Not to see Clint Eastwood’s latest film “Richard Jewell” is to engage in citizenship malpractice.
The real Richard A. Jewell, 1997. (photo: Greg Gibson/Associated Press, 1997)
Every citizen should see Eastwood’s portrayal of how well-meaning people in powerful government positions, allied to rambunctious reporters, can be so awfully wrong and mature into a malevolent force without even knowing it. It’s how prosecutors can pursue an individual, wrongfully convict the person, pursue harsh sentencing, and resist any effort to set the record straight. It’s how investigations are pursued on the flimsiest of “probable cause” and can morph into other investigations because it is heartily believed that the guy must have committed some crime somewhere, somehow. Does this remind you of the events leading to the current impeachment melee?
A notion gets stuck in the craw of government officials – call it a “profile”, an expectation about the kind of person who commit these sinful acts – and persists until action is taken to the detriment of all. Richard Jewell was slapped by the powers-that-be as symptomatic of the “hero syndrome” (creating a situation or crime to become a hero). The media’s and the FBI’s “rush to judgment” led to Jewell’s public humiliation as the Olympic Park bomber in 1996 – only 7 years later to find the real culprit, Eric Rudolph.
Eric Robert Rudolph being escorted from the Cherokee County Jail for a hearing in federal court in 2003 after being on the run for five years.
False ideas creep into the heads of mighty people in a burgeoning and energetic federal government. And if these people have guns, watch out! It’s how we can have a Ruby Ridge (1992). It’s how we can experience a Waco (assault on David Koresh’s compound, 1993). It’s how we can have serial investigations of a presidential candidate as a “Russian mole”, and later to try to pin something else on him when the first effort failed in the belief that he’s still corrupt to the core.
The Branch Davidian compound, Waco, Tx., Feb.28, 1993.
There’s something in the government ether from the 1990’s to the present that is so insidious. No, it’s not a “deep state”. It’s something endemic – or generic – to government. The Founders’ idea of government as a necessary evil is as true today as it ever was. It’s a lesson we had better repeatedly teach ourselves and our young.
“Speaking truth to power” became a cliché by people wearing fake vaginas on their heads the day after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. Well, take a look at “speaking truth to power”, the culturally powerful, or the culturally privileged – aka, Hollywood – by Golden Globe host, Ricky Gervais, last night. The line about most of those folks, all prettied up in tuxes and gowns, being less educated than Greta Thunberg rings oh-so-true. Take that Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio.
I was stunned and couldn’t believe my eyes and ears. The whole monologue was great, but the spicy parts occurred in the last couple of minutes. It was far better than the speeches by the cranial vacuum-tubed luminaries. Enjoy.
I know, I know, it’s Christmas eve but I couldn’t resist commenting on the latest impeachment fracas. Pelosi is holding impeachment hostage by refusing to deliver the articles of impeachment to the Senate. Like the sword of Damocles, now in the hands of Pelosi, Trump will face an assembly line of impeachment articles as she demands more witnesses and documents for further expeditions into all things Trump before she turns over the already-approved articles to the Senate. But she says that she is a good Catholic, hates no one, and prays for the target of her political jihad. Really, how good of a Catholic is she? Is this Christ-like behavior?
One has to wonder. Is it Christian to endlessly hound a citizen by placing them under the perpetual gaze of inquisitors? Is it Christian for one house of Congress to step outside its legal role of investigating possible wrongdoing and demand the other house, acting as jurors, step outside its role to do what the first house refused to do, such as produce the information that it chose not to provide as part of its duty? Trump is no angel, and neither are Pelosi, Schumer, and the Resistance.
Is it Christian for her to proudly announce her Christian bonafides as she soils the very doctrines of her faith? Under the euphemism “right to choose”, she crowed in 2018 that “I’m a rabid supporter of a woman’s right to choose …” Rabid indeed! Earlier this year, rather than condemn Ralph Northam’s (D, governor of Va.) support of a live-birth abortion bill in the Virginia legislature and his description of it, she dodged the question when asked. Not even the killing of a newborn can draw the ire of this allegedly “sincere” Catholic.
In addition, she has persistently opposed efforts to protect viable babies in the womb and those born alive in the course of an abortion. She is absolutely grotesque when it comes to the Christian responsibility to protect life.
Former Vice President Joe Biden was rejected for Holy Communion by a priest in South Carolina, Oct. 2019
It doesn’t stop there. In that space where some assertions of gay rights conflict with religious freedom strides the hubristic Nancy Pelosi. Religious freedom must give way, according to her holiness Pelosi. Her House-passed Equality Act would strip protections for denominations with Bible-based views on sexuality and family, particularly if their Christian calling carries them beyond the sanctuary into running orphanages, hospitals, counseling services, schools, and wherever human need lies. Pelosi wants to essentially rewrite millennia-old Christian doctrine to fit her social views. Where’s the Christianity in this?
