When Democrats resort to mob rule

Sunday, February 25, 2018

The Founding Fathers set up American government the way they did partly because they feared mob rule – the kind of which a short time later reared its ugly head in the French Revolution.

In some way, a desperate Democrat Party is embracing mob-like populistic movements like MeToo and the current anti-gun sentiment in an effort regain political power.

The GOP went through a similar crisis of faith a few years ago with the rise of the appropriately named “Tea Party” – based on an event history books celebrate by founding fathers found alarming – since they were caught at the time in-between the evils of King George and the irresponsible and uncontrollable urges of mob rule.

While Democrats like to recast the events at Charlottesville into a good-bad scenario, it was the engagement of two mobs, out of control extreme left verses out of control extreme right.

Much of this has to do with the lead up and result of the 2016 presidential election, and the desperate need for Democrats to keep control of a party fractured by two historic trends: popular Democracy verses party control.

American politics has always fluxgated between these two extreme. When party bosses appear too powerful in choosing leadership, a back to the people movement emerges in an attempt to restore “real” democracy.

People, these reformers claim, know best and will root out corruption that infects the party through professional politicians.

We see a similar reform movement emerging today set loose by the Sanders-Clinton primary when it became clear to everyone, just how much control over choices these professional politicians had, as Clinton cheated her way to undermining the effort of the popular reform candidate, Sanders.

This lifted the curtain of the machine to show must how people like Clinton operate behind the scenes, not just in the primary, but later in the general election when she and her cohorts manipulated the FBI into spying on the Trump campaign (much like Watergate.)

With the Democratic political machine getting the candidate it wanted all along, it was poised to keep control of the White House – only to have their plans frustrated by another populist candidate, Donald Trump in an election seen my many as the biggest upset in American history.

This was so stunning an upset that Democrats fell to pieces.

The Democratic strategy since then has been a desperate attempt by the political machine to embrace its own popular movement. So, behind the scenes political bosses like Soros began funding movements such as Black Lives Matters, the Women’s March, MeToo, and more recently the anti-gun movement.

This is done with the hope that the party can harness their strength and restore to power the machine that so had its heart set on making Clinton the first women president.

The Democratic push for populism is more than a little dishonest since the Democratic Party has become the party of the effete and intellectual arrogant, using control of the media and harnessing middle and upper-class gentry to that its revision to mob rule is out of touch with what real America is thinking.

Historically, Democrats have always used populism uprisings such as these to renew itself in the name of reform, just as it did in the 1960s when it finally and reluctantly embraced the anti-war movement, hoping to use the movement to regain control.

The Democratic Party’s stand in support of immigrants is nothing new. Democrats gain power by expanding their voter base. While Democrats have compared Andrew Jackson to Donald Trump, Jackson’s moves as president helped save the party by removing the requirement that voters must be landowners. This allow immigrant men to vote for the first time.

Although Democrats tended to be on the wrong side of the slavery issue in the leadup to the Civil War, they took full advantage of black suffrage to increase their power in the north in the decades that followed, though racist Democrats in the south continued to suppress the black vote there through Jim Crow laws that might otherwise have been cast for Republicans.

Democratic President Woodrow Wilson sought to expand Democratic votes with Women’s suffrage after World War I. Still later, Democrats broke the back of Jim Crow in the south, generating even more voters. The lowering of the voting age from 21 to 18 at a time when many of the kids tended to support Democrats also helped.

The current Democratic fight to protect Dreamers is less about fair play than about generating a new generation of Democratic voters. Questions remain about the intensive registration drives that Democrats conducted going into the 2016 election and whether or not non-citizens were registered in key states such as New York and California.

While Democrats using media and a special prosecutor to discredit the vote that allowed Trump to become president, this seems something like projection of their own guilt since it becomes clearer with each new revelation that the Clinton was fully engaged in a campaign of dirty tricks, not much different from the one Richard Nixon waged in 1972.

Clinton and the Democrats fully believed going into the 2016 election that a victory would demolish the GOP and foresaw Democratic control of government for another decade.

Democrats embracing of radial movements now suggests just how desperate their party is, and how they hope they can use so-called reform movements to propel them back into power.

Democrats have very good reason for believing this is possible since they have coopted similar reform movements in the past.

In the 1920s, populist reformers helped change the process for selecting candidates from an unrepresentative caucus format where political elite chose candidates to a delegate convention style in which people had a more direct vote over the candidates. The Democratic elite, however, found new ways to control the process behind the scenes.

