Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

The New Neo Posted on by

RIP.

Whatever will happen as a result of this seems loaded with turmoil and strife and rage and uncertainty – as if we didn’t have enough of those things already.

UPDATE 10:50:

Seen in a comment at Ace’s: “Seriously though, this is peak 2020. This is 2020 saying, ‘f*** you, have some more.'”

The focus now turns to the Senate. With Scalia’s death and Obama’s nomination of Garland, the Republicans controlled the Senate and a Democrat was president. So the Republicans had every right to refuse to approve Obama’s appointment and to wait for the 2016 election results.

In addition, it’s the end of Trump’s first term and he’s running for re-election, whereas it was Obama’s last term. But even so, does anyone think for one moment that, if the Democrats had been in charge of the Senate at the time of Scalia’s death, they wouldn’t have moved heaven and earth to approve not just Garland, but someone else even further to the left? Of course they would have, even if they had had only a single day in which to do it before Obama left office.

The GOP blocked Garland’s appointment because they had the power to do so. If the Democrats had been in charge they would have approved whoever Obama appointed. Simple as that. But now the Democrats are saying the Republicans should desist from approving the appointment of a president of the Republicans’ own party, because that’s supposed to be consistent with what happened with Garland? Absurd.

The situation is complicated by many other things, including the fact of RINOs in the Senate who might decide to side with Democrats. Some of those RINOs also are up for re-election this year in purple or bluish states, and might lose their seats if they vote for a Trump SCOTUS appointment and therefore the GOP might lose the Senate as a result. However, if those same people don’t vote for a Trump appointment, they are likely to be abandoned by at least some of the GOP base and they may lose their seats anyway, with a resultant loss of the Senate for the GOP.

Scylla and Charybdis.

Since the BLM autonomous zone was such a raging success in Seattle, BLM has decided to set one up in Minneapolis

The New Neo Posted on by

Are they trying to get Minnesota to flip to Trump?

Because with news like this, one wonders:

As Ace writes:

It’s almost as if this isn’t about civil rights for blacks, but about granting political power to violent, sociopathic street thugs and killers.

Much much more at the link, including this (and note the woman’s age; she’s got to be at least in her sixties – no naive youth she):

Trump tackles the anti-American anti-history anti-truth indoctrination in our schools

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, well, well.

Yesterday Trump made quite an announcement:

On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced that he would sign an executive order to launch a “1776 Commission” for American patriotism in education, countering the Marxist critical race theory of The New York Times‘ “1619 Project.” In his remarks, Trump tied the deadly and destructive riots that broke out across America this summer to the noxious ideology of Marxist critical race theory and championed the virtues of America’s founding in opposition to the “twisted web of lies” undermining American patriotism.

“Our mission is to defend the legacy of America’s founding, the virtue of America’s heroes, and the nobility of the American character. We must clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms, and teach our children the magnificent truth about our country,” Trump declared.

I don’t even have to use a search engine to figure out the left’s reaction. But my own reaction is twofold. My first reaction is that I am continually astounded at the number of things Trump manages to tackle, all at once, and impressed by his willingness to take controversial stands. My second reaction is “too bad he didn’t do this four years ago, because the hour is late and getting later.” Of course, four years ago the results of the ongoing leftist miseducation of America and its youth hadn’t reached the obvious fever pitch they have today, although leftist educators had nevertheless been doing their work of indoctrinating in leftist wokeness and the “anti-racist” form of racism for many years.

Had any president mentioned it before? I don’t think so. You certainly wouldn’t expect if from Obama. And I can’t imagine Bush saying a word about it, either. Prior to that the signs were more subtle, although they were present.

I finished law school about ten years before CLS (critical legal studies) gained ascendance, so as a student I escaped the changes that it wrought. However, I noted them later on (the 80s and 90s) and followed their development with alarm. CLS was one of the seminal movements behind the entire leftist post-modernist edifice we see today, having burst forth some time ago from its seeming but illusory confinement in the universities and law schools.

As Heinrich Heine wrote: “Thought precedes action, as lightning does thunder.” Indeed.