Here Polish World War II war orphans are being cared for at a Catholic orphange after the War in 1946.
This season to honor the birth of Christ is saddled with the preachiness of a pagan-Christian. Yes, it’s an oxymoron and also a reality in today’s morally-confused Democratic Party. I find it hard to take seriously Pelosi’s attempt to wrap herself in the garb of the Church. Does the phrase “false prophet” remind you of anyone?
Galli (r) appears on Al Sharpton’s CNN program in the wake of the editorial.
A Preface
The December 19 issue of Christianity Today – prominent evangelical publication founded by the evangelist Billy Graham – came out with a scathing editorial calling for Trump’s impeachment by the magazine’s chief editor, Mark Galli. A wide array responses critical of Galli views quickly ensued from notable evangelical leaders like Franklin Graham (Billy Graham’s son) and those affiliated with the Family Research Council.
It’s clear from Galli’s prior statements about Trump before the 2016 election that he had a strong anti-Trump bias. In 2016 he disparaged not only Trump but his supporters, many of whom are evangelicals, when he wrote, “Enthusiasm for a candidate like Trump gives our neighbors ample reason to doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord.”
It would be a mistake to assume that Galli speaks for the majority of evangelicals, let alone his magazine’s founder, Billy Graham. Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son, disclosed that his father voted for Trump: “Yes, my father Billy Graham founded Christianity Today; but no, he would not agree with their opinion piece. In fact, he would be very disappointed.” Further he said, “My father knew Donald Trump, he believed in Donald Trump, and he voted for Donald Trump. He believed that Donald J. Trump was the man for this hour in history for our nation.”
Galli speaks for himself as he sets himself apart from the vast evangelical movement. Below is my reaction to the obvious anti-Trump bias in a publication closely associated with Billy Graham. Galli richly deserves the blowback of his words.
My Reaction to Galli
John O’Sullivan, adviser to Margaret Thatcher and pundit, announced O’Sullivan’s First Law: “All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.” I’m beginning to wonder if Mark Galli’s (editor in chief of Christianity Today) condemnation of Trump in his recent editorial is confirmation of O’Sullivan’s insight. One has to ponder the possibility.
The transformation of originally center-right organizations into center-left ones starts with a muddle. Fundamental canons of the institution are confused with the passing fascinations of our cultural arbiters in well-to-do urban enclaves and the commanding heights of our media. Environmentalism, for instance, creeps into sermons and encyclicals by melding “stewardship” with campaigns against plastics, CO2, and preservationist land use policies. Not surprisingly, Sunday school lessons are littered with the pop politics. And it doesn’t stop there.
Further evidence of the politicized leftward infection is the facile proclamation of faithfulness to long-established principles while accepting the premises of the left. Now here’s a real muddle. It was clearly evident in Galli’s call for Trump’s impeachment.
First, the cognitive clutter of Galli’s piece was palpable in the attempt to erect a parallel between Bill Clinton’s perjury before a federal grand jury with Trump’s request to investigate the corruption of people who include the scions of powerful Democratic Party personages. Galli blindly endorses the worst possible interpretation of a conversational and rambling phone call to the Ukrainian president as if his and the Resistance’s interpretation is the only one feasible. Aping Adam Schiff, Galli proclaims that Trump “attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents.” This is nothing but tendentious political boilerplate. It’s demeaning for the editor of one of the most respected of evangelical journals. Galli just reduced the magazine’s reputation many notches.
President Bill Clinton’s videotaped grand jury deposition on Aug. 17, 1998
Perjury before a federal grand jury is a federal crime (18 U.S. Code § 1621), the last time that I checked. Where would Galli put a rambling phone call asking the Ukrainians to investigate corruption of gold-digging American politicos in the federal penal code? And if you wanted to put it in there, how would you state it without criminalizing the president’s Constitutional duty to conduct foreign policy? Any effort would produce a hot mess.
Oh, I forgot, committing perjury in a federal district court and before a federal grand jury by a person with as many extramarital escapades as the Marquis de Sade – including quite probably a rape, like de Sade – is the equivalent of mentioning the Bidens in a congratulatory phone call. Not! Galli lacks the simple Biblical principle of proportionality.
For the benefit of Adam Schiff, Galli, and the rest of the Democratic scolds in the Resistance, here’s a more plausible alternative rendering of the call, one understandable to a 16-year-old. Trump’s mode of conversation is not professorial, as in a lecture or a speech in the well of the Senate. He rambles like a stand-up comedian in a club. He’ll have a thought that originated on the couches of Fox and Friends and run with it. So, if the eye-brow raising boast of Joe Biden getting the Ukrainian prosecutor fired for investigating the younger Biden’s company gets Trump’s attention, and not being careful with his mouth like a smooth-talking politician, Trump bounced the idea off his cohorts and in his call to Zelensky. In such an atmosphere, policy arises from a series of rambling conversations with no clear and obvious determination. Trump brings it up in passing to Zelensky and some administrative underlings understandably mistake it for a directive to withhold aid, both before and after the call, while others aren’t quite so sure. In the end, the aid was released without anything in return. If the previous sentence is “B”, and Galli’s moral condemnation of Trump is “A”, how does Galli (and Schiff) ever get to “A”? Galli fell for a partisan canard.
