10 Hard Truths For Liberals - From A Liberal

I came across this video of a liberal discussing why the left has started to lose the cultural and political battles to the right. A lot of this is correct. The good news is for conservatives most on the left don't want to hear this.

Nancy Pelosi can't help but be authoritarian

As long as things work out in her elitist favor, she'll stop at nothing to ensure her party retains its grip on power. Oddly, she's not ashamed to say the most ridiculous things in her efforts to do so. Constitution be damned.

More details. 

Top 15 posts of 2023

I was thinking about avoiding a Top 10 list for the year (2023) but going back and looking through some of my longer forms posts, there are some worth revisiting because I think I did a decent job on them. In fact I have 15 and a couple of honorable mentions as well.

Honorable mentions - two on RFK Jr.

Is an RFK Jr. Independent Run good or bad for president Trump's reelection bid?  I shared some initial thoughts here. I followed up here, along with some additional context from Red Eagle Politics.

While I think his independent bid is a mixed bag, there are bigger fish to fry in the 2024 election season. Jill Stein getting on the ballot for the Green Party in some more states helps Trump's chances.  But the biggest "elephant in the room" is the possibility that Democrats ouster Let's Go Brandon and run a Gavin Newsom or Michelle Obama instead.  It's probably their best option at this point, and I'd say the possibilities are almost 50/50 with the polls still favoring Trump over Brandon.

(15) Slow walk the Hunter Biden investigation / impeachment efforts

I've argued that rushing the impeachment may help Democrats pull the trigger on removing Let's Go Brandon as being their nominee for 2024. Take the win in 2024 and prepare for Newsom as the nominee in 2028. Winning now matters.

(14) The Colorado removal of Trump from the ballot was destined to fail

I knew it.  Maine's effort will fail too. It is inevitable.

(13) The failure of follow the science explained

A non-political explanation of cognitive bias and a short commentary explains why climate change and COVID paranoia, among other junk-pseudo-science proclamations and dictates, were and are bad for America.

(12) The data doesn't lie (except when it does)

Academia is rife with mis-steps, often deliberate, and it's a wakeup call that data can reveal the truth, or reveal what someone wants you to think is the truth.  So be vigilant.

(11) The cyclical nature of stupidity

Here's why not all hope is lost.  Everything is cyclical, even common sense.

(10) Saul Alinsky vs Bud Light

Using Rules for Radicals as an approach to cancel a woke brand, shows the tactics can work for conservatives too.

(9) I provided Democrats some unsolicited advice on COVID

Because I know they won't listen. Here's how the Democrats could recover from some of their own stupidity - take ownership of it.

(8) How to fight the left

I keep harping on about this, year after year, because how we fight politically, matters as much as what we are fighting to support.  If you aren't effective at the battle, you can't win.

(7) More on how to fight the left

The fallacy of using only facts and logic. This is why Trump connects with voters; it's not just common sense, it's guttural.

(6) Why West Virginia matters

It's nothing to do with politics, it's what's happening there socially and economically. It serves as a warning to America.

(5) Chipping away at the foundation

Communists and socialists are doing exactly what you'd expect they would do to take down America. 

(4) Where did woke capitalism come from exactly?

Woke capitalism is a symptom of a bigger problem.  A bad symptom, but it is not the cause of what ails America.

(3) Trust first?  No.

I took issue with a reasonable argument from Mike Slater at Breitbart News Daily. Not because he's not mostly right, he's usually right.  Just not here. Trust must be earned over time.

(2) Reversing my stance (kinda)

In Top 15's #3 above, I argued why trust first is a bad idea.  But I have argued for a long time that America's greatness stems from economic strength. I was wrong.  Not that it's totally incorrect, economic strength matters a lot.  What matters more is character and values. Mike Slater was right on this point, the underlying social conservative is the fabric that must not be torn. Whether that underpinning strength of personal and national character comes from God (as I believe it does), or from just choosing to be moral and virtuous first and foremost, that underpins what makes it possible to have economic strength. Those are the deepest roots.