A similar process took place in the early 1970s, and this too became a fallacy – something clearly demonstrated in the 2016 Democratic primary when elected delegates were countered by party appointed super delegates, most of whom were pledged to Clinton.

But Clinton’s loss to Trump showed how deeply the populism went and forced the Democratic Party to rely on tradition dirty tricks as well as its own populism to counter Trump and the GOP.

The appointment of a special prosecutor to uncover a Clinton-Funded Russian conspiracy has largely backfired, although the prosecutor keeps pumping out indictments like the captain of the Titanic with a bucket trying to save his sinking ship.

MeToo, which appears to have been an offshoot of Clinton’s campaign to show Trump as a sexist, has brought down more Democrats than Republicans as well as a number popular celebrities – many of whom were also anti-Trump.

Black Lives Matters and its associated groups have proven just how easily they can fall into the same violent tactics as those they call evil.

Now, we see Democrats launching into the anti-gun movement, like political vultures feeding off dead children murdered in Florida.

As with the women’s movement, some corporations feel intimidated into withdrawing support for the NRA, part of that scarlet letter campaign Democrats are so good at mounting.

While liberal urban elitist Democrats believe this is a campaign that will eventually destroy the gun culture and make America “gun free,” most people know better.  The number of guns in America is far beyond a classic urban liberal’s perception, and many Democrats as well as Republicans own guns for their own protection.

The fact that after the Sandy Hook shooting, gun sales spiked, something that most likely is also happening now after the Florida shooting.

Deluded Democrats believe they can ride this campaign against the GOP, somehow managing to change the Second Amendment when many of these groups tried and failed to get the Equal Rights Amendment passed. Worse, still Democrats are trampling on a core Republican value and risk giving strength to the GOP.

The Democratic attack on gun rights, however, is partly a distraction.

The Florida shooting was largely a failing of those institutions Democrats rely on – a failing by cowardly police guards, a blind or uncaring school district as well as the FBI.

Part of the reason Democrats are attacking guns in this instance is because they cannot afford to criticize the FBI while at the same time defending the FBI in regard to the Russian conspiracy.

It is no accident that the Mueller indictments came out just after the GOP memo discredited the Russian probe as a bought and paid campaign by Clinton. You can just imagine Democrats twisting Mueller’s arm to make him release indictments that are largely a joke, and to keep him pressing this campaign of accusations to protect the Democratic Russian conspiracy myth.

So, Democrats have turned to populism to divert public attention away from the FBI and perhaps create an issue of guns that they can benefit from politically.

But Democrats are relying on very shaking and unpredictable mass movements to regain power, setting loose a raging bull the political machine desperately hopes it can control when – as the French Revolution clearly shows – you can’t contain rage, and one it is let loose, it goes where it wants, does what it wants, hurting innocent as well as guilty in its stampede.

Democrats foolishly believe they can restore civil discourse once they have regained power, when their current agent relies on the spreading of fear and hate.

Why Fake News is Fake

Friday, February 23, 2018

Democracy is the religion of our time – just the way Christians, Muslims and Jews have become in the past.

Ours is a godless faith, but one filled with saints and sinners – at least to those of us who follow the true belief.

Media is filled with prophets and give us the doctrines we must believe in order to become members of this faith.

A scene from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” best illustrates the massive change in news reporting over the last few decades

Archeology is about facts, if you want truth, you need take a course in philosophy.

Media has ceased dealing with fact and has become the archangel that delivers us truth.

In civic class we got a false vision about what democracy is, as teachers told us that we as citizens listen to all sides of an issue and then support those leaders that align with what we believe.

In truth, we are largely told what we should believe by a media obsessed with internet hits and delivering us “all we need to know.”

The Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, each deliver a gospel of liberal truth that steers us towards what we should believe in order to become a faithful member of the liberal establishment.

The same is also true for those who take Fox News or the other right-wing media broadcasts as gospel.

We already seek membership in this tribe or that and must be told what the current doctrine is.

This is true regardless of how well-educated we are. In fact, the most educated actually become prophets themselves, as those less informed take our word for what we should believe, accepting the true faith from us when they do not seek out the gospel for themselves.

The misconception that media gives us a balanced view is as popular a fallacy as the belief that we choose our leaders because they reflect our beliefs.

We come to politics with built in biases. We do not listen to false prophets or skewed views, which have become “fake news.”

In truth, fake news really is fake – often made up parables that are posted on the internet to counter what we perceive as false gospel being spewed by questionable media sources.

