It’s out in the open now. There’s no longer any real pretense of objectivity. Each time the progressive media “report” favorably on something they characterize like this (fairly or not) — and no switch comes down to sting their hands — they grow ever more emboldened. In the Oval Office they know they have someone who believes the very same things as they do, someone steeped in the very same academic indoctrination, someone who was taught to hate the country he now leads. Just like they were taught to hate it — and to self hate — convinced that to do so was liberating, the mark of having been truly educated, of seeing beyond the patriotic mythology into the cold black soul of a racist country whose successes came at the expense of others it had dominated. And they are protected as a result of that ideological kinship. Free to express that hatred. They are on the side of power — unbridled power that has revealed itself to them in ways subtle and direct. They are the ones they’ve been waiting for, they were told. And it invigorates them. It gives them a sense of purpose and momentum. Because through the heart of every leftist runs the blood of totalitarianism, of confirmation bias, of rank bigotry and a mob’s lust for violence, for punishment, for blood, for inflicting suffering on those who dare oppose their designs.
It’s who they are. It’s what they do.
I don’t care who rolls their fucking eyes at my saying this. Circumstances have taught me that in several years, when the political winds allow them to do so, those very same people on “my” side will be saying the very same things I’m writing on now, pretending there wasn’t a time they rolled their fucking eyes at the True Believers, the embarrassing Hobbits who were preventing them from wooing the moderates.
So fuck them.
The frightening truth that so many are pretending not to see is that we’ve seen this kind of scapegoating before elsewhere in the world. By design. Intended to bring about a desired end.
Here, today, the narrative from the neo-Stalinist progressives is that constitutionalists are racial supremacists and paranoid freaks; the Founding Fathers are their false idols; and the founding documents are their fetish. Religion is both their opiate and their cocaine, the thing that simultaneously dulls them into an intellectual stupor and turns them into evangelical zealots bent on demanding obeisance. Taken together, this toxic blend of hateful ignorance makes these slack-jawed clingers to their guns and their religion exceedingly dangerous to “sensible” people who want to live in a “community” wherein “common sense” laws — not the hoary edicts of dead white patriarchal slave owners — hold sway. Rational, cultured, intellectual people want to live in a land that looks forward, to progress, not backward, to a time of tri-cornered hats and oppression of the Other.
This is the propaganda war being launched against you, against me, against we, the people. Or at least, one prong of that war. Because it goes beyond the mere normalizing of a video game playing out a fantasy based (at least partially) around that narrative. It is a “truth” they must construct, then peddle, then reinforce. To demonize the constitutionalists is to demonize the Constitution. And to demonize the Constitution is to ready us for its obviation.
Hold onto your gear and prepare yourselves. Register nothing. Resist them at every turn. Don’t cooperate. Refuse to compromise. Because it is coming. And if you don’t feel it, and prepare for it, more’s the pity.
[…] GOLDSTEIN explores the Narrative. More […]
The next person who says to me, “It can’t happen here,” will get my response, “It IS happening here, right in front of your eyes.”
At a minimum.
Seriously… This rant brought to you by Bioshock Infinite? Yawn
It didn’t take long for Dickhunter to show up. That means you are on target.
BolshiShock was it? Ah yes, so-o-o inspiring.
But then, what about Ann! On Broadway!
Only think of it: fiery Texas twanged single-term leftist female Governor! What a stitch she was! And so very popular she couldn’t beat that dumbass George W. Bush straightup. Now that’s the stuff of high art.
And Ma Richards in 1994 was the last Texas gubnor defeated for re-election; GWB was the first ever to win re-election.
I think you’re right, Jeff. In fact, I know you are, because we are watching it happen to us right now.
Our liberties are being murdered right in front of us.
As Ace says, America is a dumb nation. It is also gutless, stupid, and lazy. And some significant part of it is evil.
Most Americans care more about the latest iGadget than they do about liberty – especially if the Liberal Fascists offer to give it to them in exchange for just a little “liberty haircut” around the edges.
Dude,
Prepare for Insta-launche, set flaps and trim, call out V1 and Vr, weopons free after wheels in the wells.
You are so right. We are already living in a 1984 news speak world. The majority of people only hear the snippets of news on radio (At the half hour), twitter, facebook etc. All major outlets are repeating the propaganda that Republicans/conservatives hate gays, blacks, women etc. which is simply an out right lie. We must call them on the lies. Call them the liars which they are. Anyone who says I am a racist, homophobic, islamophobic etc., would be punched in the face if they accused me of such lies to my face. We must fight back the lies. Cheers.
Obama attends an Easter Service where the “pastor” decides to proclaim
And CNN titles the report “Obama hears hints of politics during Easter sermon”
HINTS??? Partisan slander more like it and the Lamestream media is “la-la-la” fingers in ears.
But no, it’s Dr. Carson that is Blinded by the White
Engage any random lefty on Twitter gets a stock response “You lost, get over it and shut up.”
fuck em
Darleen,
You obviously want women back in the kitchen, being a women and all. What do you know about being a women, you are a conservative.
Cheers,
Jody
Agreed.
Don’t worry though, as soon as we mint 12 million new “naturally conservative” immigrants the country will return to its liberty respecting foundation. Certainly the new Democrat supermajority will recognize that absolute power corrupts and will decide to abandon their authoritarian tendencies. Yep, things are looking up indeed.