NOTE: That quote of Heine’s is taken from a larger quote that made my blood run cold when I first read it several years ago. Keep in mind as you read this that Heine wrote it in 1834, making the following prediction about the future of Germany and the world (yes, that’s eighteen-thirty-four, not nineteen-thirty-four) [emphasis mine]:

Christianity – and that is its greatest merit – has somewhat mitigated that brutal Germanic love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then the ancient stony gods will rise from the forgotten debris and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and finally Thor with his giant hammer will jump up and smash the Gothic cathedrals…Do not smile at the visionary who anticipates the same revolution in the realm of the visible as has taken place in the spiritual. Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder is of true Germanic character; it is not very nimble, but rumbles along ponderously. Yet, it will come and when you hear a crashing such as never before has been heard in the world’s history, then you know that the German thunderbolt has fallen at last. At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in the remotest deserts of Africa will hide in their royal dens. A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll.

Is it useful to understand the philosophies behind “wokeness”?

The New Neo Posted on by

Thinking more about the video I posted yesterday, I noticed this comment by “John Tyler”:

No point in really in trying to understand what motivates the adherents of wokeness, Nazism, communism, ANTIFA’ism, BLM’ism, etc. , because any sentient carbon based life form realizes what their end goals are.

No point in even trying to discuss what are the logical inconsistencies of these political socio-economic theologies because their adherents are immune to – or more likely do not care – about what non-adherents have to say, irrespective of the logical elegance of any arguments pointing out the deficiencies in their beliefs.

You cannot argue or debate a pseudo-religious belief system!!
It’s like arguing for/against the existence of God; one either believes or does not.

No, you cannot argue with such a person – if by “argue” you mean in the conventional sense of using reason and logic, those quaint (and apparently racist – who knew?) notions.

But I strongly disagree with the idea that there’s no point in really trying to understand what motivates them, “because any sentient carbon based life form realizes what their end goals are.” Perhaps my definition of “sentient” is different from Tyler’s, but I know plenty of people who appear to be quite sentient and who have no idea what the end goal is. They think the end goal is racial harmony, for example. Now, you can mock them all you want, but the vast majority of people who feel this way (“useful idiots,” as the Communists would say) have no idea whatsoever what the endpoint is. And the support of those people is vital to the activists. They count on that support and actively court it by coming up with such monikers as “Black Lives Matter,” which plays into this desire for an end to racism and suffering.

These unaware supporters include some people who place BLM signs on their porches, but an even greater number don’t go that far and yet they regularly vote for Democrats both locally and nationally, and fail to object when white-hating programs are implemented in their children’s classrooms. You can call them stupid or any other name you wish, but they are not stupid – merely idealistic, somewhat uninformed, and gullible.

I also think they are reachable, if they were to learn what underlies the goals and slogans of activists in movements such as BLM and the “anti-racism” educators. Those are discussions anyone can have with these unaware supporters. The discussions might not bear fruit, but in most cases you would not be arguing with an activist or someone who is familiar with the concepts involved. The majority are probably like those friends of mine who know only this about Antifa: that the name means “anti-fascist,” and so the group is probably fighting the good fight against hatred. The MSM endeavors to keep most people ignorant, and so it’s up to the right (and anyone else who is aware and not on board) to tell them what’s going on.

There’s another reason to try to understand, and that involves the next generation. If you are alert to the sorts of philosophies and areas of study (“critical” this and “critical” that) that are involved, you can teach your children or grandchildren what they mean and how to guard against them, so that they are forewarned and forearmed. You can also notice whether a certain school system or university is buying into this stuff, and try to bring to the public’s attention exactly what’s happening and why it’s both wrong and dangerous.

Lastly, if you ever find yourself in a confrontation with a True Believer, it can be helpful to know as much as possible about what they’re saying and what lies beneath – especially if there are onlookers who are paying attention. No, “You cannot argue or debate a pseudo-religious belief system,” as Tyler says. But you can confound them (perhaps, now and then) by (a) knowing their game and showing great awareness and knowledge of it (b) coming back at them with something unexpected in terms of argument or rejoinder (c) speaking to them in such a way that the onlookers learn something about what is going on here.

All those things seem potentially valuable to me.

[ADDENDUM: I’m surprised at the level of defeatism I see in most of the comments here, as well as the level of generalization regarding all people on the Democrat side. I’ve responded at some length in several comments, but right now I just want to highlight that the people I’m advocating talking to don’t ordinarily spend a lot of time on political topics and they are far more amenable to reasonable arguments from the other side than either activists or people who are intensely political.

Doesn’t anyone know people like the ones I’m talking about? I certainly do.