But even the so called legitimate news is so slanted and so geared towards providing us with direction as to what to believe that it ceased to be real.

It is modern media’s search for truth, instead of fact.

Media itself has become a religion, as reporters and editors seek to protect their sacred rites and their position as priests by defending their gospel against challenges.

These arbitrators of truth think nothing of slanting facts to fit their faith so as to keep the faithful in line, and to make certain they continue to follow accepted scripture.

Thus, the Washington Post and New York Times thinks little of filling their stories with questionable descriptions that skew the reader’s perceptions. CNN recently was caught designing questions for a Florida high school student in order to fit its preconceived agenda.

Lesser priests of smaller media outlets throughout the nation quote from the sacred texts that come down from more prominent media sources, the way monks regurgitate biblical passages.

More importantly, we get these alter boys and girls defending the sacred text against challenges of “fake news” partly because each of us who follows the faith gains importance and power from being in the chain of command.

We can never admit that our news is fake news, or we will fall from grace.

And perhaps, we already have.

email to Al Sullivan

Were the Russians sucked in by Facebook?

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

If the information contained in the Mueller indictments can be trusted, then it is clear that something dramatic happened from when the Russians started their effort to steer the election away from Hillary Clinton to when they actually launched the campaign.
Somehow, a nation that has a very long history of rigging its own elections, forgot how to do it when they arrived in the continental United States.
Instead of intimidating voters, stuffing ballot boxes, hacking into voting machines the usual stuff that goes on whenever Russia decides to have an election, Russian spies – according to Mueller – came over here, spent years establishing spy networks, setting up phony bank accounts, and creating political cells only to end up saying bad things about Hillary Clinton on Facebook, and to get their alleged puppets to shout ineffective chants at rallies.
What happened to these masters of election rigging?
Did they forget everything they learned at school?
Or did the lure of social media get to them in the same way it gets to the average American, turning their brains like ours into pudding with the presumption that Twitter, Facebook and other sites actually have any power to do more than annoy people?
For some reason, the Russians – if you can believe Mueller – actually believed that if they said enough bad things about Clinton, people who liked her would someone be convinced to vote against her. 
This is a delusion common to many of the anti-Trump protestors who took to the streets to rant and rave, hoping that they might shame Trump supporters into hating him more than they hated Clinton.
The Russians, who clearly – if you believe Mueller – expended a huge investment in this network and yet completely forgot they used to rig elections back home.
Jill Stein and Hillary Clinton clearly overestimated the capacity of the Russians in claiming the Russians had a use hacking network capable of reaching into each and every voting machine to turn a Clinton vote into one for Trump?
Perhaps the Russian spies got caught up in Facebook the way many poor Americans have, falling into a kind of trance the moment they log on, getting lured away from their intended purpose by pictures of pets other people post?
Back home, the Russian government, must have been furious that after years of setting up the operation, calculating the risk of doing all that they did, the best their agents could come up was to say rude things about Clinton – and most of these hardly original since many Americans – including some angry Bernie Sanders’ supporters – were saying a lot more often.
You would think that the Russians with their history of great writers would come up with more original slander than what Mueller claims they actually posted?
After decades of fighting the Cold War against the Russians, we know these are not stupid people. And yet, the Mueller indictments reads like a bad comic book, showing us a great conspiracy not to overthrow our government in any logical way, not to steal or secrets or even wire tap the Democrats at the Watergate Hotel, but to come here, log on to Facebook and call Clinton names?
The Mueller indictments clearly show us that the Russians did not send their best and brightest over to help Trump – if you can actually believe any of us – but a second rate team of spies that didn’t know how the hell to rig an election when they got here, and basically did what the Democrats did after the election, spewed crap that nobody in their right mind would take seriously, especially anybody who actually liked or disliked either of the candidates.
Of course, these Russians spies clearly did not have insight into what was then going on inside the Clinton Campaign or they might have been much more effect. Clinton’s team had it all over the Russians, learning how to take over the DNC from the inside, how to steal debate questions, how to spin and weave.
If the Mueller indictment reflect in any way the capability of the Russians, we clearly have overrated them over the last half century, and perhaps we should send our spies over to see if they have anything other than hot air in their nuclear launch silos because this supposed conspiracy is all hot air.

Did Comey let the Commies come in?

Monday, February 19, 2018

If you can actually believe anything the Mueller indictments say, then you have to wonder what the hell the FBI the CIA the NSA and all those other asinine initial security people were doing when the Russians were supposedly invading us?