Ace ought to know.
Doc Carson necessarily encounters much of the thrust of this propagandistic opposition.
Like Rush says, the Left always tells you who and what they fear.
Quick! Somebody secure the video game rights to the world of The Handmaid’s Tale! At least make some money off of Soros and Buffet.
Indeed. I quit reading Ace and Hot Air last November.
How much pie did you have yesterday?
None. Why? Do I seem sated? Or sugar rushing?
New York Times has a story about the “Amnesia” in China. All about the missing memories of younger Chinese concerning some of the horrific history of China.
Like Tienanmen Square, the purges of the City Dwellers etc.
They lamented about the Chinese teaching their children not LIES about the past history but not even TELLING them about it.
Yet not a word about the selective editing going on today with the State Media and how we all know that what’s going to wind up in our history books won’t come even close to what occurred.
And the NYT is a fundamental part of it.
What ever you had, have some more!
I noted yesterday Darleen that the darling of the left Cesar Chavez was against illegal immigration. He said it undermined labor.
He also had a strange symbol placed on his grave, but the folks at Google, despite all their search algorithms, can’t seem to figure out what it means.
Imagine that?
What alternative do we have to this Liberal Fascism? Complete and utter collapse.
Sundown In America
I haven’t played it yet, but from what I understand from the folks who have they are completely misrepresenting the game.
Imagine that.
Economic nationalism and capitalist cartels. There used to be a word for that, started with “f” I think. Don’t think you can say it in polite company these days, unless you are some kind of wingnut wacko.
As always Jeff, very well stated. Non-participation in the economy is the method I’m working toward. Limit income, limit consumption, limit taxes, limit my money going to the guy on disability who is doing work on the side for cash.
When the stupidest among us rise to the level of power, it’s time to prepare to live on our own ingenuity and let them starve.
Amazing how few really get that.
Jeff, thanks for the link and for the comments.
This is exactly how the Left captures the “low information” voter, with comic-book figures and video-game themes. That’s why TV comedians on Comedy Central have a bigger impact on the many Americans’ views of politics than the nightly news. The entire NPR story is here.
For those who claim that the game has people in it who are worse than Christians, white people and those who revere the founders, the message remains the same. The message is that white people, people of faith and people who want a return to the constitution are dangerous fanatics with dangerous beliefs who would, if they ever got into power would turn the country into a slave-owning theocracy.
Laugh at that if you will, as I did with the Democrats’ “war on women” theme and Biden’s threat that if Romney won blacks would be back in chains. It works. The Big Lie works.
I haven’t played it yet, but from what I understand from the folks who have they are completely misrepresenting the game.
Indeed. As I recall, Bioshock 1 & 2 were played up as “see, the Objectivist fantasy turned into a violent nightmare – as it must, of course, what with that lack of Altruism and self-sacrifice” by the sort of anti-freedom people you’d expect to push that message. In fact, (spoiler, I guess) the downfall of the undersea city of “Rapture” was brought about by a well-meaning do-gooder socialist psychologist, who just needed to control people “for their own good”.
Pure fantasy, of course. Such a creature could never happen in real life.
That Bioshock Infinite takes place in a world where violent, racist ‘Christians’ live in floating cities and revere the founding fathers, while providing ammo to those who’ll say “see, it’s just like the teabaggers!” (*), doesn’t necessarily disparage the founding of this country — the 1912 ‘reality’ is not a natural, inescapable result of the events of 1787. Any more than floating cities are. It’d be like using the Spanish Inquisition to slander Jesus; while the Inquisition was “in the name of Jesus”, I’m pretty sure the good Mr. C would’ve said “now hold on just a minute…” if asked about it.
I very much look forward to playing it. I’m positive that there are deeper texts in it than “hurh! Let’s shoot racist Christian Americans, like that Palin bitch!”
—
* But of course, those people will point to anything bad (see, the KKK, or the Nazis) and say “just like the teabaggers!”, so that’s hardly conclusive.
a mn hobbit?
link
Here’s another take: Is the Video Game Being Called the ‘Best Game of the Year’ Anti-American and Anti-Conservative?
Gah. A few months ago, I recall some idiot on Coruscant general chat blathering how the Sith Empire were “just like” the Republicans on the SWTOR game.
Yeah, the Republicans are ruled by an immortal emperor and has a caste of Force Sensitives running roughshod over everything.
… and that idiot’s name: George Lucas.
Likely not, though I find it amusing how the progs were comparing Palpatine in Ep3 to Bush and yet they have such thunderous applause for Obama’s statist policies.
Of course, they do have a projection problem they try to ignore.
What these assholes do is tell you the meaning behind what you do; what you watch, etc. And the sheeple nod along, believing they are following some profound thought.
Fuck them.
They lamented about the Chinese teaching their children not LIES about the past history but not even TELLING them about it.
Been there, heard the approved-for-public-consumption narrative. They will acknowledge that ‘unfortunate events’ happened back during the Cultural Revolution, that it was a difficult time for everyone, including the leadership, blah, blah blah. All intonated in a very serious, somber, and somewhat remorseful voice.