(1) The pitfalls of capitalism

A critical inward look at capitalism's imperfections. Despite these issues, it's still the best choice available to humanity to date.

Misleading from behind

Let's Go Brandon, late to the table and misleading the American people on top of that.  Politics it seems, is more important to these people than the national debt.

Hurricane Ian politics (3 of 3)

 Amy Klobuchar insists voting Democrat will stop hurricanes.

Did Amy Klobuchar just suggest voting for Democrats will stop hurricanes?

"We just did something about climate change for the first time in decades. That's why [Democrats] have to win this as that hurricane bears down on Florida." pic.twitter.com/F9cDc7QAr9

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 27, 2022

Hurricane Ian politics (2 of 3)

 Let's Go Brandon thinks vaccines are the answer to Hurricane Ian. Daft.

This is a strange and puzzling assertion from @POTUS.

Governor DeSantis and Florida's world class emergency management & first responders are ready to help all Floridians impacted by #HurricaneIan, regardless of vaccination status. https://t.co/ui08DDuBXH

— DeSantis War Room 🐳 (@DeSantisWarRoom) September 27, 2022

Amy Schumer, worst comedian ever?

I don't find Amy Schumer funny.  I think her politics and personality stink.  However I don't think she's comedically terrible, just not funny.  Maybe if she stuck to honing her comedy and set aside the political elite mentality, maybe she'd become funny. Others however hold her in even lower esteem and SunnyV2 even bothers to explain why:

Nicki Minaj just shocked me.

I've never been a fan of Nicki Minaj's music. But I may have just become a fan of her political positions, and I am truly surprised by that turn of events. Kudos also to Tim Pool for covering this.

Walkaway founder arrested

 Brandon Straka, founder of the Walkaway movement has been arrested by the FBI because, politics.

The psychology of crowd momentum

This is fascinating from a psychological or sociological perspective. And it has deep implications for politics. One guy dancing weird is, well, weird.  But when a second guy joins it becomes a little less weird and after the third guy joins it becomes a flood.  It's now okay to join in. And at some point, maybe it becomes unacceptable to leave.

A better view of the crowd joining:

Do it now!

I'm not going to sugar coat this, Ruth Bader Gindsberg's seat on the Supreme Court should be filled on by a president Trump appointee ASAP. By ASAP I mean before the election, or at worst, in the lame duck session after the election.

There is zero reason to delay this, and I don't expect the president, nor the senate Republicans will do so.  Of course there may be some recalcitrant Republicans who are either in a precarious re-election battle (Susan Collins), wish-washy (Lisa Murkowski) or just plain spiteful (Mitt Romney) who might not vote to nominate a Trump appointee if it happens before the election.  But those are not show-stoppers.  The Republicans have 5 seats in the Senate and if they lose all three of those votes, the deciding vote is cast by VP Pence, so Trump's nominee will be confirmed.

There are many reasons not to delay:

• it's seen as decisive action by Republicans, delivering on one of the most important issues for conservative voters.
• there's no guarantee Republicans will be able to pass a Trump appointee after the election if either Trump loses the election or Republicans lose control of the senate in November
• most importantly, there is no reason to care if the left sees Republicans as holding a double standard after Mitch McConnell refused to hold hearings on president Obama's nominee Merrick Garland when Obama had less than a year left in his term because Democrats would have no compunction about doing it if the roles were reverse.  We must not be held to the standards they want  because Republicans are in power and avoiding the use of that power to achieve conservative goals ensures that they will never be achieved.

Don't sweat the risks of this.  Yes, there are downsides like firing up the Democrat base, but they are pretty fired up already.  Fire up our base by showing them results.

While you are at it, replace the role of the justice you are nominating with another conservative justice at the same time.  Do it.  Do it now!

Stemming the final push of the woke

Wokeness and China-ness are killing the NBA. Politics over product produces a paucity of people.