This scenario was borne out by the testimony before Schiff’s tribunal. Those who mistook a meandering policy-making process for a clear directive appeared before the tribunal, but even they couldn’t identify the crime. And neither they nor the hanging-judge Democrats on the panel could account for the Ukrainians getting the aid as no investigations were conducted by the Ukrainians.
And the hypocrisy of the whole thing is astounding. Trump gave the Ukrainians lethal aid – i.e., weapons – while these same Democrats and Obama were only willing give the Ukrainians band aids and cotton balls. Spare me the convenient discovery of concern for the fortunes of a small country in the jaws of Putin’s Russia. Only mild protests came from the likes of Obama, Schiff, Pelosi, and Schumer as eastern Ukraine and the Crimea were amputated. Galli, the glaring hypocrisy of the hyper-partisan Democrats should heighten your sensitivity to their incredulous proclamations. They have no evidence of wrongdoing – least of all an impeachable offense – and neither do you [Galli].
President Barack Obama answers questions during his news conference following the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, August 2014.
I suspect a deep prejudice against Trump in people like Galli. A prejudice can exist whenever a prejudgment has been made in spite of the evidence. The prejudice allows a person to lose perspective. A history of political behavior in the era BT [before Trump] might prove enlightening if the prejudice didn’t get in the way of doing the research. A stroll down memory lane to the 1930’s and the reign of Saint FDR would prove instructive if only Galli cared.
Where shall I start? The bloating of the federal budget under the guise of “fiscal stimulus” was very useful for advancing the FDR’s political prospects and was put at his service. He withheld federal aid to states and districts who opposed his initiatives. The larceny was naturally more active during election season. Political opponents found their FCC licenses revoked. Charles Lindbergh found himself under FBI surveillance with FDR’s nodding approval. And let’s not forget the prosecution and persecution of Samuel Insull to fulfill FDR’s need for the scalp of one of the “great malefactors of wealth” for allegedly causing the Great Depression. What about the herding of Japanese-Americans into concentration camps? Of course, going down the memory hole is any recognition that FDR is probably the cause of a depression becoming a Great one.
To put finis on the Insull affair, after FDR’s prosecutors got their hands on Insull, he was acquitted of all charges in two trials.
Do we need to unearth the sordid political activities of the Kennedys and LBJ as the Church Committee did in 1976? Galli, come on, take a look.
We have an ample history of the conjoining of “politician” and “skullduggery”. Some of it is illegal, and, by Galli’s standard, all of it is impeachable … far more impeachable than a one-off congratulatory phone call to the president of a small country.
Galli’s standard for impeachable offenses is so loose that we might as well have a permanent congressional committee to handle presidential impeachments, particularly during periods of divided government. We’ll need it. At that point, the presidency will become the handmaiden of whatever majority happens to capture the House. Right alongside “sequestration” and “continuing resolutions” we’ll have “impeachment” as part of our daily news briefing. Galli’s standard has no limiting principle, at least not one recognizable to mortal man.
Isaiah quotes the Lord as saying, “Come now, let us reason together …” Galli confuses partisan hyperbole for reason. Context, perspective, and proportion have no role in his thought process. He has substituted invective for “let us reason together” rather than pursue a more thoughtful rendering of the issues before us.
Conservative political figures’ calls for “Chick-fil-a Appreciation Day” in 2012 resulted in long lines, such as this one in Wichita, Kansas. The call came on the heels of LGBTQ protests of the company. (Photo: NPR)
Has Chik-fil-A abandoned the Salvation Army and FCA? The company claims it is merely redirecting its charitable giving. The media center-left, which includes the heavies and the so-called “fact-checking” sites, have howled that the criticism of the company’s action from the right is gross hyperbole. For me, I smell a rat … in the company and among our disreputable and tendentious national media.
Snopes.com came to the defense of the company’s decision by saying that Chik-fil-A and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes were just 2 of 80 organizations losing support. Snopes quoted the company’s announcement in describing their new giving philosophy as one to “deepen its giving to a smaller number of organizations working exclusively in the areas of education, homelessness and hunger.” Hogwash! What a pile of mush.
How do you think a sellout to the cultural left occurs? “Deepen” becomes synonymous with “abandon”. The new foci are favorite hobby horses for the left’s ongoing program of social engineering. It’s certainly a way to soften the company’s image away from a Bible-based Christianity to a compromised form more compatible with transgendered bathrooms and new forms of nuptials.