But as you noted, they never actually get around to telling any of the specifics. Like 30+ million dead.
It’s the ultimate non-admission admission, and solely intended to serve as an impenetrable gloss on the real truth. Ask any particular question and all you will get is mindless repetition. Well, that and an annoyed look. Repeat or rephrase the same question and you’ll be treated like a pariah.
The narrative never serves to further dialogue or discussion, it’s sole purpose is always to end it.
And look for it soon in a neighborhood near you.
Long live the samizdat.
-If having too much pie makes you write as brilliantly as this, Jeff, please send me your address so I can ship you several cases of my Mother’s Boston Cream Pie.
Damn well put.
-The Left’s efforts to demonize us are part of their strategy to delegitimize our way of thinking. They want all of us to view the world through their funhouse mirror. They’ve declared us Outlaws…well…we might as well start living-up to the role, eh?
Resistentiam Tyrannis nunc.
Resistentiam Tyrannis saecula.
PROSCRIPTUS!
Resistance to Tyranny now.
Resistance to Tyranny forever.
OUTLAWS!
[…] you heard? NPR and “Bioshock” are teaming up to destroy all that is good and true about America. A blogger […]
“Long live the samizdat.”
link
Seriously, from a gaming stand-point the game doesn’t even sound like it’s very challenging or even fun to play.
Plus, the whole “Right-Wingers/Christians are such the bigots!” meme is played, pun intended.
Coming soon: The Killing Fields! You are the Khmer Rouge! You kill those nasty peasants and who ever has the largest collection of skulls IS Pol Pot!
Never happen.
Those of you Instalanching in, kindly make an account and visit often. This is one of the few places online — if not the only place online — where the foundational elements of the disease called Progressivism are discussed. Including Republican progressivism.
Progressivism is indeed gutless, stupid, lazy, and evil. It pays to be; the system depends on dependency. We are top-heavied, corrupted, topple-prone, and rotten. Our underpinnings have been reconstructed on sand as a simple edifice to selfish folly and rampant self-deception.
So, we are today’s Rome. It happens and as it does it’s not hard to see it playing out. Grasp that simple truth and everything falls into place. The right v. left paradigm died decades ago. This world is the normal versus the profoundly dysfunctional…
Thomas McDonald, the game reviewer and devout Catholic, has initial impressions here:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godandthemachine/2013/03/bioshock-infinite-first-impressions/
Intentionally or accidentally, Ponzi Bankster America has eaten its own tail; it has entered the Jenga phase all fiat systems must as positive feedback sets in. It is addicted and cannot bring itself to suffer withdrawl.
I have to say that I had nearly forgotten how allergic I am to “moreso”, until reading McDonald’s review.
Neither here nor there, though.
Other than that: the game looks pretty cool and interesting, visually.
I bet NPR would miss the Stalin-like “Governor” of “The Walking Dead”
How wonderful that Irrational Games spent $100 million and 4+ years developing a visually stunning video game that stirs up racial & religious tensions as well as demonizes our founding fathers. Like kids aren’t getting enough of that at school, on TV, etc.
We can tell that Jeff is right because in the last 4-5 years it has become impossible to hold even a simple, superficial conversation with someone on the Left. Even non-brainer topics like the weather devolve into Global Climate Change diatribes and accusations of being a denier. We have been successfully divided and demonized.
I actually don’t give a rat’s ass how much money they spent on that.
On the other hand, just think how many illegal immigrant kids could be educated with that kind of cabbage.
Great post Jeff.
I’m a few hours into Bioshock Infinite. I can see where the press would try to imply that the extreme, bastardized version of patriotism and religious is akin to the Tea Party but it really is not. The society in Infinite are set apart from the rest of society, not trying to integrate, hence the floating city. They revere/worship the founders (there’s not really any mention of the Constitution) and the leader of the society, The Prophet. And while the Prophet makes mention of doing things in God’s name, it is clear that he considers himself God. The society in Infinite is far closer to a militia or an isolationist sect (again, an extreme bastardization of both Christianity and Patriotism). The tea party is interested in positive change from the inside (though they consider themselves outsiders, they are not withdrawn) and while they certainly express a zeal for freedom, liberty and the Constitution, such sentiments were much more commonly held, prior to the Rise of the Hippies and the counter culture movement in the 60’s and 70s.
I also thought the success of Bioshock itself, was initially spurred on by the Ayn Rand like sentiments expressed by Rapture’s founder, Andrew Ryan – his vision of a world where the productive thrived on their own work and the non-productive had no place in society- I think it capivated people- its a common sense solution to an age old problem (Ryan called the non-productive “parasites” which is not an inaccurate description of much of the wellfare society at large) and I recall many gamers claiming they had looked into Atlas Shrugged while playing and after playing Bioshock.
Yeah, Matt, as I told one academic who wrote me trying to defend the storylines of Bioshock, that wasn’t my interest, nor was it the point of my post. What I was concerned with was how NPR was using it’s review of the game as a kind next layer to an already burgeoning leftwing narrative about constitutionalists, et al.
I thought my post made that clear, but evidently it didn’t, as certain people take me for a Luddite hysteric who happily is being replaced by a generation of younger, hipper conservative writers who understand nuance and subtext. See, eg., my follow-up post.
