We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Getting away from all news and internet for 5 or 6 days is always interesting. To make it even more liberating, I leave my cell phone at home.
Sometimes I feel strongly that politics is important, and at other times I believe that they are all big government scoundrels and that America would be best off with a philosopher-king with perfect integrity, as long as it were me. I'd hate the job.
I am heading up to western MA to be with family and for our Christmas Mass, thence to Stowe with friends to ski, drink beer, chase girls, and get away from the intertunnels and all of the insane news about the protesting retards.
A special Christmas thanks to all American law enforcement. Cheers to you guys and gals. I'd be scared witless to do your jobs.
I do not hate lefties, liberals, progressives at all. In fact, I am always interested in their views and their reasons for them. I often find that they have a hatred of those with differing views which is difficult for me to understand. So much hate and anger that you can hardly have a civil chat or a civil debate.
No problem with hate, because many things and people deserve it but I sure don't.
As I said yesterday, Cuba is an insignificant, God-forsaken 3rd world s-hole with the population of the state of Georgia and with a crappy, corrupt, and cruel government like most other crappy 3rd world countries. It does not deserve all this attention or all this debate. All we Americans want from Cuba is cigars (possible in the near-term) and some political justice for their people (possible eventually). The latter is of course what we wish for all terrible crappy countries which include most countries on the planet, but which we cannot provide for them.
As I have said, Cuba is just another Haiti. Same population as Haiti, too.
Heading towards normal relations with Cuba? That's fine with me because basically Cuba is of little significance. Only the Cold War Russians put the place on the map, but that was 50 years ago and nobody, even the Russians, care about it anymore.
We'll leave out the billionaires, because they are too few to move the dial. Let's just look at the very high-income people who make America look unequal in the statistics.
Who are the piggish people with multi-million annual incomes?
Pop music stars Pro athletes and coaches Hollywood stars, producers, and agents Fund managers of large popular funds, hedge and regular Large urban real estate investors and brokers Successful creators of new businesses and venture investors in highly successful businesses A small number of CEOs of major corps. A microscopic number of authors Investment bankers? Not much anymore
I don't begrudge any of these people their incomes, but I sometimes envy it while aware that I would not be capable of doing what they do. Still, if we taxed them all 100% over 1 million, we'd eliminate the statistical "crisis" and people would have to bitch about something else.
I am glad that BD has scheduled a few Tim Keller posts for Advent. I attend the church in NYC where Tim is pastor, as do many of my friends. Some of my Jewish friends sometimes come with me too because the vibes are good and because Jesus was a serious Jew.
In the video posted yesterday, Keller was responding as an apologist to intellectual critiques of religion in general, and to Christianity in particular. He did so humbly, and often amusingly, but those intellectualized interrogations missed the point, I think.
In my humble and non-theological view (raised Catholic, then agnostic, now in it) is this: If you sense a spiritual vacuum in life, if you sense a secular, or an empty survival-oriented or self-oriented attitude towards life, then you can try believing first. Willing suspension of disbelief. Give it a chance. Then see what happens. There is nothing to lose, and maybe a fresh new existence in a new world, a new reality, to gain. A rebirth, as they say. This is a kingdom anybody can live in today.
You can't think your way into it.
If it does nothing, you can quit it anytime. If the baby in the manger is not ripe to be born in your heart today, you can wait as long as you want to. This kind of pregnancy can take many years, or never.
“The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.”
...another ascendant group (is) the Clerisy, which is based in academia (where there are now many more administrators and staffers than full-time instructors), media, the nonprofit sector, and, especially, government: Since 1945, government employment has grown more than twice as fast as America’s population. The Founders worried about government being captured by factions; they did not foresee government becoming society’s most rapacious and overbearing faction.
The Clerisy is, Kotkin says, increasingly uniform in its views, and its power stems from “persuading, instructing and regulating the rest of society.” The Clerisy supplies the administrators of progressivism’s administrative state, the regulators of the majority that needs to be benevolently regulated toward progress.
Do we humans tend to believe what we want to believe? Do we tend to believe what fits our preconceptions? Of course we do. God, however, has blessed us with a cerebral cortex with which to help balance our wishful fantasies against reality but our frontal cortex is a weak antidote.
Perhaps politics has always been about irrationality, propaganda, pandering, deception, etc. Socrates himself fell victim to a democratic witch hunt. There are always plenty of people out there who desire power, money, easy jobs, public recognition, etc. and who will do lots of things and compromise whatever integrity they have to get them. I understand that, but I do not respect it. I do not respect calculating, manipulative, dishonorable people, and I desire to insulate myself from them.
In recent years, it seems that the contagion of truthiness (useful fictions) goes hand-in-hand with the generation of underlying long-term politically-driven narratives. The seemingly-sociopathic Al Sharpton proved, in the 1987 Tawana Brawley episode, that a lie which fits the right political narrative can be profitable in many ways. In fact, his reckless, destructive ballsiness made his career as a public figure - while destroying many others involved in that famous non-story.
Truthy stories cannot get a foothold without media support or incurious acceptance. The media made Al Sharpton by refusing to treat him like the charlatan he is. The media made the Duke rape story, the "Hands up" story, and so many similar stories now culminating in the UVA gang rape story. None of these things were stories - they were ginned-up fictions to provide data points on a narrative line. That is what novelists and poets do.
These are modern versions of yellow journalism. We need more people willing to call "Foul" against tendentious PC baloney.
I don't really think this is all about gullibility and wish to believe. For the most naive, perhaps, but generally I think it's more cynical and calculating than that. There are agendas which seem, to some, to be more important than the truth. There are hardly enough Walter Duranty awards left to go around these days.
Advocacy journalism doesn't just run with fairy tales. Just as importantly, the MSM refuses to cover stories which would be fueled to near-fatal or fatal levels (eg, the IRS story) were a conservative in power. May I note the dearth of aggressive "investigative journalism" since the Left has held power in Washington? Has the Obama administration done anything worse, thus far, than the Nixon administration did? He has known, all along, that the MSM will cover for him because he is a lefty and has brown skin. Good insulation.
Pretty much everybody knows all of this now. The news is mostly spinfotainment and the only thing the public can do about it is to switch to FOX where "fair and balanced" means something - to the chagrin of the lefty narrative-spinners. Or Morning Joe too.
"What is truth?" asked the very clever Pontius Pilate
We'll see what happens with that UVA story eventually. To my mind, a "rape culture" is a feminist invention to keep their movement alive.Rape is a serious felony in the US, and is becoming more rare as time goes by. The criminality of rape is not controversial in the US although it is acceptable in many parts of the world and in many cultures. Dubious rape stories, like dubious racism stories, only harm a cause and create backlash. The same thing has happened to the "climate" hyperbole. For rape or attempted assault, call the cops, same as with a burglary or mugging. It's that simple. For climate, enjoy the day whatever the weather. Not to worry, in New England it will change tomorrow.
In no place in history on this planet has there ever been less sexism or racism, or more opportunity, or more generosity to the unfortunate, the feckless, the disabled, the homosexuals, and the transgenders, than there is in the Anglosphere today, and especially in the US. So why are the voices so shrill?Could it be because they see their relevance disappearing?
We'll leave out the billionaires, because they are too few to move the dial. Let's just look at the very high-income people who make America look unequal in the statistics. 
There’s no good reason for her not to run.