It may not be how you choose to spend your time. But I’m suggesting one-on-one exchanges with a friend or relative who fits the description I’ve given of the sort of person amenable to listening. They exist, and their numbers are not infinitesimal.

A great deal of patience is required. But if every single conservative chose even just one or two such people to talk to, I think some worthwhile change might occur. If you give up before you start and don’t even try, however, it’s less likely to occur.]

What we’re up against in today’s woke activism

The New Neo Posted on by

This is long, and I don’t usually watch long videos. Nor have I completely finished watching this one – not yet. But I’ve watched (or listened to; you can do the latter while doing some other task that doesn’t require full attention) much of it and I’m highly impressed. “Wokal Distance” manages to sum up the philosophical underpinnings of what’s going on today in a manner that’s fluent, clear, and understandable.

At around minute 42:30, he talks about methods of fighting it. But the whole thing is worth listening to:

And this is interesting as well [emphasis mine]:

Once reified, postmodern abstractions about the world are treated as though they are real things, and accorded the status of empirical truth. Contemporary social justice activism thus sees theory as reality, as though it were gravity or cell division or the atomic structure of uranium.

The correspondence theory of truth holds that objective truth exists and we can learn something about it through evidence and reason. That is, things are knowable and we gain reliable information about them when our beliefs align with reality. It’s termed “the correspondence theory of truth” because a statement is considered true when it corresponds with reality and false when it doesn’t. Reality, of course, is the thing that does not change regardless of what you believe.

While advanced civilisations going back to classical antiquity employed this reasoning in selected areas (Ancient Rome to civil engineering and law, for example, or Medieval China to public administration), it’s only since the Enlightenment that it’s been applied consistently to nearly everything, at least in developed countries. It forms the foundation of modern scientific and administrative progress and accounts in large part for the safety and material comfort we now enjoy.

Reified “Theory” is no more and no less than a rejection of the correspondence theory of truth. There are no universal truths and no objective reality, only narratives expressed in discourses and language that reflect one group’s power over another. Science has no claim on objectivity, because science itself is a cultural construct, created out of power differentials, and ordered by straight white males. There are no arguments, merely identity showdowns; the most oppressed always wins.

And, because language makes the world, attempts by scholars in other disciplines and from across the political spectrum to do what I did and falsify Theory’s empirical claims are met not with reasoned debate but an accusation that those individuals are harming the oppressed or silencing the marginalised, because all someone higher up the hierarchical food chain is supposed to do when confronted by someone lower down is listen. That’s the point of telling people to “check their privilege” before they open their mouths.

Pluckrose and Lindsay make a compelling argument that this is a religion, and not in the glib, observational sense that its adherents are taking knees, engaging in call-and-response, or washing each other’s feet. Rather, contemporary social justice asks us to believe things that aren’t proven in the same way that “Muhammad ascended to heaven from the battlements of Jerusalem on a winged horse” or “Christ rose from the dead on the third day” aren’t proven.

We live in two competing worlds. We’re not just watching two different movies (a phrase you often hear). We actually disagree about what “watching” and “two” and “different” and “movies” are.

Another way to look at it is that it’s a war between content and process. The post-modernists are about process, with content being whatever they say it is. And the process has to do with power as they see and define it, who has it and who doesn’t, and who ought to have it. They think they should have it, and then they will determine the content, which does not exist as an independent truth.

[ADDENDUM: A relevant announcement by Trump.]

About the perp in that Tulsa cop-killing

The New Neo Posted on by

Please read this on the history of David Ware, the man charged with murdering police officer Craig Johnson in Tulsa back in June. It is quite edifying.

As you read it, note that the killer probably has been an alcoholic and habitual drug user (perhaps addict, perhaps not) and in trouble since his teen years. I have no idea what interventions were tried for his substance problems, but it doesn’t seem as though they worked. Perhaps he is a sociopath.

At any rate, he made good on his earlier promise to kill Johnson. The other officer he tried to kill was only six weeks on the job, so there was no history there.

Remember the “protestors” who harrassed patrons sitting outdoors at a restaurant?

The New Neo Posted on by

They’ve been charged with an assortment of crimes such as theft, conspiracy and simple trespass, harassment, criminal mischief, and disorderly conduct.

I have no idea whether they’ll be convicted, and even if convicted whether they’ll get anything more than a weak slap on the wrist. This is in Pittsburgh, and my guess is that the only reason they are facing even the possibility of consequences is that Pittsburgh still has an actual DA rather than one who is in league with those who would do away with such antiquated penalties.

