Israel, The Fog Of War

 https://spectator.us/topic/israel-worrying-descent-into-violence/

I like the Spectator because it admits it has a conservative bias (like there is such a thing as truth, life has meaning,  etc) ... that old fashioned stuff, while it valiantly tries to be even handed. 

This column admits that it is "possible" that Netanyahu had a hand in this escalation. It is clear however that violence in the region is a way of life. Israel isn't going away, and the Arabs are going to continue to attempt to erase it. It is widely thought that Israel has nuclear subs with nuclear missiles, in which case, "erasing" Israel would almost certainly result in the destruction of Tehran, and possibly Mecca. 

Muslims see that as a good thing. If they destroy Israel, and Israel kills them,  they are assured  that Muslim heaven will have a severe  run on virgins. Given that Muhammad's favorite wife had the pleasure of the marriage being consummated when she was  age 9. Does Allah simply create more virgins millions of Muslims are annihilated by nuclear fire? It has never been clear to me what female Muslim martyrs get, but I suppose that is not of any concern in their system. 

The Muslim respect for women knows no bounds. The American left just loves Islam, were women caught in adultery and gays are stoned. OTOH, they hate Christians that espouse horrible things like loving your enemies. 

If you think about how the left looks at lots of things ... like assuming we won't have an energy problem if we get rid of all fossil and nuclear, and go to wind and solar, perhaps this actually makes sense in context? 

The Woke CIA

 

Tucker gives us some "hope a dope" that this may all be a deep fake. (ha, ha)

When the world is insane, and lest a little laugher at the insanity might improve your mood! 

Killing Freidman

 Link to NR column.

A little hard to do since he died in 2006, but the dead are a major part of the Cadaver In Chief's constituency ... could the dead be the opposition? Things like ideas and principles are easy to ignore, but they often take over when you really desire to ignore them most (age and death being great examples). 

Milton Friedman, whose empiricism led him to embrace free-market public policy, was the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century. But Biden has a weird habit of treating Friedman as a devilish spirit who must be exorcised from the nation’s capital. For Biden, Friedman represents deregulation, low taxes, and the idea that a corporation’s primary responsibility is not to a group of politicized “stakeholders” but to its shareholders. “Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore,” Biden told Politico last year. “When did Milton Friedman die and become king?” Biden asked in 2019. The truth is that Friedman, who died in 2006, has held little sway over either Democrats or Republicans for almost two decades. But Biden wants to mark the definitive end of Friedman and the “neoliberal” economics he espoused by unleashing a tsunami of dollars into the global economy and inundating Americans with new entitlements.

As we can see from the Cadaver administration, reality seemingly isn't running the show either.  

The Horror Of America

 https://www.newyorker.com/news/on-religion/a-pennsylvania-lawmaker-and-the-resurgence-of-christian-nationalism

The left is very concerned about any hint of patriotism. They have made it clear that when there was an "America", it was "institutionally racist", founded on whiteness, sexism, and noxious combination of horrors like patriotism, Christianity, the nuclear family, rule of law, capitalism, etc. 

The rather long linked column lays these threats to Wokeistan out very clearly using the example of a fairly obscure Pennsylvania legislator, Doug Mastriano. The following gives some idea of the horror of seeing Muslims as a threat. 

By the nineties and two-thousands, many white evangelicalshad come to understand Islam to be the primary threat to America. “White evangelicals were already worried about the growth of Islam, especially beginning in the seventies with the Arab-Israeli war and the rise of oil,” Sutton told me. “What 9/11 shifts is that Muslims are no longer just a threat to Israel but a direct threat to the United States.” This hostility also turned on Muslim communities in America. At megachurches, pastors preached about the spread of “sharia law.” Secular liberalism and movements for social justice were also seen as threatening. “In the early two-thousands, among conservative pastors, you’d often hear that the gays are softening up our society in preparation for Islam,” Michelle Goldberg, the author of “Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism,” told me.

The Cadaver In Chief (Biden) has labeled "White Supremacists" as the greatest terrorst threat to Wokeistan.  Apparently in the past, he was deluded to thinking that Islamic extremis were a threat, but he is woke now. 