Snopes and its media parasites aren’t engaging in “fact-checking” but in “claptrappery”. They mistake PR fluff for real motive. The company’s statement has all the earmarks of the ages-old campaign tactic of removing a candidate’s hard edge in order to appeal to a wider public. In this case, the company avoids the boycotts and the Antifa goons.
Until I hear of anything else, “sellout” appears to be the more accurate word.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren in a May interview in Iowa Falls. (Daniel Acker/For The Washington Post)
I remember a conversation with a friend and colleague who appeared to be apoplectic about Donald Trump’s lies during the campaign and up to the aftermath of the inauguration (when the exchange ended). Wow, looking back on it, over-stating crowd sizes seems awfully pale when compared to the whoppers coming out of the mouths of Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Lena Dunham, Jussie Smollett, and the adolescent Amari Allen at Immanuel Christian School. They have in common a desire to exploit ritual identity-victimhood, the central tenet of being “woke”.
Whew, let’s take ’em one at a time. Warren’s angle is to peddle a Native American heritage that doesn’t exist for professional advancement. She compounds the error by spreading a tale of losing a job for being pregnant, also fully debunked. At least the second tall tale takes advantage of something that she quite clearly is: a woman.
Former Vice President Joe Biden campaigns for president in Davenport, Iowa, on June 11, 2019. (Photo: Joshua Lott/Getty Images)
After Warren, we have Biden. This guy is famous for his whoppers. The one that should be most irritating is his rendition of the traffic accident that killed his wife and daughter. He bellows that they died at the hands of drunk driver. Sorry, Joe, not true. The authorities at the time said alcohol wasn’t involved and even more interestingly concluded that Mrs. Biden was the cause of the collision when she strayed into the truck’s path. What’s more galling is Biden’s sliming of the other driver as one who “drinks his lunch”. The man’s family demands a retraction. This is more than a mistake on Biden’s part; it’s evidence of a Biden character flaw.
If that’s not enough, along comes the mouth of the lefty celebrity community, Lena Dunham. She claims in her book that she was raped in college by, what else, a white College Republican. The only problem: it ain’t true. In fact, her publisher had to shell out a settlement to the innocent accused. Is there a congenital connection between being woke and lying? One wonders.
The fictions continue with the little Amari Allen at Immanuel Christian. It just so happens to be the place of part-time employment for Karen Pence, and, of course, being a place of traditional Christianity – the LGBTQ agenda is an awkward fit there.
Karen Pence at Immanuel Christian School. (Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press)
Well, anyway, the little girl came home with a story of abuse and physical assault by, what else, some white boys. The only problem – you guessed it – it ain’t true. At the time, for our woke press, it was a two-fer: racism, racism everywhere, and the VP’s wife is a functionary of the white racist machine.
Do you see a pattern here? I do. The woke folks are so enthusiastic about their lefty social engineering that they’ll defame anyone and anything to get there.
I can’t stop here. Does the slander of the Duke lacrosse team remind you of anything? How about the alleged rape culture at U. of Virginia, courtesy of Rolling Stone, and subsequently and fully discredited? The despicable and wild tales of Kavanaugh’s youth? Come on, let’s call them what they are: lies. Don’t be a bit surprised that more deceits lay in store after the completion of the investigation of the investigators of Russia-gate and whistleblower-gate.
I’ll ask once again: Is there something congenital between being woke and lying? One wonders.
RogerG
* You can read about many of these episodes in Kevin Williamson’s recent piece in National Review.
Piedmont, Ca., seventh-graders participate in the global strike for climate change in San Francisco on Sept. 20, 2019. (Credit: Andrew Reed/EdSource)
Overton Window: noun; the range of ideas tolerated in public discourse, also known as the window of discourse. The term is named after Joseph P. Overton, who stated that an idea’s political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within this range.
A Google search produced the above definition (more on the concept here). We are experiencing an attempt to impose the limits of acceptable opinion on certain issues. That word, imposition and its derivatives, will occur a lot in this piece. No better example can be found than the construction of an Overton window on the issue of climate change. As with any imposition, the range of acceptability is being forced upon all, while also being arbitrary with the mode of enforcement more indicative of mob behavior. A highly excitable throng endeavors to manhandle the window leftward.
The Global Climate Strike of students of September 20-27, 2019, brought to mind the idea of the Overton window. Here we have young people ranging in age from elementary to college boycotting their classes to engage in protests demanding more government power to control people for the purpose of “saving the planet”. I have my doubts about whether the goal is to “save the planet” or simply expand government power to impose a political clique’s narrow vision of the good.
Means and ends get muddled here. I was a college adjunct instructor in Physical Geography and was continually exposed to the ideological dogmas of climate change – “climate change” being the more robust and useful term as compared to the mere “global warming”. “Ideological” is the correct adjective for the belief system that riddles the curriculum, support materials (textbooks, et al), and teacher preparation. There is much about the movement’s claims to scientifically question. Yet, the movement glosses over the uncertainty about the climate issue’s severity, the exact nature of the phenomena, and the realities of proposed solutions to immediately rush to the goal of revolutionary social, economic, and political reorganization.