Via Tim Pool (more below the video).

If athletes, some of the most successful people in America thanks to their skill, believe that America keeps people of color oppressed, so be it.  It's blindness, but everyone is entitled to their own opinions. If they want that to be the stamp on their sport so be it too.  But don't expect everyone to fall in line with it.  The Harris poll shows that to be true.  

America is a damn successful country and it enables success for everyone, albeit quite imperfectly (there's definitely room for improvement).   Because it is so successful, people need an escape,  a respite from the day to day grind of putting food on the table.  When they want that escape, they don't want to be preached to about being uncaring scumbags who support cruelty and inequity.  That's not who they are, they don't deserve that and they don't want to watch someone telling them to be woke.  They want to see a three point shot or an amazing dunk.

Yet the growing omnipresence of the social justice agenda and messaging is slowly tearing away the fabric of America, the world's only true exercise in people first. Progressives clearly want to take that away, or are unaware how badly they are damaging it.  And the omnipresence is real.  It was news media, education, the entertainment industry and the government (everything from the FBI to the IRS).  That was destructive enough. It's now moved beyond that to the remaining refuge of sports and video games. Even knitting for God's sake. It's even infiltrating religion.  It's a weed that needs to be eradicated.

I'm not talking about anything nefarious.  I'm talking about really waking up to what is happening and pushing back.  Voting for conservative principles.  Eschewing companies that support radical agendas.  Going to PTA meetings to have some control over what your children are learning and not learning.  If you are so inclined, go to your church regularly and speak up about what it should be doing - volunteerism not advocacy.  And boycott sports that boycott their own business in favor of wokeness.  Start your own community organizations aimed at positive change towards American values.  Just voting for president Trump is not enough.  It's stemmed the bleeding but not solved the problem.

There's a war going on and you are losing the battle for the soul of your country and many of you are not even paying attention to it.  The one good thing about this massive progressive push is that has been a red alert for a lot of people.  The slow crawl to wards socialism was working because people would just grumble about these minor incremental changes but accept them.  With Obama there came this "fierce urgency of now" that led so many on the woke, progressive Left to believe they were so close to the finish line, that Trump was just a one time aberration that requires a massive ramp-up of the push towards socialism.  A final push of wokeness, they believe is all that is need to quash resistance to their collectivist socialism.  

But it's finally alerted many people to the danger they pose to America, to liberty, to individuality, to creativity, to entertainment, to religion, to life and to individualism.  They may have harmed their own cause irreparably. That remains to be seen. Everyone needs to play a part in the future of the country.  That starts at home, in your own community and goes all the way up to every vote you ever cast locally, statewide and federally.  Look at who you are voting for.  Understand what values they stand behind and their positions on issues.  Democrats vote in a block and cannot be trusted to vote what they claim.  But many Republicans are establishment types who espouse, if only secretly, the same positions as the Democrats.  Know who they all really are, and act and vote accordingly.  It is incumbent upon you, not just now, always.  Because this is not the final push of the woke, even if they believe it is.

With personal freedom comes personal responsibility, and that includes your RESPONSIBILITY to vote, and vote with understanding and knowledge.

Us and Them

Pink Floyd had a song back in 1973 called Us and Them. It's become pretty much everything in politics these days, or more likely, it's always been everything in politics.  More generally, it was a song about war and human nature.  Individually we like to think we would be fair to people who are different from us, and would treat them nicely.  But as a group we end up going to war because it's us or them.  That's a fairly superficial take on the song but the essence of it is there to make my point.

It's inevitable that humanity groups itself into like tribes.  There are too many people in the world and in early human history we were too scattered to do otherwise. It's what led to the existence of nations.  On a smaller level, it's what led to guilds based on skills, it's what led to political philosophies.  It also led to ethnic identification. 