The idea that that old tired nation of "America" was as recently as the early 2Ks considered to be "exceptional", or even (horror!) "under God", is abhorrent to the woke elite like the New Yorker. 

As BLM states, "Silence is Violence". If you fail to speak out against the vanished "America", you are an enemy of Wokeistan. 

Get your mind right!

Souls In The Twilight, Scruton

https://newcriterion.com/issues/2019/5/scrutons-souls

The review maybe goes into a bit too much detail of the book. I'm not sure you can access the whole review outside of a Criterion subscription, but if you can sneak it in, it is worth it ... maybe even with one of those "free introduction subscriptions" ... easy to get into, hard to get out of. So much of life is that way. 

A good summary of the book is "elegiac" -- a lament, haunting, wistful. 

If I wasn't such a fan of now deceased Scruton, I would likely not have purchased it. I'm glad I did, I see it as an elegy for Sir Roger. 

Bonhoeffer, Metaxis

 Since I read this on Kindle, here is a link to my highlights and notes on Goodreads.

Here is a link to decent review of the book.

A major part of the book is documenting Bonhoeffer's deep theological challenge of living our faith in Christ. His question of "What is the church"?  is directly applicable today. Is the church a social organization of people that gather together on Sunday to be entertained, to be identified as "virtuous", "woke", etc or is it a set of committed, confessing, devoted followers of Christ who humbly seek to live their lives increasingly in his example of being wholly human and wholy holy (spiritual)?

The very troubling part of the book is how easy it is to map Nazi Germany to "America" today -- which is much the same as Nazi Germany not being "Germany". We are clearly no longer the Constitutional Republic that we were founded as. We are largely a fascist pagan state. Hitler killed 6 million Jews, our holocaust of abortion has killed 60 million babies.  

In Nazisim, the ideology of Fascism -- massive government bureaucracy, media control, church control, big business cronyism, the judicial system, education all collaborating to create creeping totalitarianism; was combined with nationalism, racism, paganism, and idolatry (for the swastika and the person of Hitler). 

Today, massive government bureaucracy, media, liberal churches, big business, the judiciary, the educational system, etc are combined in censoring ("cancelling") alternate views, paganism through "wokeism", and increasing idolatry through symbols like rainbows, BLM, the earth (environmentalism), masks, etc. covered here. 

So far we are missing the "strongman focus, our "Hitler", who the mass of the population worship. Is that a requirement?, or will worship of wealth, pleasure, etc, and the people who embody those (Musk, Bezos, Gates, etc) suffice? 

Some interesting quotes from the book: 

You cannot claim you believe something if you don’t live like you believe it. God is not fooled by our claiming to believe the words of some well-crafted statement of faith—or by our dutiful church attendance—any more than your neighbors are fooled by it, or the devil is fooled by it.

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. God will not hold us guiltless.

God is the one who invented reality, and reality can only be seen truly as it exists in God. Nothing that exists is outside his realm. So there are no ethics apart from doing God’s will, and God—indeed, Jesus Christ—is the nonnegotiable given in the equation of human ethics:

Hitler must be called a Nietzschean, although he likely would have bristled at the term since it implied that he believed in something beyond himself. This clashed with the idea of an invincible Führer figure, above whom none could stand. Still, Hitler visited the Nietzsche museum in Weimar many times, and there are photos of him posed, staring rapturously at a huge bust of the philosopher. He devoutly believed in what Nietzsche said about the “will to power.” Hitler worshiped power, while truth was a phantasm to be ignored; and his sworn enemy was not falsehood but weakness. For Hitler, ruthlessness was a great virtue, and mercy, a great sin.

Here in the early 21st century it is an important book for us to "read and weep" as we ponder it's message. Is our silence violence? 

The Chauvin Babbit Standards

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/04/thoughts-on-the-chauvin-trial-and-verdict.php 

The linked contains a solid analysis of the Chauvin "trial". Yes, the prosecution did well. Yes, the defence did poorly. It was a made for TV "drama", and the script was followed. 

I thought the key point was made first in the linked post. 