However, before the zealots get to their beloved revolution, prudence requires the rest of us to seriously consider a simple question: Are the zealots’ claims correct? Much has been said and written about the issue but only a small slice gets the light of day. To be clear, the purpose of this article is not to present a detailed examination of the activists’ assertions about “climate change”, but to report on a singular episode – the students’ Global Climate Strike – as part of an ongoing campaign to use politicized science so one may foist on the general public a drastic alteration in our settled social, economic, and political arrangements and confer near-totalitarian power in the hands of a select few.
If interested, if you have 32 minutes, below is a reminder that an honest debate on the science of climate change actually exists, something the fanatics would like to squelch and close the Overton window..
What happens when fanaticism replaces scientific inquiry? Well, we get young and impressionable minds ditching school for a day to help stampede lawmakers into creating the environmentalists’ Leviathan. How were the kids primed? Well, the ideology-as-science corrupted the dogma’s purveyors, the teachers, and permeates the kids’ media-rich social ecosystem. I know; I’ve been there, particularly at the campaign’s pedagogical front.
It’s interesting to know that the professional and degreed people with the least scientific background take up positions as the most prominent mouthpieces of the movement, some in taxpayer-funded government posts and some riding their earlier name-recognition in politics to a new and very lucrative career in climate change. Does the name “Al Gore” come to mind?
Almost any metropolis and city with a university presence will have a municipal position solely devoted to the issue of climate change. For instance, in my state of Montana, Chase Jones serves as the Energy Conservation Coordinator for the City of Missoula with the portfolio of developing and coordinating the city’s climate plan.
Chase Jones, City of Missoula Energy Conservation Coordinator
In a radio interview, he stipulated that he has a degree in Communications from University of West Virginia. He cut his teeth in Montana environmentalism through the Montana Conservation Corps, an environmental non-profit. The Chairperson of the Corps’s Board of Directors is Jan Lombardi who has a rich personal history in Democratic Party politics, Planned Parenthood, National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), etc. Another member of the Board is Chris Pope, the Democrat representative of Montana House District 65 and possessor of a Spanish Degree from University of Oregon and Masters in Public and Private Management from Yale. Chase’s background and the résumés of those around him are symptomatic of the kinds of experiences that inclines them to accept broad and general scientific claims, especially if they confirm ideological biases, while they lack the detailed understanding to debate the substance of any of the many scientific aspects of a meta-issue like climate change.
Jan Lombardi (center), chairperson of the Montana Conservation Corps
These people are impressed by the pronouncements of large groups, as if the announcements put finis to any further scientific inquiry, and closes the Overton window to those who dispute them. They then can announce a “consensus” to dismiss the irritating queries of those of a more scientifically skeptical mind. All the while, they ignore the vast scholarship on groupthink and Public Choice Theory which does more to explain the behavior of large associations and bureaucracies in perverting pure science. The stance may work for the politically-motivated non-scientist, but it isn’t science. It’s partisan politics masquerading under the rubric of science.
Non-scientists are pushing the issue with the assistance of politicized scientists and their politicized associations. Large and long-established professional associations are particularly prone to fashionable political moods. Blacklisting is common. Remember McCarthyism? In regards to climate, remember nuclear winter, global cooling, and now global warming? Remember the Union of Concerned Scientists and their Doomsday Clock during Reagan’s defense buildup to counter the Soviet threat? Remember the blowback to Reagan’s idea of missile defense? Going back further, how about scientists’ enthusiasm for eugenics that would ultimately seep into the Final Solution? The wreckage is astounding whenever science is mingled with politics.
“Best Baby” contests promoted eugenics at the Oregon State Fair in the early 1900s. (courtesy of The Oregonian)
“Selection” of Hungarian Jews on the ramp at the death camp Auschwitz-II (Birkenau) in Poland during German occupation, May/June 1944. (Wikimedia Commons/Yad Vashem)
Inevitably, science will be the handmaiden to politics when the two are merged, with disastrous consequences.
The loudest advocates of a Green New Deal are likely to have the least acquaintance with real science. If anything, they have just enough exposure to be dangerous. Their stunted view is propagated to the young in a never-ending torrent from one grade to the next, from one movie to the next, and from one social media post to the next . The stage is set for a critical mass of people who lack the tolerance for opinions cynical of the artificial zeitgeist. The radical all of a sudden becomes the popularly “sensible” and those outside of this favored cohort will be dismissed, or worse. The eco-revolutionaries, hiding behind the innocence of youth, are well on their way to the kind of power to upend our way of life and build a new green order.