There are positives and negatives to the concept of Us.  It allows for collaboration and collective interests being worked on with a synergistic effect (two heads are better than one).  On the other hand, if there's an Us, there has to be a Them.  Those two don't have to be in conflict but so often they end up that way. One of the big reasons for that is that some people can take advantage of the Us by demonizing the Them.

It has had unfathomable consequences in human history, with some prime examples being Nazi Germany and later the Cold War.  But it has also bled into politics.  Democrats have fostered group identity over individual identity in order to harvest voter groups that they can exert sole 'ownership'. It's become dangerous in that conservatives and Trump supporters especially, have been vilified to such an extent that left leaning voters think of them as evil and are therefore in some minds granted permission to demean them, harm them or worse. 

As conservatives we are not immune to making this mistake.  Granted we are less likely to exhibit hatred of individuals and more of ideas. But we are not immune.  When we want immigration enforcement it can be perceived as an Us and Them worldview. It isn't racial (at least for most conservatives, though some are susceptible to that notion).  It does get perceived as racial, thereby fueling the Us and Them view of Us by the Them.  Wanting the rule of law has somehow become racist. That's an insane outcome of the Us and Them views fostered by the left.

Heck, this post is itself calling out us and them. We are not immune.  What you have in common with the Them in America (I say "you" because I am a Canadian, even though I am an American in spirit) is that you are all American.  That's still and Us and Them, but it's a bigger, more inclusive Us. That has to be a division that cannot be allowed to be broken - even though it seems as though the Left (and anyone who claims to be a globalist as well) is certainly trying to do exactly that.

How you prevent a breakup of America in this hyper-partisan Us and Them climate is not obvious.  But I suggest it must be part of every effort, every debate, every decision going forward.  The only way America remains a cohesive nation is if everyone takes on that personal responsibility in their own lives.  Don't worry if the Them are not doing it, or the Us are not doing it, You do it. Make it your own goal.

To that end, I thought this video might be helpful to keep in mind.

Democrats - immigration and the politics of opportunism

Take a look at these Democrats on the record on immigration.  Here are a few examples of Democrats, on record, supporting tougher border enforcement.  Were they lying back then , or are they lying now that many are joining the abolish ICE bandwagon and wanting to allow anyone in at the expense of national sovereignty?  My educated guess is that they were lying then.

For Bush, family>country>politics

No political capital left, so buh-bye.

Via Hot Air, former president Bush finding his voice to criticize Trump is now real;

In 2009, less than two months after Obama was sworn in, Dubya had this to say about criticizing the new president:

“I’m not going to spend my time criticizing him. There are plenty of critics in the arena,” Bush said. “He deserves my silence.”…

“I love my country a lot more than I love politics,” Bush said. “I think it is essential that he be helped in office.”

Four years later he was still true to his word. Now he’s crapping on Trump. As a certain losing presidential nominee might say, what happened? It can’t be tactical.

Allahpundit goes on to speculate that it's personal.  It is. Bush cannot apply one standard to Obama and another to Trump without his motivation being questioned.  If what he says about country being greater than politics is true, then by extension, he should not criticize president Trump either.  But he has.  That means there has to be something greater than country.  That would be family.  Then-candidate Trump was pretty harsh on Jeb Bush, and he's family.

The Bushes seem as incapable of any level of self-reflection; Jeb Bush regardless of Trump, was not going to win the Republican nomination for president.  Even if he did he would have lost to Hillary Clinton.  Putting Clinton ahead of Trump from the perspective of most Republicans is not putting country first.  A Clinton presidency would have been the final nail in the coffin of America's future.  Either they're ignorant of that fact or clearly the Bush's took Jeb Bush's loss personally. 

For a family that prides itself on putting service to country first, this is a bad reflection on that image.

Larry Elder vs. David Rubin (done politely)

From January of this  year, a polite political discussion.

Politics -- it's all cyclical

Cycles.  The Bible covered this subject over a millennium ago in Ecclesiastes. Whether you are Christian or not, this truism applies:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

The verses continue to cover other things for which there are different seasons.  The point is universal; everything, absolutely everything is cyclical.  There are  ebbs and flows, peaks and valleys in absolutely everything from global warming to the economy, to bull markets and bear markets to politics and human behavior.