I’m starting to think after 11+ years of this that I’m not really cut out for this medium. It’s not about ideas or engagement or honest debate, as I thought it would be back in its infancy. It’s more now about anxiety of influence and personal positioning.
Sad, really, that I can’t even get conservatives to honestly represent what I write.
“Indeed. As I recall, Bioshock 1 & 2 were played up as “see, the Objectivist fantasy turned into a violent nightmare – as it must, of course, what with that lack of Altruism and self-sacrifice” by the sort of anti-freedom people you’d expect to push that message.”
Actually Bioshock 2 retro-shoehorned in a collectivist “co-founder” of Rapture and tries to explore the evils of unchecked collectivism and notes how much they look like the vils of the unchecked objectivist idealism (which was itself pretty sketchy and idiotically drawn IMHO).
The problem is Atlas Shrugged was supposed to take place in a fifties like era and Ken Levine put his Rapture back in the 1930’s. It insists that objectivists do not hesitate to use force to dominate others and abandon all respect for life and morality apart from darwinian existential struggles in the name of progress through selfishness. That they will LET the citizens choose to run around in gangs killing each other for cheap super powers and they will let scientists purchase orphans and against their will turn them into parasitized mutants who recycle super powers from the dead and keep them in vending machines. Worse Levine suggest that Rapture was born of paranoiac disgust at the sloppy kind hearted unfair world. Well if it was then it’s not much of a stand in for Gault’s Gulch is it? Because Gault’s Guch was a haven from a REAL enemy, and there were no mutants or psychopath artists, or brain washing. The people who came where were invited and free to leave. The collectivist enemy that necessitated their flight and gathering together in hiding was not based on Rand’s paranoia but her own experiences in the Russian Revolution before she fled.
In short Levine made a very SHITTY slanderous, and careless examination of Objectivism and its historical underpinnings. It is very sad and lame that people try to claim that it somehow illustrates a logical progression of objectivist idealism to an inevitable dystopia or that altrusim somehow insulates one from fanaticism. What logical progression? He doesn’t even make a real case. He expects you to stipulate that Objectivism is crazy and leads to crazy things and then points to Rapture, which is not a simulation or model of anything as proof. He merely starts with the fall of rapture and tries to work backwards to a poor stand in for objectivist idealism.
I am not an objectivist but I can see that Bioshock was the product of a philosophical light weight bullshitting about Objectivism and hiding that shoddy cartoonish and clueless hot mess of a n ignorant pastiche behind a lot of pretty/ugly art. Without all the art nouveau/art deco, neon, super powers, resource looting, and big deep sea diver cyborgs it would have had nothing much to recommend it.
And frankly I think that Dishonored did a better job of that with its grimy rotting late 18th century “brass and coal fire” industrial empire motif. It was less shrill.
There is NO DOUBT in my mind that Bioshock Infinite is a slander of “cornball” conservatives (their city looks like Mainstreet at Disney World) and started out as a knock on the border security movement on the usual slander of “you must hate brown people and foreigners” if you oppose illegal immigration.
But I haven’t played it yet. I’m too busy getting back into Borderlands 2.
I think Jeff is correct. Maybe not about the game, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that were to be the case, but about the NPR reaction and what that says about the larger issue.
I do believe however that the true greatness of this country, the thing that sets “us” apart is the core of prinicipled idealism and love of liberty that burns in a great many of it’s citizens. Clearly many who read PW and other blogs are but one example of this.
Yes the core has been taking a beating the last 50 years or so and it only seems to have accelerated lately. But I don’t think it’s going to die off and wither away. Sure “it CAN happen here” like so many other failed societies ala Rome but I don’t think we are headed for that end or the tyranny of a Soviet state or China.
That is our exceptionalism. We wont allow it to happen here. There are too many of us still. The core is not rotten, it’s the yammering fringes that will die and be peeled away. Maybe by force. But hell we’ve done it once and we can do it again. Thomas Jefferson wasn’t full of crap. There has never been a country founded in such a way as ours.
This is unhelpful but I think nails it… http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/03/when_men_forsake_god_tyranny_always_follows.html
Well, I’m no giant fat of Hot Gas, either (been banned there for like forever) but can you honestly say that you depend on the native intelligence, self reliance, bravery, and virtue of the American people to stop or reverse the decline?
How’s that been working out for you?
When the stupidest among us rise to the level of power,
They’re not stupid; they’re power-lustful sociopaths who know exactly what they’re doing.
Oh, almost forgot:
Hey Jeff, you Bible-thumpin Xtianist, you!
There.
[…] dicentra on As the country slides into liberal fascism, conservatives are being set up as the scapegoat […]
It’s also worth noting that our pop-culture scribes and artists are forever imagining totalitarian nightmares resulting from right-wing administrations, but never, ever acknowledge that almost every example of totalitarianism in modern history has the words “socialist” and/or “workers” and/or “people’s” prominently on display in the name of their movement.
The path to totalitarianism requires all power to be concentrated in one place. It is painfully clear which movement today is doing its best to strip power from states, cities, and individuals, the better to “manage” things from the White House. (For those of you with degrees in Angry Studies: that movement is not the Tea Party.) The idea that small-government classical liberals are enabling the path to a totalitarian power grab is so absurd that those “enlightened” souls who believe it without a second thought deserve all the mockery we can heap upon them.
