Mayor Eric Garcetti announces his intention that LA Department of Water and Power not replace three coastal gas-burning power plants but instead find a combination of renewable energy sources sufficient to take their place. (Sharon McNary/KPCC/LAist)
Today’s Democrats are like migratory birds. They are hardwired to travel in certain directions. For North American humming birds, it’s south; for Democrats, it’s left. In other words, even if blindfolded, Dems migrate ever closer to Havanna — as a model of societal organization, that is. Take for instance the rush to embrace the Green New Deal. Take for instance the LA mayor’s drive to hobble power generation for the city by closing down 3 natural gas power plants and replacing them with the fairy tale of … full-on “sustainables” – i.e., wind and solar. Get ready for more middle-class flight and rolling blackouts.
The pic shows LA’s powerful and influential lining up like Canadian geese. This certainly is a rush to the future … if your future has in store a lifetime lockup in a mental hospital. Knowingly taking poison isn’t a sign of mental stability.
Watch out USA. A Californian with presidential ambitions, Sen. Kamala Harris, wants to bring the California psychosis to a neighborhood near you. If you’re poorly informed, just remember that a Californian with a “D” after their name is shorthand for a candidate’s toxicity.
California governor Gavin Newsom announces the end of the high speed rail project, Feb. 12, 2019. (AP)
Is it a coincidence that the Green New Deal is all the rage as 43 states have legalized the relocation of dime bags of pot to the aspirin isle of the pharmacy, if not the produce section of the supermarket? Our teenage central planner’s (Ocasio-Cortez) afterbirth – The Green New Deal – disappeared without a trace as people began to realize the insanity of reshaping our society according to the musings of sophomores in pot-smoke-filled dorm rooms.
The same fate awaited the LA-to-SF bullet train because the idea probably originated in the same dorm room.
What’s left is a rump. Were the same young and addled geniuses responsible for a bullet train from … Bakersfield to Merced? With the fiscal probity of drunken sailors, Californians showered $5.4 billion on the $100 billion psychedelic vision. Virginia’s governor, Ralph Northam, showed the way out of the morass: allow it to be born – Bakersfield to Merced – and then abort it. Gavin Newsom, California’s hair-gelled governor, played the role of Kermit Gosnell.
To be blunt, telling a person what to think is not wrong; claiming the power to make another person think that way is wrong. The former is necessary for dialogue in a community of free association. Before there is a voluntary dialogue of views, one must first have a view contra another’s. The second half of the first sentence is the Green New Deal (GND), which is grounded in the rationalized Prussian state and more fully implemented in the full-mobilization governments of the warring parties of WWI – what was called War Socialism.
Let me explain. After the humiliations of Prussia at the hands of Napoleon, the Prussian state was rationalized around the administration of academics under the Hohenzollern monarchy as the cure for what ailed the nation. For people like the philosopher Hegel (Google him), it was the perfection of political organization.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, U. of Berlin. Portrait made in 1831.Prussian king William is crowned Emperor William I of Germany, Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, France, 1870.
This gave rise to his history-as-progress thing, and would flower into Obama’s silly talk of being on the right side of it – which means to agree with him. Add a dose of “experts” rooted in opinionated “science” and you’ve just short-circuited popular sovereignty. Oh, lip service is paid to “democracy”, but it’s only of the kind that is allowed to agree with the stale and calcified opinions of a claque of “experts”. Thus, we have the unelected administrative state and the Green New Deal demand for a whole lot more of it.
Modern industrialized war provides the opportunity to put the grotesque plan into operation. Since it’s all about government controls in time of war, it’s socialism, thus War Socialism. It also explains the constant search for the “moral equivalent of war”. Declaring a war-like situation is the go-to excuse to marshal the state, create new claques of “experts”, bust the budget, and control the lives of people. Once again, welcome to the Green New Deal.
The parallels with that other high priest of the “laws” of history, Karl Marx, are aplenty. He announced the need for a lot of consciousness-raising by a prescient few. Lenin called them the “vanguard elite”. As in the Communist Manifesto, so in the Ocasio-Cortez Green New Deal. Who else but the few self-anointed gnostics, schooled in the theology of the global warming apocalypse, can be entrusted to lead us to the promised land?
Don’t dare, you “frontline communities”, use your democratic voice to build coal-fired power plants to sell electricity to communities stuck in the brave new world of windmills and solar farms. If you try, the full force of the soviet will descend upon you.