Ever since 9/11 everybody in the world has been touting how tight our security has become homeland security has become the Gestapo of modern times.

This is completely evident anytime you want to sneak anything through an airport such as your grandmother's historic watch or that little laser that you keep wanting to shine in the pilot eyes.

I can’t even get my driver's license without sacrificing my first born.

And because of immigration fraud a decade ago, I can't get a birth certificate copy from the county in which I live.

The FBI the CIA NSA and all these other groups are supposedly overseeing our entire lives, spying on our emails, wiretapping our phones, watching us with satellites and a host of other atrocious personal violation in name of protecting us.

And yet the Russians somehow pulled over this allegedly massive conspiracy -- according to Mueller-- that went undetected not just during the election but for two years before that.

What the hell were all these so-called secret agents doing during that time? Wasn’t there any chatter they pick up like they do with terrorists?

How is it possible that anybody could have done anything that these indictments said without somebody somewhere in the federal government catching onto it since we are the most over spied country in the world?

The Mueller indictments are telling us that our security is the most incompetent since the Three Stooges.

And this is an agency that Mueller once oversaw and whose friend, Comey oversaw at the time when all this was going on?

Mueller’s investigation was prompted by the firing of Comey, and an effort to give some weight to the fantasies of Democrats who claimed the Russians had rigged the election to get Trump election.

If you can believe anything Mueller came up with, then he proved once and for all how legitimate it was to have fired Comey since Comey not only screwed up the Clinton conspiracy with emails and other acts, Comey clearly missed the fact that a massive communist conspiracy was taking place right under his nose.

If Mueller indictments are true – and there is plenty of questions about this – then he basically proved that the Russians were operating freely under the watch of Comey, who is the man Mueller was trying to vindicate.

Not only was the White House firing of Comey appropriate, if Mueller can be believed, but he should have run out on a rail tarred and feathered and sent to Russia as utter proof of American incompetence.

Of course, we will never know if Mueller is right because none of those indicted will ever be brought to the United States for trial, and none of the evidence can ever be verified.

This whole investigation appears to be a front for Democrats and a face saving for Clinton in order to some how blame the Russians for her losing the election.

The Russians said bad things about Clinton and a gullible American electorate ate it up.

Of course, half America without being a front for Russia said as much about her, but then we might now expect the New York Times to call for a reinstitution of the House Committee of Un-American Activities and start demanding that people name names, or be put on a list so that we can never work again in a free society.

Worse still, the Mueller indictments showed just how stupid Mueller believes average Americans are in that they would accept verbatim anything anyone might post on social media.

Of course, in some regards, he may be right since many Americans believe the crap they read in the Washington Post and the New York Times.

But clearly the indictments claim it is all right for American voters to be mislead by the Democrats, Republicans or major media, but not the Russians.

Far scarier, however, is the overall conclusion you have to draw if Mueller’s questionable indictments actually have merit.

These indictments are telling us that all the protections we put in place after 9/11, all of the intolerable violations of civil rights we allowed in the name of Homeland Security, were largely a waste of time. All these agencies supposedly keeping watch over us, spying into our lives like Big Brother, allowed a conspiracy even larger than that of 9/11 to take place under the nose of the biggest spy network in the world.

Aren't we lucky that if all this is true all the Russians wanted to show us how bad Clinton was?

Now we have to live with the fear that someone who actually wants to do us harm might be operating and none of these so-called networks have a clue.

Blood on the lamppost; a Russian in the closet

I'm rewriting an old novel in dedication to Mr. Mueller's Russian conspiracy theories and the contemporary madness that has taken over America.
All of the characters in this novel are fictional, and similarities to famous political figures is purely coincidence. There is no such place as New York City.
(I will add chapters as I finish rewriting them-- pardon all typos) 


Chapter One: Thieves

Chapter Two: Ghost in the Machine

Chapter 3: the senator can't stop killing people
Chapter 4: The press agenda

How the Russians should have stolen the election

Sunday, February 18, 2018

Will Rogers once said: “Russia is a country that no matter what you say about it it's true. Even if it's a lie it's true.”

The Mueller indictment this week isn't so much a testimony to Russia's ability to mount a conspiracy but Russia’s utter ignorance about how the American elections work.

Despite all the rhetoric from the sour grape Democrats, and claims by Mueller, it is clear the Russians were not trying to influence the election.