Tossing the term “chained government” (in contradistinction to “small government”) about in my thoughts becomes the more comfortable everyday I manage to live.
I’m starting to think after 11+ years of this that I’m not really cut out for this medium. It’s not about ideas or engagement or honest debate, as I thought it would be back in its infancy. It’s more now about anxiety of influence and personal positioning.
Ack. Don’t say that. I think the problem is the general dumbing-down of society as a whole. Influence and positioning are all some have.
They responded as they did, because they simply didn’t “get” your larger point. And now they simply don’t want to admit that embarrassing fact.
Jeff, sorry if it seemed like I mis-interpreted your post. I’ve been reading alot of the feedback elsewhere and it seemed like many folks hadn’t played the game and were getting second or third hand information. I think you’re absolutely right about the NPR article and its not hard to see how a game that has characters that border on the racist/jingoistic/hard core religious/hard core constitutionalists can be used by the Left to criticize the Right and the Tea Party as a “cautionary tale” of where the Tea Party philosophy leads.
Next Up : Why killing dragons in Skyrim is racist.
[…] via As the country slides into liberal fascism, conservatives are being set up as the scapegoat | protei…. […]
Over the last six, seven years, I’ve reluctantly concluded that the American creed requires a certain amount of faith in those things. So maybe the better question is how has not expecting the American people to live up to our tradition of native intelligence, self reliance, bravery and virtue been working against us?
We start by teaching up to our traditions, or perhaps better still, demand of ourselves that we learn up to our traditions, along with sundry other aspects of the world we inherit. And to be sure, any wide failure in the nation to do these things began quite long ago, in ways large and small — and we still wonder little whether the choices to institute these failures weren’t made with a knowing sense of the end at which we sit today.
[…] Instapundit picked it up, and Jeff Goldstein takes the opportunity to rhapsodize: […]
That, and we stop trying to outsmart the American people and endrun the electoral process the way the Left does.
And by that, what I think I mean is that we tell the Amerian people what they need to hear instead of telling them what we think they think they want to hear in order to get them to like us enough to vote for our candidates.
Huh, that’s odd. It seems that Tony isn’t aware a response to Bloom’s piece has already been made. Did he overlook notice? Or is he ignoring a notice? Or is there no notice available to him?
sdferr,
With my older daughter approaching school age, I’ve been thinking about what’s missing from the current educational systems. I’m thinking K-12 needs to return to Civics and higher ed needs more vo-tech.
With my older daughter approaching school age, I’ve been thinking about what’s missing from the current educational systems. I’m thinking K-12 needs to return to Civics and higher ed needs more vo-tech.
Substance, the matter of substance I mean, is very largely missing, displaced by a concern for “method”: now this method, now a newer method, now an even newer new method. Burglars, they steal the time from the young.
Missing as well I think, are learners, i.e., teachers, who would improve their teaching by a firm recognition of their own ignorance, taking a renewed learner’s delight in removing it from themselves, thus making a presence in their classrooms as model students for their students to look to. Aha! So that’s how it’s done!
[…] Unlike many others on the Right who ‘still believe the people on the Left are decent, well-meaning people who happen to be wrong philosophically‘ and refuse, therefore, to confront the Truth about the evil designs of the Left In America, Jeff Goldstein wears no blinders and refuses to sweeten his words, because he knows this is a time for speaking plainly and forthrightly: […]
“racist/jingoistic/hard core religious/hard core constitutionalists”
You say that like it’s a bad thing. Those mechanisms have prolpelled the structures that support your life.
The horse you rode in on; where is it, (and more importantly what is it)?
Look on the bright side. Totalitarian fascist/socialist/communist movements have their demise hard-wired in from their inception. Yes, they’ll make a hell of a mess of things — I’m afraid it’s too late to avoid global financial collapse — and yes, wherever the totalitarians gain a foothold in the wake of fiscal armageddon a lot of people will find themselves up against the wall. But many of those most enamored of their would-be worker’s paradise will find that it’s themselves against the wall in the competition to see who shall rule their coming utopia.
Those of us who don’t wish to rule but only to survive would be advised to keep our heads down and our eyes open if we find ourselves inside their wire, but I also think there will be outposts of freedom where we can band together and resist the lunacy. A goodly portion of the Rocky Mountains, Great Plains, and South will likely remain free and in their weakened fiscal condition the totalitarians won’t have the wherewithal to mess with us much. They’ll be too busy fighting amongst themselves for whatever crumbs they have left.
Get ready to redraw the map!
So, Swen, about that map-drawing. Please leave a bit of northern New Hampshire as an outpost behind the lines ….
Associated Press: ‘Illegal immigrant’ no more
Yep, I’d say the mask is off.
[…] Comes via American Power, where Donald Douglas refers us to Jeff Goldstein […]
The march to rid the news of all content proceeds apace.
It is now the “educated” that harbor the leftist worldview. The blue collar world remains for better or worse what it is the “bitter clingers”. A generation ago the opposites were true. This is a result of the educational system being the only place where the slackers of the time could get a job. Back in the day, my teachers warned me of the dangers of communism and like-fascist governments from first-hand experience.