Speaking of soviets, the GND has them too. The vague references to local community councils will be nothing but warrens of left-wing activists, just like the soviets of revolutionary Russia. The boilerplate title of “workers, soldiers, and peasants” was nothing but cover for Bolshevik militancy.
And so we are to go the way of Venezuela, Cuba, the Soviet Union, etc., etc.
Empty shelves in a Caracas supermarket.
Ocasio-Cortez, our teenage central planner, symbolizes the extreme myopia of many that are treading a well-worn path from the post-Napoleonic Prussian state to the garrison governments of the world wars and the spawning of systematize totalitarianism. Don’t expect the realization to suddenly dawn on her and her Twitter followers. She is to erudition what an oil slick is to water. It only floats on the surface and there ain’t much beyond that.
I watched PBS’s Frontline “The Gang Crackdown” on MS-13 till I couldn’t take it anymore, roughly ¾ of it. The program was a goulash of logic that raised more questions than it answered. And when it tried to answer some, the explanations resembled Alice going down the rabbit hole. The thing was an affront to common sense.
The broadcast tried, in the tradition of the world’s best sleight-of-hand magicians, to associate the presence of MS-13 to reactionary American public officials. As they did so, anyone watching it would be blinded by one basic question. Where do we find these MS-13 miscreants? They reside within the suddenly blossoming enclaves of immigrants, many of them “undocumented”. Suddenly blossoming! We wouldn’t have this problem if we hadn’t lost control of our borders. Dahhh!
MS-13 murder scene.
Such logic apparently never dawned on the script writers – or at least there’s no evidence of it. Instead, they steered the viewer into a sojourn of the crime and poverty of third world countries, the reactions of law enforcement, and the unchallenged opinions of open-borders activists. Clearly, the program could have benefited from more of the kind of pushback that was only reserved for Trump and federal and local law enforcement.
Activists protest the Trump administration’s approach to illegal border crossings in Washington, Thursday, June 28, 2018. (AP File Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
The lambasting of American authorities was partnered with an unstated inference. Call it innuendo with a light touch. Bad conditions everywhere in the world obliges the US to accept nearly anyone needy. Why else the hackneyed reference to the plight of El Salvadorans, et al? Everyone living in a dirt floor hut is now to be recast as a “soon-to-be-American”. Emma Lazarus’s poem is sentiment, but it is also suicide as public policy in the era of a gargantuan welfare state.
Frontline added nothing to the immigration debate but the tired Democratic Party talking points on the issue du jour. A little more honesty would help, as well as a little more rationality.
PG&E trucks sit on a roadside in Paradise, California on Jan. 22, 2019.
Here we go again. PG&E filed bankruptcy. The utility’s previous filing for insolvency was in 2001. The purported reason for this latest at-bat in Chapter 11 is the fear of lawsuits from devastating wildfires over the past few years (17 in 2017). Yes, the state has been burning up. A multi-year severe drought hasn’t helped. Exacerbating the problem is rural residents’ preference for suburbia in wildlands. The explosive nature of the fires is kindled by wild land management practices of an eco-crazed state government. In this maelstrom sits a huge uility. Greenie mandates on the utility industry run rampant which divert revenues from day-to-day maintenance and upgrades. With some of the highest utility rates known to man, it’s perplexing that the hardening of its infrastructure is woefully lacking. The whole situation screams of a collapse waiting to happen. Well, here we go again.
Please watch the Wall Street Journal video on the infrastructure shortcomings of the utility.
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., at a Dream Act rally in Irvine, California, on Oct. 11, 2017. (CNN)
I’m not sure if the prepositions “of” or “from” or “for” apply to the presidential candidacy of Kamala Harris. One thing is certain though: she will take all that is California national. What does that mean? Let me list the ways. Be prepared for far-reaching, zealous gun control; be prepared for a huge spike in energy costs; be prepared for open borders; be prepared for high taxes; be prepared for a mania of regulation; be prepared for more “free” stuff from the forced courtesy of the American taxpayer; be prepared for an enhanced campaign to ride religion out of the public square; be prepared for intensified gender confusion in public policy; be prepared for militant jihads against all sorts of “isms” and “phobias”; be prepared for the elevation of abortion to a civic sacrament; be prepared for the enactment of totalitarian environmentalism; and on, and on, and on, and on. And I haven’t gotten to foreign policy.
Remember the personal assassination of Judge Kavanaugh. Harris led the mob. This kind of behavior may be celebrated west of the Coast Range, but is it a role model for the rest of the country? If it is proclaimed to be, it ought not be. The video:
A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for California as the new direction for the country. If that’s your beau ideal, by all means, be my guest. If so, one final (maybe 2) “be prepared”: be prepared for a new era of limits and your children not being able to leave home till 40.
