knew better but had never been responsible for actual job creation. By the end of the decade, President Reagan had won a cold war that had been going on since the end of the Second World War.  The Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of trying to match the economic power of the U.S.  In 1990 we had moved from a world of competing superpowers to the last remaining superpower.  It was a position that would not last long.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, we began another transition as we sought to downsize the recently bolstered military to divert funding to social programs.  Unfortunately for Iraq they misread the tea leaves and thought they could gain the oil of Kuwait while we were distracted.  I suspect they thought the same old dual superpower standoff would protect them.  They were wrong.  What they presented was the perfect tank war the US had built its conventional military to fight.  They used Soviet tactics and equipment and we had Air-Land Battle doctrine we had trained to for almost 20-years.  It wasn’t even close.

The next transition was the 1992 election where we passed the mantle from the Greatest Generation to the Baby Boomers.  I think anyone looking at governments over the next 30ish years would be dismayed at how poorly the Baby Boomers have handled the governing of this nation.  Whether it is the relaxed sexual standards or the loss of faith as a central basis for morality, we have been less than brilliant at setting a course for the nation that offers it hope for success.  With the ascendency of the Boomers, we have brought with us all the ME ideas that have led us, as parents, to demand participation awards for just showing up.

In the 90s we saw the further refinement of personality politics where the faux moral outrage of one political party fueled the impeachment efforts and division of purpose.  It was to become the springboard for the personality politics we enjoy today.  I can only assume it also serves as the basis for today’s faux moral outrage of the other party since as Newton discovered for every force exerted on a body there is an equal and opposite force. (3^rd law)

Along the way, we have discovered a new enemy fueled by the fundamental Islamic faith, whose followers are willing to die to advance the visions of their faith.  I am not sure how this new zealotry will continue, but the terror networks they create are next to impossible to destroy by conventional state diplomacy.

What my generation passed along to its children is, unfortunately, disrespect for civil discourse and the impressions that only those who agree with you are worth listening to.  We see these lessons every day in the new electronic global village our technological skill has created.  It is an environment our children have grown up with and are much more skilled at manipulating than its inventors of my generation, but it seems to be working differently than its inventors imagined.

We have also indoctrinated our children into the belief that youth have a unique wisdom that surpasses that of the older generations.  Perhaps that comes from the same place as the participation trophies?

As we approach this upcoming election it does not appear the boomer generation is ready to pass the torch or Gen X/Millennial crowds are all that ready to assume it.  What is clear though we have transitioned from an age of cooperation within government to one of open hostility between opposing political beliefs.  Serving their own interests, the media is happy to engage in rumor-mongering rather than factual reporting if it serves to further their corporate and personal political agendas.  In an electronic age speed rather than accuracy is the standard for most news outlets.

I wonder, what and when will be the next transition?