The length of the cycles are not always consistent from category to category or even within a specific category.  For example economic growth periods typically last much longer than recessions (unequal cycles) but during the Great Depression there was an inconsistently long down cycle.

This idea is important to keep in mind during turbulent times such as these. As the Persian saying goes, "this too shall pass".  The reason this struck me today is because of Peggy Noonan's column today in the Wall Street Journal where she laments the decline of lucid, eloquent discourse in American politics.

Have you had your 2016 Moment? I think you probably have, or will.

The Moment is that sliver of time in which you fully realize something epochal is happening in politics, that there has never been a presidential year like 2016, and suddenly you are aware of it in a new, true and personal way. It tends to involve a poignant sense of dislocation, a knowledge that our politics have changed and won’t be going back.

We’ve had a lot to absorb—the breaking of a party, the rise of an outlandish outsider; a lurch to the left in the other party, the popular rise of a socialist. Alongside that, the enduring power of a candidate even her most ardent supporters accept as corrupt. Add the lowering of standards, the feeling of no options, the coarsening, and all the new estrangements.

...A friend I’ll call Bill, a political veteran from the 1980s and ’90s, also had his Moment with his child, a 14-year-old daughter who is a budding history buff. He had never taken her to the Reagan Library, so last month they went. As she stood watching a video of Reagan speaking, he thought of Reagan and FDR, of JFK and Martin Luther King. His daughter, he realized, would probably never see political leaders of such stature and grace, though she deserved to. Her first, indelible political memories were of lower, grubbier folk. “Leaders with Reaganesque potential no longer go into politics—and why would they, with all the posturing and plasticity that it requires?”

She provided an even more low bar example in the piece.  This too shall pass.  Noonan should know better, she's older and undoubtedly possesses far more political insight than I do. Politics in America has not always been eloquent or refined.  It's fluid.  What we witnessed during the heyday of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher or Churchill or the Founding Fathers is more likely the shorter cycle. But the pendulum can only swing towards the guttural for so long before it swings back or the pendulum actually breaks.  

America can only decline for so long before it snaps back or collapses like ancient Rome or Greece. But even such a calamity would not be the end of the ideals that made America great, just as the collapse of the U.S.S.R. did not ensure that communism ended up in the 'dustbin of history' for all time, the ideals of liberty and justice for all shall not perish if America does.  They might ebb, but they will eventually flow once again.  But prior to such a catastrophe of an American implosion, politics will surely snap back from the brink of Idiocracy and allow for an American mending.  Just as Obama won in 2008 and 2012, he was severely rebuked in 2010 and 2014 by voters.  And just as Trump and Clinton might embody the negatives Noonan concerns herself with, neither will be relevant in 8 or 9 years at most.

Legalizing marijuana, lowering educational standards, outsourcing jobs, encroaching government restricting liberty, yes we must make our voices known and fight for what we believe is correct or America might not snap back, just as Rome eventually did not recover from it's own flawed choices. But the ideals that created America will remain in hearts and minds, and will someday, somewhere once again flourish in a significant way.

While Noonan conflates Trump as the solution with Trump as the problem, she is not all wrong in her observations;

My Moment came a month ago. I’d recently told a friend my emotions felt too close to the surface—for months history had been going through me and I felt like a vibrating fork. I had not been laughing at the splintering of a great political party but mourning it. Something of me had gone into it. Party elites seemed to have no idea why it was shattering, which meant they wouldn’t be able to repair it, whatever happens with Mr. Trump.

I was offended that those curiously quick to write essays about who broke the party were usually those who’d backed the policies that broke it. Lately conservative thinkers and journalists had taken to making clear their disdain for the white working class. I had actually not known they looked down on them. I deeply resented it and it pained me. If you’re a writer lucky enough to have thoughts and be paid to express them and there are Americans on the ground struggling, suffering—some of them making mistakes, some unlucky—you don’t owe them your airy, well-put contempt, you owe them your loyalty. They too have given a portion of their love to this great project, and they are in trouble.