Some concessions to popular consent will have to be made, but the threat of an opposing majority will have been lessened by a demography-wide closed mind. It will be a constituency willing to cede great power to a set of elite experts in the arts of the eco-gnosis. But to be on the cusp of power in the first place requires more than indoctrination. It’s necessary but not sufficient. To tip the edifice into a revolution, a panic must be created through crisis-mongering, or as long-dead progressive/socialist leading lights would have called it, the moral equivalent of war. What goes for the “conscience” of the Democratic Party, our giddy sophomore class president and congressional blowhard from NY’s 14th congressional district (AOC), parrots the war line along with sycophants in the party’s presidential derby. After the panic attack produces electoral success, once in power, they aren’t going to give it up because the population happens to be profoundly discomforted by the mandated changes. In this ends-justifies-means world, popular sovereignty will be luxury that can no longer be afforded. The whole scheme could end up being one man (or woman, et al)/one vote/one time.
A 1968 Cultural Revolution poster. The caption reads: “Destroy the old world; Forge the new world.” Today’s eco-activism is reminiscent of Mao’s campaign to reinvigorate the revolution.
This is more than a slippery slope. It’s a well-trodden path through the pages of history. Why are eco-activists so intent on repeating the horrifying record? Interesting question but the answer is obvious. They think that they’re immune to the trap many others have fallen into over the past couple of millennia.
They are kidding themselves. Over those very same millennia, power has proven to be quite an intoxicant. It overwhelms a person’s conciliatory and moderating nature. The goal of eco-purity will crowd out everything including tolerance for the opposition. To borrow from Lenin, a vanguard elite leading the way to the green future won’t trifle with elections unless they can be manipulated into validating predetermined decisions. Pure and simple, it comes down to imposing a small group’s preferred mode of living on a broad population who may be unaware of what is happening.
The 1920 Presidium of the 9th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Seated from left to right are Enukidze, Kalinin, Bukharin, Tomsky, Lashevich, Kamenev, Preobrazhensky, Serebryakov, Lenin and Rykov.
I’m reminded of the circumstances in Russia in the few decades before the Revolution of 1917. One is struck by the wide acceptance of radicalism among the educated classes (teachers, the professoriate, students), many circles in urban populations, and some of the well-off gentry in the years leading up to the Revolution. It even penetrated the military’s officer corps. Denunciations bordering on treason, even advocating the assassination of government officials from the czar on down, riddled the last couple of decades of the regime. Socialism of a variety of shades was trendy, as is the “green future” and “sustainability” today.
Policy mistakes compounded the troubles. One was the decision in 1906 to confer a safe space from police intervention for university campuses. It was hoped that the policy would quiet things down on the campuses. It did no such thing. The radicalism was allowed to fester and boil over to nearly all sectors of society. The radicalized young of 1905 became the violent revolutionaries of 1917 and later Lenin’s shock troops in the imposition of the Bolshevik conception of the good.
Russia, 1917: Mass political meeting of workers at the giant Putilov factory. Bolshevik and other radical student agitators were active in fomenting strikes and other upheavals Tsarist Rusia.
Sound familiar as you view the images of the young faces demanding a Green New Deal in the Global Climate Strike? Those scenes of a radicalized youth who are radicalized by a radicalized curriculum, sustained over the many years of their matriculation, should send shivers down the spines of anyone knowledgeable of Russian history circa 1890 to 1921. In the end, a radicalized caste will get the opportunity to impose their narrow vision of the good on a population ignorant of their own children’s indoctrination.
The Overton window of tolerance for opposing views is shifting left. The zealot’s politicized science will be the only approved form of science. That means that the only accepted version of science will be the kind that has garnered the assent of the governing elite. It must, like everything else, serve the ends of the secular dogma’s dream of the good life. It’s so Orwellian.
Climate protesters September 24, 2019.
In the end, prepare to retreat back a couple of centuries in quality of life. These vision quests aren’t concerned about the production of wealth so much as dictating the smallest details of living for 330 million people. Conditions gradually deteriorate as the legacy of prior affluence begins to erode. Some flee and others adjust to a world without variance from the rules of the eco-commissars.
I’ll end this piece where it started: the student Global Climate Strike. Watch the speech of a sincere but naive youngster before a UN panel as she tearfully pleads for the erection of the eco-Leviathan. Also observe the shamelessness of the adults as they exploit a child whose personal identity has been supplanted by a fanatic’s nightmare of impending doom. Watching her as she gives her speech is wrenching enough, but remembering what has been done to her is much more terrifying.
I am a retired California teacher (since 2015) after 29+ years in California high schools. The state has become a zoo, and now so will the classrooms. AB 493 would require teacher training in LGBTQ ideology. SB 419 will make suspensions for, among other things, unruly behavior almost non-existent. For teachers, it’s like being wheeled into the operating room and seeing the medical staff armed with sledge hammers. There won’t be much improvement in your condition but there will be a big mess to clean up.
493 takes teachers out of the classroom to be indoctrinated in all things sex-related. The propaganda line is as follows: Forget the Bible and millennias of understanding and accept the idea that a person can will themselves into another sex. Transgenderism is an important part of the coursework. Of course, we can’t do the same thing with race or ethnicity. Remember cultural appropriation? We can’t do the same thing in regards to height or long fingers. But teachers will learn that genitalia and chromosomes don’t matter.