Implicit bias is all the rage in social policy circles. The rationale for the crusade is based on the assertion that we do something more than overtly act like racists (homophobes, Islamophobes, etc.). We harbor hateful prejudices deep in our subconscious. It’s not enough, it is said, to control the racist behavior. We must expunge the lurking bad thoughts swimming around in those vast unconscious reservoirs in our brains. The field is more than a rich source of consulting income for the high priests of the endeavor. The dogma branches off into innumerable calls for the checking of privilege and other forms of sloganeering. But is it true? There’s good reason to say wowwww!
David Berreby
This came to mind while reading in my April 2018 issue of National Geographic Magazine the article, “The Things That Divide Us” by David Berreby. A natural logic could lead one to rightly assume that evil behavior has tentacles in evil thoughts. Fair enough. The problem lies in ferreting out the purported bad biases. Further, there appears to be a tenuous connection between the lurking prejudice and behavior.
And there’s good reason to question the attempts to measure the hidden bias. Please read the following article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Can We Really Measure Implicit Bias? Maybe Not”, by Tom Bartlett, Jan. 5, 2017, https://www.chronicle.com/…/Can-We-Really-Measure-Im…/238807.
What we have in the National Geographic article is another non-scientist author claiming the certitude of a scientist with, in reality, an ideological ax to grind. Berreby has nothing but a BA in English from Yale to his credit. He uses the tendentious claims of some psychologists to support what is in essence his political crusade.
Since the 19th century, we have experienced the attempt to marry science to politics. The regions of the world laid waste by Marxism, eugenics, and National Socialism are a testament to its abject failure. Informed decisions are one thing; totalitarianism is another. It’s amazing that we have discovered a new way to construct Orwell’s Ministries of Truth and Love.
PBS’s “Dictator’s Playbook: Mussolini”, my assessment: very misleading. If you haven’t seen it but plan to, don’t! There are better biographies out there. The thing exudes with the ideological partisanship that grips today’s academic and media hothouses. The program says more about them than Il Duce.
One of the contributors to “The Dictator’s Playbook: Mussolini”.
Politically corrupted academics littered their commentary with derogatory parallels to anyone who has serious doubts about multiculturalism, the many tentacles of political correctness, and the fantasyland socialism of the green movement. In the intro, the creators set the stage by connecting Mussolini to the modern rise of populist and nationalist parties in Europe. They couldn’t help but boil their beliefs down to “xenophobia”, as if there’s nothing to worry about in the sudden influx of millions of unassimilated immigrants. Check the crime stats and terror cells coming out of Scandinavia’s “especially vulnerable areas”.
Watch the clip of violent Muslim youth confronting Swedish police in Stockholm.
Trump illusions pervaded, like two profs’ summary of Il Duce’s program as one of “making Italy great gain”. It’s repeated often enough to make sure you get the idea. But think about it: what leader would be opposed to making their country great, from George Washington to Obama? If they weren’t about that, they would have to keep it secret or nobody would entrust them with the keys to the White House.
Mussolini’s political platform is reduced to violence, love of war, violence, nationalism … and did I say violence? One glaring plank missing from the script is summed up in the Fascist Party motto, “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state”. The Fascists’ love of the state was conspicuously absent from beginning to end. I suspect that modern Progressives are a bit uneasy knowing they share the same love. When you’re too busy lambasting Trump, sometimes you muff the more obvious connections.
Elizabeth Warren and Ocasio-Cortez might very well have a Mussolini problem. All you have to do to see the line of descent is substitute “free” (for all the stuff that they want to give people: healthcare, college, reparations, high wages, you name it) for “the state”. And, indeed, nothing is to be outside “the state”, as Hobby Lobby, Jack Philips, and any traditional Christian who takes 2,000 years of church history and the Bible seriously should now know. Today’s Dem-Left would be uncomfortable with the marching, uniforms, and martial vigor, but not much else.
FDR didn’t have much of a problem with Mussolini’s corporatism. He tried it in the National Industrial Recovery Act and its commissariat, the National Recovery Administration. Likewise, the Dems of today are marching toward a greater fulfillment of the motto with state-aggrandizement in the Green New Deal. Could that be the reason for the slipshod treatment of Il Duce?