This entire case could not have happened just 10 or 15 years ago. The prosecution was driven by the global phenomenon of a bystander video that was posted to social media. In years gone by, there would have been no controversy. George Floyd would have been recorded as the 5,000th or so opioid death in Minnesota.

I propose the following as what the "standards" of law enforcement in Wokeistan are.:

The standard for police being involved in the death of a black man in any way during attempted or actual arrest is for them to be maximum "imaginable" crime, after with the assumption will be “Guilty until proven innocent beyond any doubt.” (prove there are no unicorns beyond any doubt, prior to a not guilty verdict)

The “Chauvin amendment to standard” : “If declared guilty a priori by public officials, large lawsuit awards, threats of rioting and looting, killing jurors, etc. Useless “deliberation” must be short.

Note: The standard for the killing of an unarmed white woman military veteran by police shall be, “no charges filed, identity of officer not to be released”. ( The Ashley Babbitt standard)

Wright vs Babbit

 https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/04/15/police-mistakes-and-difference-between-wright-and-babbit-shootings-column/7225813002/

It's so obvious it really doesn't require any more explanation -- "it's literally black and white". 

Of course, “weapons confusion” cases are often caused by an officer’s acting out of “fear, mistake, panic, misperception, negligence, or poor judgment.” Yet, in one case an officer is charged and in the other the officer is cleared.

Kimberly Porter, Resisting Arrest

 Choosing a firearm vs a taser is a bad mistake. This video gives a little insight as to why officers may feel some pressure in these situations. 

Have you ever confused left vs right? If you have, consider how being in a high pressure situation that could cost your life might affect your ability to choose the proper hand. 

Chris Rock provides some practical insight on how to not get your ass kicked in a police interaction here. It would also very much decrease your chances of getting shot. 

The person resisting arrest HAS A CHOICE! They make the decision to put their own life, AND THE OFFICERS life at risk. The officer -- committed to doing his/her job, protecting the community, and likely other officers at the scene, really does not have a choice. 

This PL post discusses the Duante Wright shooting and officer (Kimberly Porter) being charged. 

So why would anyone become or stay a police officer? 

The Dollar Demise

https://americanconsequences.com/kim-iskyan-the-death-of-the-dollar/ 

I've been predicting the death of the dollar for a long time -- when will the global economy pull the plug on the ailing dollar? 

And greenbacks are the world economy’s most important medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value. If they don’t use U.S. dollars, it’s a lot more difficult – and expensive – for countries, companies, and people to buy oil or gold, sell toys or cars, or invest in hotels or bridges.

At a gut level we all understand this. Inflation is vastly understated -- look at your medical and insurance bills for example. Look at taxes on your internet and cell phone bills, and the increasing cost of the services themselves. Everything with few exceptions is rising in price, and it is rising faster than whatever you put in your savings. The government reports the inflation numbers, and they claim they do COLA (Cost Of Living Adjustments) for things like Social Security, military and government pensions, inflation protected bonds (TIPs) etc. Artificially keeping those numbers and interest rates artificially low is a way to heavily tax the masses without letting the "little people" know.

Put it all together, and 78% of all dollars that have ever been made, have been created over the past 12 months. (And… none of that, of course, includes the proposed $2 trillion infrastructure plan announced by the White House in late March.)

The federal deficit is forecasted to hit 15% of GDP in 2021, the biggest deficit since World War II. That’s compared with 2.4% as recently as 2015… and 9.7% in 2009, in the depths of the global financial crisis.

Debt, like most degenerative diseases, doesn't happen quickly, although also like degenerative diseases, when the end does come, that will be quick.  All of a sudden, Bitcoin or some other digical currency is very likely to replace it. 

Most likely is that the U.S. dollar continues to be nudged out of the ring. The other reserve currency options – euro, yen, renminbi, digital renminbi – may become more palatable in relation to a debauched dollar. And in time, bitcoin – or a future cryptocurrency standard-bearer – may also be used as a reserve currency.

When that happens (and it is inevitable unless policies drastically change)  the dollar will drop in value very quickly. Something that cost $1 will cost $1.50,  $2?,  $5? ... no real way to know.