I know; I know. The ideologues have a chest full of rhetoric and vocabulary to make others well-versed in the pseudo-science. Just remember, this isn’t the first time “experts” were enthralled by intellectual mumbo jumbo. Remember phrenology? Remember eugenics? If you do a deeper dive, you’ll find more bunk.
If that isn’t enough, 419 moves the schools further down the road to a suspension-free utopia … or maybe dystopia is more accurate. A school is commanded by the ideologues in Sacramento to jump through more hoops before a kid can be suspended for unruly behavior. It’s not as if schools already don’t do this. They do, and a lot. In some cases, too much. Nikolas Cruz of Parkland fame benefited from this bend-yourself-into-pretzels disciplinary regime. Last year, California’s Kern High School District teachers rebelled against the imposition of the “restorative justice” flim-flam.
So, the not-so-golden state will have boys-now-girls in the girls’ bathroom, locker room, track team, soccer team, …. Chaos in sex and gender will be supplemented by classrooms that more resemble prison riots. Teachers might begin to act like the Lloyd Bridges air traffic control character in “Airplane”: “Looks like I took the wrong week to quit ….”
“Steve” (Lloyd Bridges) sniffing glue in “Airplane”.
The whole situation will drive teachers to more than the bottle. It’ll drive many out of the state … if they remain sober enough to operate a U-haul.
I got a reply from “cushelp.com” at Walmart regarding my comment on the company’s new gun policies. The company’s online respondent indicated that the comment will go up the chain of command, and included a link of the newsletter/memo from President and CEO, John McMillon, to the employees (see the first edition of “A ‘Woke’ Walmart” for the link). This only further drew my ire. After reading McMillon’s missive to employees, I pounded a reply. Here is my rebuttal:
Thanks so much for your timely reply to my email which contained a link to a company circular from Doug McMillon, President and CEO, to associates about the new policy. Apparently somebody read my detailed response to your new policy on guns and ammunition. Again, thanks for taking the time to read it. However, rather than allay my concerns, they have been heightened.
McMIllon’s announcement to associates reads like a heated reaction to an issue-of-the-moment. Indeed, it goes further. It adopts wholesale the line of argument of partisan gun control activists such as the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, the Brady Campaign, etc., etc. All in all, Walmart is gradually aligning itself with the center/left. McMillon is confirming John O’Sullivan’s famous aphorism: “All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.”
Let me count the ways. Surprisingly, I am not bothered so much by the company’s decision not to allow open carry in the stores. The problem lies with joining well-publicized nationwide gun-control crusades, emblematic in the demand that “the status quo is unacceptable”. It’s part of the usual rhetoric coming from the usual hive of gun-control groups and the Democratic Party. Parts of the memorandum could just as easily come out of Chuck Schumer’s office (D, NY).
I’d like to remind Walmart that the Second Amendment is part of the “status quo”. The Supreme Court defined the ownership of firearms to be an individual right, not a collective one. It’s presence in the Constitution is not for hunting or protection from MS-13. The Amendment is an avatar for citizen control of their government. A lesson in the English Civil War would work wonders in the corporate boardroom at Walmart.
So, what parts of the “status quo” is to be subjected to change? Well, it’s inanimate things like guns and ammo that are to be targeted (no pun intended) for punishment. The unstated premise is that the availability of these things constitutes a danger to the public. You tout the the company’s previous decision not to sell “military-style rifles”. The policy is nonsense as is the call to join a debate on resurrecting the Assault Weapon Ban. Calling for a debate are weasel words for establishing one (Ban). The debate on the Ban has been over for quite some time: the thing didn’t work, was allowed to lapse, and the Democrats refused to bring it back when they had the White House and majorities in both houses of Congress.
Further, the “military-style” nomenclature is silliness on stilts. It’s all about a gun’s cosmetic qualities. These guns are no more dangerous than any semi-automatic gun. By the way, guns are by their nature “dangerous” … as are crossbows. If they weren’t, they’d be no good for hunting. The AR platform and its knock-offs are associated with the miscreants of mass shootings because they are broadly popular with the gun-buying consumer base in the general public. They are the most highly demanded product in a gun manufacturer’s inventory. Hopefully, you’re not suggesting that all these buyers are crazed lunatics. If semi-auto shotguns with more compact barrels were to be all the rage in the murderous-loser class, would a call for a ban on semi-auto shotguns be next? Strange legal principle: find out what’s popular with lunatics and prohibit it.
The ludicrous nature of the Ban can be seen in the bumbling attempts to codify the concept into law. Is it the pistol grip? Is it the semi-auto nature of the thing? Is it the magazine capacity of over 4 rounds? Is it because it looks like something in a John Wick movie? Going from state to state examining their bans is an exercise in chaos theory. Usually the laws are written by people with the least knowledge about firearms. Watching them at a press conference is a real hoot. The big problem with the ban stems from the quixotic desire to proscribe a product for its cosmetic qualities. That’s it!