Quite true. But dark despair at politics or the GOP or in anything, is not only unhelpful, it's wrong: To everything there is a season.

Obama introduces Hillary to the underside of the Emailgate bus

This interview, complete with some cleverly hidden words, shows the president is not on Hillary's side and will not run cover for her on the Emailgate scandal.

Notice:

(1) He claims to have not known about it when it happened. In other words this is her own scandal, not anyone else's.

(2) It's been "ginned up" "in part" because of politics. So he's saying (or implying at least) that there's legitimate concern there as well.

Thanks Obama, that's actually helpful. 

There is nothing going on

If there's anything important going on in American politics right now, I'm not seeing it.

The situation in Ferguson is being treated as a political topic by many. But it's not. It's an investigation into a situation involving local law enforcement even to allow the discussion that this was a racially motivated crime is to make it political. Why? Because the officer followed protocol and his training. Even if it was the action of a racially hostile individual, that is an isolated situation not a reason to indict a system as endemically racist. Does the training need to change to account for different situations? Maybe. That is still not political.

Obama's amnesty power grab? That may be political but right now, nothing meaningful is happening on that front. Speculation? Sure. Angst? Definitely. But movement? Nope. That will happen eventually as both Republicans and Democrats decide how to react to the president's actions and then act on their own. Otherwise, it's just talk. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Discussion is important. Hashing out ideas is a good thing, but it's too early to comment on the direction that has yet to be taken or speculate on which direction ultimately will be taken. It's just too early.

Secretary of State John Kerry telling Russia to ignore Obama's tough talk on Russia? Yeah, they were already doing that.

Chuck Hagel's forced resignation? Nothing to see here. Hagel was a yes man for Obama, just not quite yes-y enough. It's more evidence that the White House has been so insular it can't stomach any opinion not precisely aligned with its own. But we didn't need that evidence and the left still doesn't want to acknowledge it.

I might be sounding disenchanted with politics. Perhaps, but it's not a reflection of how I feel about American politics. It's more about the lack of development. We're in a lull. That's not a bad thing - sometimes it's necessary. In an Obama era, with a lame duck Democratic senate, less is definitely more.

Meanwhile, wait for it. Lulls typically don't last very long.

Is nobody asking this question about the stock market?

I'm no expert at the stock market watch, but this latest September-October downturn, while by no means on the scale of the 2008 crash, looks pretty bad. yet you go onto market watch TV shows and you see people arguing about whether this is a correction or nothing to worry about. With Japan slumping and now Germany and perhaps the rest of Europe slumping into recession territory, Chinese GDP getting softer, is it time to wonder whether there is another recession looming if not yet actually present?

Or is this just another case of protecting the president pre-midterm elections? I'm wondering why there isn't a healthy dose of skepticism here. Rose-colored glasses seldom work out.

I'm not suggesting that either protecting the president or unjustified optimism is the case but the level of optimism among the wealth-and-trading pundits does make it seem that they are trying to talk us into believing there's nothing to see here. Or perhaps it's themselves they are trying to convince.

Or maybe I've just been reading ZeroHedge too much lately.

UPDATE: As it turns out, not everyone thinks this is worth ignoring.

Now, in the last two weeks the stock market has undergone a substantial correction that may yet turn into a full blow crash. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped by about 1300 points since October 1, falling from around 17,200 to 15,900 as of late afternoon on October 15. The S&P 500 and NASDAQ have fallen by similar proportions. All told, the U.S. stock markets have lost close to $1.6 trillion in wealth in the past two weeks. By all appearances, the correction has not yet run its course. The markets could fall still further on worries about slow growth in Europe and the United States, and a general sense that events are spiraling out of control.

So there's that.