It also occurs to me that the perpetrators probably never thought they’d be charged with anything. They are so used to getting away with this sort of thing that the idea of consequences is unlikely to have even entered their heads.

US Democrats are not European-style socialists. They are worse.

The New Neo Posted on by

If I had to describe the single most disturbing thing about today’s Democratic Party, I’d be hard-pressed because the number of possible choices is so large. But it probably would be this phenomenon, well-described yesterday by commenter “Lorenz Gude”:

And finally an observation from a resident (and also citizen) of a Social Democracy on a point that I don’t think most Americans fully understand. What distinguishes social democracy from other forms of socialism is that when social democrats lose an election they accept the results. That was true in Sweden when the Social Democratic party finally lost power after about 50 years. And it was true in Australia when the current PM Scott Morrison surprised everyone by winning our most recent election. NOTICE, my fellow Americans, that the Democrats have never accepted the results of the 2016 election, and are promising us not to accept the results of the 2020 election should they lose. Some of them are totalitarian communists like Stalin, and some are the kind you have to pry their cold dead hands off – not guns, but power. Like Comrade. Mugabe or Comrades Chavez, Maduro, and Castro.

That is it.

They have signaled this for the last four years by Russiagate, the ridiculous impeachment theater, the nomination of an obvious puppet candidate (proxy for others), their push for mail-in voting, and proposals such as ending the filibuster, packing SCOTUS, creating several new states, ending the Electoral College, making illegal immigrants citizens, and open borders, every single one of them designed to fundamentally change the country in ways that would keep the left in power indefinitely.

In the US the left is exploiting the goodwill of Americans and their desire to bend over backwards to avoid any taint of racism and to atone for the racist past. Therefore, a great deal of the Democrats’ agenda has been redefined as anti-racist. That is the key they believe will lead to permanent power, and they are betting that the citizens of the US will hand it over to them.

The Tulsa police officer shooting and how it relates to Jacob Blake

The New Neo Posted on by

Do you remember the names of police officers Craig Johnson and Aurash Zarkeshan, or that of David Ware? I certainly didn’t. They are not household words.

But on June 29, 2020, Officer Johnson was killed and Officer Zarkeshan was gravely wounded in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by David Ware, right in the middle of the current turmoil about policing. In the Tulsa case, all three people were white (I believe Zarkeshan is of Iranian descent, but that’s white also). Another reason it didn’t get wide attention is that it was the officer who was killed rather than the perp.

But a video of the incident has recently been released (last Monday), and it amply demonstrates why the police fired on Jacob Blake. Shipwreckedcrew at RedState has the story. Please read.

[NOTE: See also this.]

[ADDENDUM: Here is the story of what happened in greater detail. It’s very chilling, particularly the fact that Ware had already incapacitated the officers and yet after a pause fired a kill shot to Johnson’s head.]

Roger L. Simon: who shot the sheriff?

The New Neo Posted on by

People are not responsible for all the consequences of their actions, especially those that are difficult to foresee or that are very distantly removed in time or place. But sometimes (as I wrote Monday) they are at least somewhat responsible:

And that’s how we get to Compton, California, and people who support the cold-blooded attempted assassination of two deputies while they sat in their car. It all fits together like the pieces of a puzzle: blue lives don’t matter, cops cannot be allowed to defend themselves, cops need to die.

This is an evil that’s rests – like so many evils – on a lie. Everyone complicit in that lie should be ashamed, but they are very far from shame.

Very very very far from shame.

After I wrote that piece on Monday, it occurred to me that one of those groups “complicit in that lie” – and in fact, very instrumental in disseminating it as far as it possibly could – has been the NY Times, particularly in its dedication to the mendacious and destructive 1619 Project about which I’ve written many times. But the editors were not content to merely make this project the focus of their paper. It is tied into a far-reaching educational program to spread the word as much as possible into the primary grades. And many educators are obliging.

Roger L. Simon weighs in on it, too, particularly the 1619 Project:

:

…[A]n indelible line exists connecting the dots from the NYT’s 1619 Project to the blood-stained sidewalks of South-Central Los Angeles.

That along with such empty and meretricious academic inventions as “critical race theory” and “systemic racism” are the supposedly intellectual underpinnings of a movement yielding nothing but nonstop social unrest cum physical and psychological destruction.

