A funny thing happened to Doug Ross on the way to Blogcon.
Turns out much of our southern border is already indistinguishable from Mexico, according to a rancher he met on the plane. And that’s just the politics and the corruption. And the street tacos.
Which isn’t really funny, I realize, and probably not new information for most of us, save for maybe the extent. But it’s the extent that’s so harrowing to visualize. Because I’ll be honest: before I read the piece I didn’t think it could get any worse in the southern border hot spots than it already was.
I was wrong. It already was worse than it I’d already thought it was.
Good lord, but what happened to us as a people and a country?
TV happened to us.
It started with movies where they presented lies as truth and distorted and hid reality to fit their preconceived notions of what should be rather than what is.
When TV become wide spread, the lies and obfuscation increased in tempo until now when we’re manipulated almost every second by our friends, our enemies and those who want to make something they want happen.
Education was next. Once the Government intruded further into education and the parents are continually pushed back. It began, again, as those trying to effect change to fit their preconceived notions at the expense of reality and facts and they began to neglect actually teaching how to think and began teaching what to think.
Finally politically they have melded their assault on the the social and educational fronts into a coherent and continuous exercise in creating perceptions rather than presenting facts and keeping the citizens asleep that are somnolent and suppressing the aware by fear and misdirection.
We won the cold war but lost our country.
Good lord, but what happened to us as a people and a country?
Dunno, the possibilities extending so far out. Sigmund Freud mistaken for science? Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice as an inevitablility? Charles Elliot as an educator? It’s damnably hard to tell.
OT but breaking: Gosnell guilty on 3 out of 4 first-degree murder counts and one count of manslaughter.
Top story at http://www.cbsnews.com/
The Linguistic Turn?
TV happened to us.
Phooey. No one even had cable until the 80s.
I think Ernst, by way of Jeff, has it.
Family breakdown (big government replaces dads), and a complete lack of respect for human life (~50 million dead babies).
RE the fence: yeah, it works. And it drives the smuggling to areas adjacent to the fences.
But not all the areas are equal. Smugglers need cover to avoid detection, so they head for the mountain-areas or the arroyos where oaks, mesquite and ash trees provide the shade and cover they need.
Which means, the Federal response forces the migrants to use corridors like my back yard on Turkey Creek in the Chirichahuas.
But wait! It gets worse. The road blocks north of the border 50 miles work just like the fences do, and they are just as obvious to the smugglers. So, they simply plot courses that avoid the stops. Which means the check-stops only serve to stop and search American citizens traveling lawfully along roads we finance with our taxes and licensing fees. Got it?: the sheep pay to fleece themselves well north of the failed border, while the traffickers simply side-step the check-points, heave their packs higher on their backs, and make for I-10.
And, as the rancher in Douglas found out the hard way, land owners cannot enforce commonly understood trespass laws against brown-skinned “Other” people like we can against whiteys. Because of the Social Justice, or whatever, brownie gets a pass on trespass, while whitey gets the full force of the law.
There is a legal/political/media industry in Pima County and Tuscon devoted to enforcing the new Latin jurisprudence in SE Arizona, and, until the richies in Seattle, DC and Connecticut face the same injustice, they’ll not lift a finger to change it.
Progressivism.
Good God…this is again OT, but now they’ve gone and pissed of the AP.
http://tinyurl.com/cmyqyhg
TV happened to us.
I disagree. Before television and radio, our countrymen depended on newspapers and local gossip. These might not have lent themselves to 24/7 propaganda, but they sure as shit weren’t comprehensive or fair.
Instead, I think it’s the result of 100 years of leftist warfare, fought so far beneath the surface that to this day most of our countrymen have no idea that a war has been fought and lost.