Then Walmart stacks its current silliness with more silliness on the ammo front. No handgun and .223 ammo. What’s the logic behind that? Clearly, the company associates those cartridges with mayhem. Why else put them on the no-go list? What’s next, a ban on 12 gauge? Any cartridge’s survival on Walmart’s shelves hangs by the thread of a killer’s choices.
Astoundingly, McMillon applauds the likely decline in the company’s market share in ammo. Now that’s a first: a company defining success as a decline in market share. Sears and JCPenney should be popping champagne corks instead of wringing their hands. It seems like the national Walmart is taking its cues from California Walmart. California is a mess and hardly an example to be imitated. I fled the state as a third generation native Californian to Montana. The state is no place to raise kids. Are the Walmarts in Montana soon to be looking like the ones in that lefty loony bin?
As always in these kinds of circulars, there are some palatable suggestions. Shoring up FixNICS and competently-written red flag laws are things to consider. But the gun and ammo ideas are just warmed over goofiness in Democratic Party bullet points. None of the ideas have a scintilla of relevance to curbing these mass shootings. Ditto for the much-vaunted “universal background checks”. Try to enforce that idea when family heirlooms are passed down from parent to child. The dribble is trotted out each time for the sole purpose of hammering more traditional and conservative circles in our population.
I suspect a general leftward orientation in corporate boardrooms. Others have noticed it as well. Walmart has not been inoculated. I attribute the phenomena to an increasing isolation in corporate governance from the common people, particularly in flyover country. Socio-economically, the “suits” identify with each other and the urban values of their location. Much has been written about this. Now these collectivist values appear to be seeping into Walmart. O’Sullivan might be proven right once again.
For your information, I shifted my recent tire purchase from Walmart to Discount Tire. In fact, I used your cheaper price to get a price match from them. You are to be thanked for providing the price leverage. But to be honest, I would have agreed to a higher price to avoid doing business with a company who appears to be lurching left. I will be doing the same with our other consumer purchases. Don’t look for my car in your parking lot.
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Once again, the online receptionist indicated that my response will go up the chain of command. I suspect the reply is boilerplate.
After learning of Walmart’s new gun policy after the murderous rampage in an El Paso Walmart, I spirited off a reply on Walmart’s website comment link. Here is my initial comment to the company’s new policy:
I am commenting on your recent policy regarding guns and ammunition. I hope somebody reads it.
Right at the start: I am no gun enthusiast but am a strong believer in the Second Amendment and its pure and historical purpose. Also, I have come to notice the left-leaning tendencies in corporate boardrooms across the country. More and more, corporate policies are reflecting the left-wing zeitgeist of our urban and academic centers. I could provide more detail about this orientation if a history and philosophy lesson is required. Still, the trend is increasingly becoming apparent at Walmart.
Certain ideologically-laden code words keep recurring in many corporate policies, including Walmart’s. These are partisan leitmotifs that are littered throughout in more than just bland pronouncements on the company website, but also in company actions. Take for instance “corporate responsibility”. In the past, I have come to associate the phrase with Walmart’s attentiveness to community needs such as assistance to homeless shelters and schools. Well, it’s gone way beyond that. “Sustainability” has glommed onto the phrase. “Sustainability” has morphed into much more than roadside trash pickups. The word is corrupted with lefty crusades such as the massively politicized “climate change”, the wars on fossil fuels and plastics, and the never-ending campaigns to force “equality” in all its intersectional and “marginalized” guises, in the name of “equity” – whatever that means.
The last one is a war on tradition. Established notions of public morality, institutions like marriage and family, and values such as self-reliance, personal responsibility, and economic freedom are assaulted in the pursuit of making the “new man/woman”. Call it social engineering; something reminiscent of more sordid episodes of the 20th century.
I am sad to see that Walmart has succumbed to the zeitgeist. Now, it’s guns. The new policy about open carry and ammunition may have something to do with liability issues. Nonetheless, the corporate course on these matters is still troubling. A mob is afoot emanating from our megalopolises, the worst in academia, and the media that is tied to the two. It takes courage to stand athwart the mob. Yours appears to be waning.
I’m reminded of Simon Schama’s chronicle of the French Revolution, “Citizens”. The mob of Paris and its fire-breathing demagogues were the bane of civil governance for the country for centuries. Threats, intimidation, violence, and blackmail were all-too-common. The lid blew off in 1789 and France plunged into darkness and dictatorship for decades afterwards. At the time, some people made their peace with the Revolution. Have you made yours?
Don’t mistake fashionable trends of thought for wisdom. The Second Amendment is a symbol of citizen control of our polity. As such, I’m exercising my sovereignty in severing any personal commercial association with Walmart.