The die is cast. Nothing left but for the scene to play itself out.
I have the same warped optimism as Swen. Things are changing. Prepare to make that move.
Yes, Swen, listen to RI Red, please.
Did I just see that right? Is there a new reality show where they shove slightly trained celebrities off of high diving boards? That’s a thing? A REAL thing? Not a joke?
TV is now impossible to make fun of. The jokes are easily outpaced in empty weird spectacle by the subject of the jokes. The comedian cannot successfully imagine ‘bread and circus’ reality TV as ghastly, stupid, obviously artificial, and appalling as the real thing has become. I remember when it was all about living in houses/camps together, working on complex projects, ball room dancing, some form of cultural freak show, and such. Now it’s celebrities gut checking on a high diving board with a camera on them ?
Shit.
I wonder if this show was dreamed up by someone who saw the film Alphaville?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splash!_(TV_series)
If you thought an ex magazine editor and actress yelling at chefs forced to make something in 40 minutes was dumb….oy vey.
Actually, I have very little faith in the American people these days. And it’s been quite some time since I did. My problem with what Ace said (or whomever may have said something similar at Hot Air) was not with the argument itself, but with the fact that he and other Team R cheerleaders are Johnnies-come-lately to the present reality.
Raised as a Catholic, I’ve always thought faith was something reserved for the infallible. The best any human, or group thereof, should ever expect of anyone is confidence.
Those in whom I have confidence are a very select few, always have been.
In the American people I once had something more like decently high expectations, which is still a step down from confidence. Now?
I’m trying to avoid the proverbial “soft bigotry,” but it ain’t easy.
Great Stuff, Jeff. (I’ve been a reader since 2005.) The Triad is now complete. Yours today is a mate to the following two posts @The American Thinker: The 20 Sept 2008 art. “The Drumbeat” by William Staneski and the 24 Feb 2013 art. “Three Reasons Conservatives are Losing the Battle for America” by J. Paul Masko III
Everyone should go read these two as companion pieces to Jeffs fine summation/declaration. Gotta jet, so no time to link. Someone else?
Taken together they pretty much “cover the waterfront.”
Heard on the radio today that Aaron’s Rents was one of the fastest growing businesses in GA the past couple years, and is projected to grow even faster. This was reported as a good thing.
The idiocracy is here.
What’s that, BMoe?
Its a place that rents stereos, video games, tvs, furniture and appliances to retards for about 10 times what they are worth.
Yikes, that’s always a good sign.
It’s a way to get around the limits on loan interest. People “rent to own” the rental part means the item isn’t yours till you make the final payment. The “rent” makes up for not being able to charge more interest. By the time you get done you will have paid much, much more than if you had gotten the same thing at Walmart or something. Like beemoe said many times more.
Mr. virgil xenophon’s recommendations, “The Drumbeat”, and “Three Reasons” — ain’t read ’em yet, just linkin’.
If any of Aaron’s Rents’ customers ever discovered eating Ramen, checking out books from the library, and/or walking around town for exercise and entertainment they’d probably discover that being broke is entirely sufferable.
Some of the best years of my life.
Smoking cigarette butts from the ashtray sucks though, I’ll grant them that.
For instance I just looked up an Xbox 360, you can own one for the low, low price of only $49.95/mo. for 24 months.
That’s insane. Insane.
Mercy . . . and do these people know how to breathe too?
Which, y’know, if they do . . . why, bonus!
When I called their customers retarded I meant it literally.
My bird tells me he’s getting kinda itchy with that cat looking down on him all hungry-like.
Ceiling Cat has a far less appealing backstory than simple bird killin’, sdferr.
For what it’s worth, I just get a kick out of a cat sticking his curious head out of some drywall. Equally funny would be a cat sticking his head out of the space between books on the shelf or out of someone’s shirt pocket.
I’ll tell bird ceiling cat’s funny, but not with any expectation he’ll believe me, and that, despite how funny I think c.c. is m’self. Being a sheetrocker from way back, any critter peeping out a hole in sheetrock is good to go with me.
When my oldest cat was a kitten, a very tiny kitten, she climbed on top of my ballcap wearing head while I was sitting at the computer desk. She then climbed out on the bill of the cap, leaned over the edge and peeped at me upside down.
I think she realized that from that moment on she pretty much owned me.
I’d have named this cat Danger Junky, BMoe.
I was reading this Dalrymple essay from this collection and it touches on a number of subjects batted around her the past several days (months years):
Read the whole thing, as they say.
More than anyone wanted to know about Ceiling Cat and Basement Cat:
http://www.lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
[…] Jeff G. / protein wisdom:As the country slides into liberal fascism, conservatives are being set up as the scapegoat […]
Do take a gander at that screed.
I stopped about half-way through it, sdferr. I left a comment, but I feel dirty just having been there.
I will say this, though: whenever the freakiest leftists and the most faux-sophisticated righties are after me over the same post? I figure I’m over the target.
Quite. Yet it has an urgent way of proving your point about it, gotta give it that.
“Blood Libel to Blood Simple | his vorpal sword”
That smarmy little fuck was masturbating as he typed that shit. I’m sure of it. It’s dick tested and nut-blast approved. It’s leftist dumbshit porn. Five minutes in the light. Dude be grippin’ zer handle, jawohl yer betcha’.