The Russians mistakenly believed our claims that elections a really are about popular opinion and they were trying to sway voters, influencing public opinion through misinformation

But the Russians are rank amateurs when compared to the American media and the two-party system that bats around control of the country like a badminton birdie.

Everything in the indictment shows just how out of touch the Russians were with how the political system works and would have been far better off imitating what Democrats and Republicans had done for more than a century in manipulating voters.

The Russians were apparently not paying attention to all of the classic techniques the two American Parties have perfected, either by stealing votes or by discouraging opponent supporters from going to the polls at all.

The Russians clearly believed more in the American system that any right-minded politician here does. This is why their efforts seem so pathetic, despite all the hype Mueller and Media give it to suggest that this was some great effort to interfere with the election.

The Russians completely misunderstood what it means to rig an election, and that despite all we see on TV with people marching in the streets, Democrats and Republicans long ago learned that to rig an election you have to do it behind the scenes.

The Russians should not have bothered with any convert. They should have started a think tank the way the Democrats and Republicans have, little incubators out of which the best lies and distortions are always hatched.

It’s not that the Russians conspiracy was completely off base. Most of what they did was routine for Clinton during the election, stealing questions, buying out the Democratic Party so that she was the inevitable candidate, and Soros, who funded and manipulated thousands of people to hit the streets after the election.

The problem is the Russians simply mistook these Democrats stunts as all that was needed, when any Democrat could have warned them it was hardly enough.

The Russians – who live with a controlled media – should have known from the start that in order to win an election in America, you first have to take control of the press the way the Democrats did.

This is never a sure thing as the Democrats found out when Clinton lost, but a campaign has to have a candidate that isn’t a dirt bag.

The biggest crime the Russians did in coming to United States to work the election is underestimating just how manipulative the system is.

The made the mistake of presuming that if you hold a protest, if you chant the right things and get the press to pay attention to you, voters will be swayed to vote the way you want them to.

This is a vast overestimation of the intelligence of the average American voter, regardless of how educated or well-informed.

The Russians were hopeless outclassed in trying to manipulate public opinion when it came to the con job American political parties play.

While the Russians were trying to “influence” voters, politically deluded Democratic college students were out looking under every rock for Democratic votes if it moved they registered it.

While Democrats screamed and yelled about the Russians hacking into voting machines, they were far behind the curve when it came to how well American politicians engaged in the most classic of voting manipulation: the mail-in ballot.

Perhaps if the Russians had read more books on how to make friends and influence people they might have better understood the most basic concept of American politics: awarding of patronage to supporters.

If you don't have a contract to give somebody or a political appointment or a job you don't win votes.

The Russians also clearly failed to understand how many votes there are to be gained in graveyards.

This whole indictment of Russians over attempted manipulation of the American election just shows how inept they are in compared to how we do it here in America and how good at it we have become.

If there is a lesson to be had and if the Russians intend to influence the 2018 midterms they have a lot of catching up to do and may have to hire Hillary Clinton as a consultant.

Russian conspiracy unmasked: send in the clowns

Saturday, February 17, 2018

If I had known the Russians were going to pay people to say bad things about Hillary Clinton, I would have waited for my check to come in the mail.

This is essentially the essence of the charges that Mueller filed this week in exposing a Russian conspiracy that largely resembles a Three Stooges routine.

You have to think with all the high-profile Russians named in the indictment (one of whom I even know in passing), the Russians could have done a better job in “influencing” the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

To say I’m disappointment is a gross understatement.

Being a huge fan of the early cold war James Bonds movies, I expected some high-tech espionage, killer satellites, men in black, neat little pocket devices that can open doors and transmit government secrets to the internet.

We didn’t even get the hacking of voting machines that Jill Stein promised us or the great conspiracy with Donald Trump Democrats claim allowed him to win over Clinton in the election. We didn’t’ get Mata hari or even Natasha and Boris – all we got was a pack of people saying bad things at staged protests and posting terrible (but sometimes even accurate things) about Clinton on social media.

In fact, the antics so resemble those employed by the Clinton Campaign prior to election day and the Soros-funded antics post-election, you would think the Russians advised both.

Mueller’s pathetic indictment essentially says the Russians snuck in, set up cells and paid Americans to say bad things about Clinton (and yes, I’m still waiting for my check in the mail.)

The fact that no Americans were indicted is significant since the actual activities fall under the category of Freedom of Speech – even if they strongly resemble the dirty tricks Nixon and Clinton employed.