Rather than television, I’d go back to the Progressives and their successful campaigns to introduce Constitutional amendments allowing the income tax and the popular election of Senators. This quickly led to Senate populist pandering that gave us Women’s Suffrage and Prohibition. It’s been a steady slide into Progressive nanny-statism ever since, as a federal government used pleas “for the children” to expand its reach ever farther, with no Senate to push back or advocate for the sovereign States. As a result, the States, churches, communities, school districts, militias, private charities, and every other form of local association have been displaced and usurped in order to concentrate power in Washington.
It remains to be seen whether our communities will rediscover their traditional associations or reassert their local problem-solving abilities when Uncle Sugar finally goes broke for real.
I live in the Rio Grande Valley, about 15 minutes from McAllen. If anything this post understates the problem. When I first moved down there, my mom and stepdad lived in an apartment complex that had many BBQs and parties. At one end of the complex lived a DEA agent, the other lived a drug dealer. They both knew who the other was, but all they did was ignore each other at gatherings. The DEA agent once told my mom that if she ever had a problem not to go to any local LE or Federal stationed near the border, instead to go up to San Antonio and talk to the Feds or Texas DPS there. He didn’t think any law enforcement officials near the border could be trusted.
The road blocks north of the border 50 miles
Why not ON the border? Too dangerous? Not enough shade?
Too dangerous? Not enough shade?
Because then they could only harass and intimidate Americans who were crossing the border. This way, they get domestic checkpoints that are avoided by the professionals, but serve as an excellent way to browbeat the locals into subservience.
The police get grumpy when they cannot bully people.
Apparently some here don’t understand the impact of visuals. I’m not surprised that some don’t, just surprised that some here don’t.
They also haven’t paid much attention to what many who are addicted to TV and other visual media, AND WHO DON’T BOTHER TO EXPLORE, believe what has happened in the past.
Phooey? Yeah? Tell that to people who get their news from Comedy Central.
When I click that, I get “TinyURL redirects to a TinyURL.” Is the link working for anybody else?
= Community organized fascism. Not too different from the border, the smell is the same.
Working link.
That was for the tiny url link.
Phooey? Yeah? Tell that to people who get their news from Comedy Central.
Why bother? They are clearly idiots. Fwiw, observing behaviors is my business.
From geoffb’s Stanley Kurtz link (the first under “Community”):
And a further quote from the same Kurtz article:
ot leigh finishing #3 pair of jeans maybe by 15 i’ll be good at it;)
Woe unto the poor sap of a conservatively inclined kid who chose to go to Swarthmore, (paying multiple tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege, surely) who comes to find out the terms of the game have been changed mid-stream. Tough luck, sucker.
swarthmore was kinda of dumpy haverford was more “ivy league”
swarthmore ain’t be mainline
Thank you Geoffb. I was cooking for my mom and had to leave for a while. From now on I’ll check my alleged links.
Sorry McGehee, I’m new at this.
Not really sure what’s going to happen to us a a Country. Best guess? Unintened Consequenses…OR What I saw at the Coup…
Gunny at the ANTILIBERALZONE(dot)com has the right of it. It’s war.
Jesus…I can spell, but can’t type.
That’s awesome, nr. I never liked sewing denim, but I just have a regular old Singer sewing machine. I have a serger that Hubs bought for me, but I’m afeared of it. It sits there and mocks me with all its spools of thread.
You need to think of a brand name and open a sweatshop.
the schumer/rubio are trying to take all the illegal labor. i just bought a ’50’s necchi in need of rehab. cheap hobby(i like fixing the busted up ones like the singer 457 what needed a new gear) that you make something useful
Two things about the Swarthmore video.
I do hope that the college and others “disinvest” from the oil-gas-coal sector and throw all their endowments into the Solyndra’s out there. Going bust would do them a world of good.
Those conservative students just got a real world education in what political thugism, fascism is and how it operates. They also learned that passive resistance like their “Quaker” administration supposedly practices doesn’t work well against that kind of opposition. Bullies have to be stood up to with force.