You know what would be great? If we introduce his vorpal sword to j. augustus bloom, esq. of the American Conservative.
They can come together and form a bond over their hatred of me! Let’s show them how much they have in common!
Like I’ve always said: I’m a giver.
I bet the ol’ viper was ‘speakin’ truth to the curtains and ceiling fan blades by paragraph six.
And the truth was sticky.
funny, sdferr, but I was just telling my wife about it, and that’s roughly what I said: does the asshole not know that he just proved my point?
Also, palaeomerus: I don’t say it enough, but — as with a number of others here — your comments are often brilliant gems that I really should stop to praise. Don’t ever change.
as he typed that shit. I’m sure of it.
Additionally, while wearing strategically torn fish-net stockings and the highest of heels.
Oh, and in the comment I wrote? I suggested that he’d been masturbating to his own prose, as well.
And when multiple readers can spot that kind of authorial-related subtextual self desire, well… you are what you tug.
Which, y’know, we can take as his bow in the direction of self-sufficiency, after all.
j. augustus bloom probably thinks he has an Akin Switch that he can flick instead of bringing anything like a real counter argument. He thinks he is handing out the credibility and reeling it back like a boss. He thinks he’s the doorman to the big tent and that such a position holds much weight now that the big tent is being blown perilously leftward while its once useful tent pegs remain obstinately stuck in the ground like ugly backward losers. Because Staunch. And demographics. And nuance.
*wants those few minutes of his life reading that drivel back*
Projectionists projecting their projection onto others? Yeah, that sums up the screed pretty well.
I especially liked his blather about firearms as “objects of murder” and presuming that’s why the icky evul people he hates so much must want one for that very reason.
I don’t appear to be able to post at that site from work, but am considering posting some link’s to Oleg Volk’s blog and picture galleries.
I’m sure more images depicting a pretty lady holding a gun will give him an even bigger hissy fit.
Also, “his vorpal sword” writes like Barrett Brown’s retarded little brother.
And my avatar would likely give him a grand mal seizure.
God bless Texas.
DID NOT!!! Or something…
Also, “his vorpal sword” writes like Barrett Brown’s retarded little brother.
Further examples of his oeuvre may be found here. Unsurprisingly, he’s got a Caudillo man-crush.
It’s fascinating that this guy is middle aged. I’d have pegged him as a peer of the space titty scribbler. Although, that might not be fair to that particular artiste.
“I suggested that he’d been masturbating to his own prose, as well.”
I suspect a Sailor Moon costume and a vibrating buttplug were involved as well. For freedom!
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
Not actually seeing the Tea Partiers anywhere on that list, just a lot of leftist governments. I’m sure that’s just a compilation error that will be corrected any time now.
Wow. Gold medal, 1996 Internet World Exposition.
For what? We are not told. But there were probably almost a hundred thousand users on the Internet, back then.
Ok, I exaggerate. his vorpal sword never exaggerates. We should show respect, I imagine, although I can’t imagine why.
This all goes to reinforce a natural law that I am currently devising, to wit: every emotional issue is to lefties an
occasionimperative to introduce new legislation to keep people from being hurt or killed, with the sole exception of abortion.Oh my lord. I had to keep reading that train wreck.
I have some friends who’s been trying to get a gun for 6 months. And this is BEFORE new laws went into effect in their state.
And we don’t need tanks, when we’ve got drones.
Oh, and I’ll see his cute lil’ wolf picture and raise him this:
http://www.thegulag.org/photos/vorkuta
It ain’t happening here, sport. I’d recommend keeping your mass-murder masturbation fantasies in your head.
If we ban hollow points because they do that to a wolf, we’re certainly going to have to ban chainsaws.
Well, then.
Obviously his sword is a metaphor. More like a butter knife, I’m thinking. And about as vorpal as a Snickers bar.
…hence his confusion.
Oh, and this about purported “Tea Party” leader Dale Robertson:
He’s a fraud. He’s a solitary crackpot. I happen to have him as a 3rd-level connection on LinkedIn, and he’s listed as an “Independent Executive Office Professional”, which means almost all of nothing, and has 78 connections.
78. A guy who purportedly started the entire Tea Party has only 78 LinkedIn connections. I have nearly that many, and I try to keep my connections to a minimum.
Oh. It turns out that the 1996 Internet World Exposition was a one-of-a-kind event. But at least it was blessed by a Shinto priest.
Which should bother people bothered by icky religion, I would think.
He has a picture captioned with “This was what happened to the kids at Newtown, using an assault rifle and hollow point ammunition (banned in international warfare for over a century)”
It shows a picture of a dead wolf with a hole blown through it. Which of course can be accomplished using hollow point ammunition of absolutely any muzzle energy.
That’s why I have my Marlin .22LR loaded with hollow points: because it will blow a cavernous hole through any intruder.
I was unaware that Lanza used hollow points. However,
What’s real is these hollow points. And these MRAPs.
Soft-points and polymer-tipped bullets will perform in a like manner, so maybe somebody is reasoning from a faulty premise when they attempt to argue from the Hague Convention.