An atmosphere of vengeance has been created, rocketing across the zeitgeist from Antifa to the Marxist leaders of Black Lives Matter to academia to Hollywood to the media to the myriad putatively “liberal” and “progressive” politicians, enabling violence in the streets of their cities, to the crazed individual who pointed the gun into the Compton squad car and plugged the deputies in the face.

Just as you are what you eat, you reap what you sow. And the editors of the New York Times, not to mention their slavish lackeys at the Pulitzer Prize committee, are responsible for the fruits of the theories they toss out with reckless abandon because actual wrecks ensue.

I think Roger is actually being too kind when he accuses them of “reckless abandon.” What else did they think would happen, if they push the message that this nation is irredeemably evil and has been from even before its founding dedicated to enslaving and harming black people? These dots are not difficult to connect – and if they failed to do so, then they are stupider than I thought (the old “knaves or fools” dilemma).

It would be different if the 1619 Project were the truth. Then they would have the defense (and I think it would be a fairly good defense) that when you tell the truth and people get angry at the truth it is unfortunate but you are not really responsible. But if you concoct a lie, with great effort and skill and a large expenditure of time and energy, and contrive to spread it throughout the land, I believe you are responsible for the effects of that lie, much like those who came up with the blood libel against Jews in the Middle Ages.

However, in the Middle Ages, I suppose it’s possible that those who concocted the lie thought it was actually the truth. But I don’t see how anyone at the Times wouldn’t have known that the 1619 Project was a lie. And if they didn’t know at first, they certainly knew once all the criticism from historians (even some on the left) came in. But at that point they barely broke stride, changed a single sentence, and continued to spread the 1619 Project and its message far and wide.

Malice aforethought.

No, the Times knew or should have known exactly what they were doing in making a decision to make this “America is guilty of original sin” message their leitmotif. And they succeeded. Congratulations, NY Times editors.

Of course, the Times is not solely responsible for the violence, although they’ve played a large role. Many many others (and the perpetrators, who bear the most responsibility) have also pushed a similar message. But it would be highly ironic if the Times’ efforts end up contributing mightily to the precipitous decline of New York City as a financial and entertainment and tourist and business center. They probably will consider it worth it, though, if it destroys the hated Trump – a New Yorker through and through by history, but not by political point of view.

I have deciphered Bidenspeak

The New Neo Posted on by

Everyone is puzzled by this. I am not puzzled by this. It is simplicity itself:

Big step towards Middle East peace

The New Neo Posted on by

Today we have news that would be enormous and that the great majority of Americans would celebrate, if it wasn’t occurring as a result of initiatives Trump put forth:

Cementing a regional geopolitical shift few would have thought possible little more than a month ago, Israel on Tuesday signed landmark normalization deals with two Arab nations at a White House ceremony, with leaders hailing a “new dawn” for peace in the Middle East.

Hundreds of people amassed on the sun-washed South Lawn to witness the signing of agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The bilateral agreements, dubbed the Abraham Accords, formalize the normalization of the Jewish state’s already-thawing relations with the two Arab nations, in line with their common opposition to Iran and its aggression in the region.

“We’re here this afternoon to change the course of history,” US President Donald Trump said from a balcony overlooking the South Lawn. “After decades of division and conflict, we mark the dawn of a new Middle East.”

The left laughed at Trump and especially at Jared Kushner when they indicated they were working on this. And if the left is elected, they’ll be laughing again as they do their best to undo it.

But for today we have Netanyahu saying this:

For thousands of years, the Jewish people have prayed for peace. For decades, the Jewish state has prayed for peace. And this is why today we’re filled with such profound gratitude. I am grateful to you, President Trump, for your decisive leadership. You have unequivocally stood by Israel’s side. You have boldly confronted the tyrants of Tehran. You’ve proposed a realistic vision for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. And you have successfully brokered the historic peace that we are signing today, a peace that has broad support in Israel, in America, in the Middle East—indeed in the entire world…

And the blessings of the peace we make today will be enormous. First, because this peace will eventually expand to include other Arab states, and ultimately it can end the Arab-Israeli conflict once and for all. Second, because the great economic benefits of our partnership will be felt throughout our region, and they will reach every one of our citizens. And third, because this is not only a peace between leaders, it’s a peace between peoples—Israelis, Emiratis and Bahrainis are already embracing one another. We are eager to invest in a future of partnership, prosperity and peace.

May it be so.