Swarthmore has always been a Green Weenie of a school. They charge huge tuition for worthless majors, too.
i always wanted to ask a “quaker” if they would fight to defend quakerism. libtards the lot.
i have snobby progg cred: i delivered pizzas to bryn mawr.
“Why bother? They are clearly idiots.”
They’re allowed to vote. Unfortunately.
With respect to Swarthmore, they should look at what happened to Antioch College when it went full proggtard. They’ve reopened, but just barely. They had something like 30 students the last I heard.
Because then they could only harass and intimidate Americans who were crossing the border. This way, they get domestic checkpoints that are avoided by the professionals, but serve as an excellent way to browbeat the locals into subservience.
That’s the obvious corrupt reason.
Damn if it ain’t the true one, too.
As for us being 30 years behind Mexico, that poor country has been corrupt since the Spaniards first made landfall.
The coveted youth vote, Spies? It’s much ado about nothing most of the time. Kids like to talk politics because they think it makes them sound smart. If they are merely quoting John Stewart, they aren’t thinking and they usually can’t be assed to vote, either.
If they have schools of education, or if their schools of arts and sciences are typical of this day and age, any major in those areas is worthless, and any tuition charged for same is excessive by definition.
since we’ve become so determinedly fascist in America building a wall doesn’t sound quite so comforting an idea as it once was
It is to anyone who has lived on the border. Like me.
still it’s nice to know one can get out of here in a pinch
“Belize!” says the Belizians. Maybe invading Cuba would be a better option.
“still it’s nice to know one can get out of here in a pinch”
nyt hall monitor
it’s really hard to take a forgiving christian approach to the guy what tore up the mayan pyramid
but you gotta figure he’s just that ignant and what’re you gonna do
what’re you gonna do?
Quit being Christian about it and cut out his beating heart like a good Toltec to offer to the injured gods.
As one of my journeyman professors replied to my “so, you agree with [academic celebrity in the field]” remark many years ago:
No. He agrees with me.
That said, I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss jcw’s observations about the pervading influence of the boob tube; particularly for its ability to define deviancy down and regularize the irregular.
Go more modern-barbaric, no need for an offering, the little god-man in DC is your friendly trafficker, and prefers dog anyway.
The stinking Arabs never built a decent pyramid, but threaten to tear some down.
there’s mounds hither and yither I’d pass them as I drove about
i passed up Emerald Mound in mississippi
and I stopped for this one in Louisiana – the Louisiana people had repurposed it for a cemetery but it was nicely done – then I stopped at a couple three others somewhere else in Louisiana but they were just hilly messy things surrounded by trailers
but then all the others I just passed up after that
mounds are kinda like civil war monuments you don’t want to disrespect them not even a little but there’s just so much else to see
oh also I went to Blue Mound Illinois which is smack dab in the heart of illinois floating there in an ocean of dirt
i drove all about the town but never did find the mound
then i skittered westward on these eerily tidy dirt roads until i was stymied by the illinois river – a bridge was out – so I had to get on the interstate, which I think I stayed on til i got to hannibal for the night
i have snobby progg cred: i delivered pizzas to bryn mawr.
Neat, our paths may have crossed at some point. For 18 years I lived in Bryn Mawr, right behind Medley Music. Which pizza joint did you work for?
Fragen Sie Herr Professor Doktor Alexander Demandt
particularly for its ability to define deviancy down and regularize the irregular.
The same was said about the Penny Dreadfuls and dime novels. I’m not necessarily disagreeing that television is influential to the stupid or merely uneducated. It’s much easier to sit on one’s ass and eat chips than it is to read the Classics.
OT: I complained when many were chanting “at least they’re reading!” about the Harry Potter books. My boys read the books and loved the movies, too. But, they did know they weren’t “great books”. If the litmus test is the fact that kids are reading, then what’s wrong with the comic books our parents bitched about?
…what’s wrong with the comic books our parents bitched about?
Not a damn thing, if you consider how many of our best and brightest are comic book collectors.