Elections have consequences. Yep, they do. So, thanks go to the suburban voters in suburban districts (and a few elsewhere) for handing the House majority to a party intent on raining totalitarian environmentalism (the Green New Deal), various versions of socialism (#1 and #2 are synonymous), and impeachment on the country for the next 2 years. Regardless of what D-candidates said while campaigning, the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, and Jerry Nadler were swept into power. Again, thanks for the next couple of years of social/political/economic poison. Assisted suicide appears to be in vogue.
The doctors ready to administer the poison pill: Maxine Waters (D. Ca.) and Jerry Nadler (D, MY).
A public, said to be deeply concerned about “dysfunction” in DC, curiously voted for more of it. The slide into governing incontinence could be accelerated by a much-heralded romp through impeachment land, in addition to the profusion of “investigations” into matters as worrisome as the president’s dental care habits.
I’ve refrained from commenting on Mueller, choosing to wait for his report. Right now, of greater concern is the public’s perceptions about impeachment. There’s a good chance that no matter what Mueller writes it will be culled for articles of impeachment. The Mueller report and their own inquisitions will be the vehicle to hang Trump for his style and policies. Since its coming down, it would be nice to know what the public and even our own politicos know of the subject.
I don’t think that I would be too far off when I say, Not much. It’s a product of poor schooling and pop media. First, impeachment – the indictment phase of the process for removal – is a political act and the grounds for it hinge on “high crimes and misdemeanors” (HCM). What does HCM mean? It doesn’t for the most part refer to statutory crimes, even though they might be included if serious enough. It centers on what Andrew C. McCarthy (and Cass Sunstein) calls “truly egregious instances of maladministration”.
The unease about maladministration goes back to British and colonial experience. Legislatures wanted to control their royally appointed governors and judges. It’s not likely that Trump’s habit of name-calling qualifies (“low IQ Maxine Waters”, even though “foolish” would be more accurate). It’s more probable that the Dems will hang their hat on business/financial dealings and the Trump’s campaign efforts to do what Hillary’s succeeded at doing: namely, get the Russians to give them dirt on their opponent. The Steele dossier anyone?
All the bellowing about “they stole our elections in collusion with Trump” is simply carnival barking. The Dems will use whatever they and Mueller dig up to essentially go after Trump for his coarse style, a tactic which they patented years back – remember, “Bush lied, people died”.
Also, he’s a miscreant for not being politically correct. The Dems would like to censor all immigration policy options outside open borders.
Whether any charges are merited is beside the point. The sole goal is to get Trump. For the Dem caucus, “maladministration” really means to disagree with them.
So, suburban voters who voted to flip actually chose “maladministration” in order to maladministrate – i.e., we’ll be embroiled in impeachment wars for about 700 days. And be prepared for Ocasio-Cortez to be a euphemism for the Dems’ policy preferences coming out of the House.
A sad scene at National Geographic Magazine headquarters after the 2016 election …. Not! It could have been given the way these people write.
Distraught Hillary campaign workers on election night, 2016.
I’m not sure how much more I can stomach of the corruption of science in popular publications like National Geographic. The magazine is not about the furtherance of geographic knowledge. It’s opinion journalism. It’s newfound mission is the chaining of the subject to a political agenda. The agenda is one that could be found among the babblings of campus social justice warriors or The Resistance.
“Social justice warriors”, also referred as the “Resistance”, protesting the Trump administration in New York City, 2017.
Time and again, issue after issue, the magazine never fails to disappoint. Pior issues led with cover stories like “Why We Lie”, “Gender Revolution”, and “Black and White”. “Why We Lie” came hot on the heels of the howling from the Left about Trump’s exaggerations and misstatements. Come on, when has hyperbole become unusual for politicians and activists? “Gender Revolution” pushed the “T” in LGBTQ. “Black and White” advanced Marxism with “people of color” replacing the oppressed and alienated proletariat. A favorite hobbyhorse is what I like to call “totalitarian environmentalism”.
What chaps my hide is the complete absence of peer review. Claims are made without any caution. The words “scientists” and “experts” are used without modifiers like “some” (I saw it only once in the cover story in “Black and White”). Opposing views are treated as if they don’t exist. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised since the articles are written by non-scientists with an all-too-often reliance on politicized scientists. Going back to the aforementioned cover story, the author – Elizabeth Kolbert – was a literature major at Yale. Surely she has great interest in the study of race, but she is no scientist and has a definite ideological bias. There’s no filter of the scientist as she writes.
If you sit on the left side of the political spectrum, by all means, subscribe. In this instance, you would be approaching National Geographic as you would Mother Jones. Indeed, there’s not much difference between the two.