Take guns away from people? Why would government want to do that when they can simply make them impossible to acquire (legally) and more trouble than they’re worth to keep (legally). That guns will remain in the hands of the criminal element is a bonus.
Hollowpoints are evil, Pablo. Left alone, they will fire themselves down the barrel of any nearby assault rifles, ripping chunks out of grade-school children.
Therefore, they must be destroyed. The hollowpoints, I mean.
Snack time already?
I’m gonna need an update on whether the cops who virtually all carry them are upstanding public servants who nobly protect us or jackbooted thugs keeping us all down for The Man.
What color is the President again?
Speaking of blood libel, another quote from the ever quotable Theodore Dalrymple:
The good doctor neglected to mentioned that the same iconographers prostrated themselves before the altar of reason. Literally.
Something for vorporal sword whetters to think about when not whetting their vorporal swords.
[…] for blood, for inflicting suffering on those who dare oppose their designs. Read more @ As the country slides into liberal fascism, conservatives are being set up as the scapegoat | protei… True words = Quote: Hold onto your gear and prepare yourselves. Register nothing. Resist them […]
Agreed.
What’s French for racist?
What’s French for racist?
Pretty much the same as for the political left here: Le Droit
That’s suspiciously reminiscent of Detroit. Which, racist. And also post apocalyptic wasteland.
I always thought the post-apocalyptic wasteland would have a lot more be-mohawked Australians driving around in scavenged vehicles with a lot of extra welded-on spikes and blades.
Though granted, it’s been 20 years since I was in Detroit, so maybe things have changed.
Frabjous!
Sorry I’m late in responding, sdferr.
How has it worked against us? Simple: It has divorced us from the reality of America, and led us to depend on qualities that no longer exist as universally as they once did. Expecting people to live up to qualities many of them no longer possess may make one feel good, but it doesn’t really mirror reality very well.
You implicitly admit this when you start talking about our need to educate folks. If we need to educate them, aren’t you admitting they aren’t educated? The same thinking applies to the other problems I mention.
If America was the nation you seem to be saying you think it is, well, then, America would not be the nation it actually is – one that reelects Barack Obama in the midst of a Great Depression primarily caused by Obama himself, and the biggest assault on individual liberty since FDR.
It takes a stupid (I love Barry unconditionally), greedy (give me my Obamaphone and unemployment/foodstamps), gutless (oh, please, take my liberties to protect me from evil guns and terrorists and dope), lazy (what? vote? too much work!) to bring us to this current state.
Recognizing that is the first step towards fixing it. You cannot fix a problem if you refuse to admit it exists.
Or so it seems to me.
I’m somewhat at a loss Bill. Or just a little confused.
First, the quoted question was placed by Ernst — so I blame him.
Second, you seem to think I would deny or somehow mitigate the ignorance and vices of the American people, whereas on the contrary, I would insist on the recognition of this ignorance and these vices (best were it done by the ignorant themselves though, of course).
Which in turn wouldn’t make sense if I were somehow “refus[ing] to admit it [this problem of ignorance — in general terms, compounded by other vices] exists”.
In even more general terms, the theme of nearly the whole of my advocacies here at pw is to suggest a return to classical liberal education. I’ve advocated as much since the day I began writing here and continue doing so down to today. And unless I should be persuaded that there’s a better long term means out of the disaster the lack of such education has placed us in — which is to say the nation in — I believe I will continue such advocacy in future.
Well, I’m certainly not arguing against such advocacy – quite the opposite, in fact.
And my apologies for the mis-attribution.
And my apologies for the mis-attribution.
Oh, no probs, indeed I only mentioned it in order to explain a little my own confusion.
We stand with Aristotle and Montesquieu, among others, good company so far as politics goes, for they both understand education to be the primary thing.
Also:
http://bible.cc/proverbs/22-6.htm
And as an afterthought, it has seemed to me that when we carefully examine the “interests” involved in education, placing responsibility for the conduct of education in the hands of the government as an institution necessarily involves the government’s interests in the education that government will permit to be carried out — and in this, the extent, the matter, the thoroughness or lack of same. Will the government have an interest in exposing its own misdeeds, its own failings? This state of affairs is all the worse when the government stands in a monopoly of the thing.
Hardly.
But from the point of view of the citizen under the rule of a government as an institution, what matters could be more important to their own felicities, their own prosperity, their own happiness, their own good? Naught that I can imagine.
It is no coincidence that the left began its long march through the institutions with the formal and informal education systems (“informal” subsuming movies, pop music, and the like).
It is no coincidence that the left began its long march through the institutions with the formal and informal education systems (“informal” subsuming movies, pop music, and the like).
Aye. Which constitutes a backhanded compliment to Aristotle and Montesquieu, even if never given proper place in the Progressive’s formal teaching as to Progressivism itself. They deny Aristotle and Montesquieu even as they adopt their precepts. The liars.
I suspect the Framers would have been surprised to discover some of the “institutions” created by the state, through which liberal fascists later so successfully marched.
I’m pretty sure that the Framers assumed that the process of education would be either private, or carried out at the very lowest and most personally responsive levels of governance.
In fact, I think I could make a fairly decent case that the creation of these institutions, rather than their capture, was the beginning of the downfall of the constitutional republic.