What apparently is illegal is the fact that the Russians failed to report themselves as a campaign funding raising organization. It may even be illegal for a foreign country to be involved in funding campaigns at all. This is a gray area these indictments fully exploit to build a conspiracy out of an Abbott and Costello skit.

Indictments suggest that somehow by paying for a bunch of Americans to say bad things at protest and post bad things on the internet, the election swung from the Democratic candidate to the GOP.

This is beyond silliness, but Mueller needed to come up with some conspiracy or another to justify the expenditures of such large amount of tax payers’ money on what most people consider a witch hunt in order to support sour grape Democratic theories that the Russians somehow helped Trump steal the election.

The indictments so much resemble the New York investigations of the 1940s into communist infiltration of the SUNY colleges and the more famous 1950s Joe McCarty House of Un-American Activities hearings that you have to wonder if Mueller had the script written for him by a Democratic think tank. McCarty was trying to prove that Soviets were funding unions and other left-wing protest groups. Now Mueller is trying to prove the Russians are supporting right wing groups. But this oppressive act is exactly the same.

While Democrats and media will play this up as fruition of the Russian conspiracy they claim was taking the place, in truth what has been uncovered so far is so much a far cry from the claim that Trump colluded with the Russians to win the election and that the Russians somehow actually influenced the outcome on his behalf.

The indictments largely come across as more Democratic propaganda paid for by the taxpayers in order to keep alive a long-discredited concept that can be played up by Democrats going into the 2018 mid-term elections. In fact, we’re already getting media spin on how to prevent the Russians from doing so.

What is truly dangerous about the indictments is the potential for abuse beyond the partisan Mueller findings, but the ability for this legal concept to be expanded to include any group that protests or posts provocative things on social media.  This is particularly dangerous to immigrant-rights groups which might get off-shore undeclared funding and could provide an excuse for law enforcement such as ICE to shut them down.

The Russian conspiracy that Mueller supposedly uncovered is as ludicrous as the 1960s attempts by the CIA to give Castro exploding cigars.  And Mueller, in promoting it, should put on a big red nose and big flappy shoes and change his name to Bozzo.

Mueller clearly shows his desperation in providing Democrats the Russian conspiracy they desperately need in order to take back the House and Senate later this year.

This is a bogus indictment politically motivated and with political results the crimes committed here are so petty it's beneath anybody's to even consider them as a real crime and hardly live up to the hype that Democrats had been spreading.

But these indictments open the door to a potential to charge anybody from exercising their free speech rights, especially in someone can make up or prove some off-shore funding source paid for the protest signs or office space.

Mueller is traveling down the very dangerous path the FBI went in the early 1970s when law enforcement secretly sought to shut down alternative press.

This is the new Red Scare only instead of coming after the left, Mueller is the new Joe McCarthy coming after people who lean to the right.

He is sending a very loud message that there is a potential for arrest if you happen to support the wrong people.

And a political tool used by the Democrats to undermine Trump can equally be used against Democrats, especially in a time when immigrants are being deported in droves.

Will ICE now begin to search out funding sources for groups that support immigrant rights and use them to shut them down?

Democrats really need to be careful about the can of worms they are opening here, and we all need to fear what might crawl out.

resume

Releasing the mindless beast (democracy as myth)

Friday, February 16, 2018

One thing I learned in college years ago is just how out of date our belief systems are.

Most of what we believe these days was already out of date by the time of Voltaire.

Most Americans cling to beliefs associated with The Enlightenment -- this idea that human kind can be made perfect through the accumulation of knowledge. In other words, the more we know the better we become.

World War I largely discredited this idea although many people did not yet know it at the time, sending off our best and brightest in the belief that they were engaged in a “war to end all wars,” – a foolish idea to believe evil can cure evil.

This folly became most evident in the run-up to World War II when accumulated knowledge was use to perfect the means of mass slaughter – the best and brightest in science and technology developing the best and most efficient means of eradicating human life.

While most serious scholars have since concluded education alone does not make for a better person, the masses continue up the same old road like sheep led to slaughter.

This ignorance is not an exclusive attribute to the uneducated.

In fact, the better educated in our society -- trained in the illusion of the Enlightenment – arrogantly assume they are somehow superior to the less educated, having gone through all the hoops degree programs can provide, when in actuality they are no closer to possessing “truth” or “moral” high ground than the masses they think of as uncouth.

A number of post-Nazi thinkers believe mankind cannot be perfected, and that we live with fundamental flaws that education cannot cure.

This may explain to some degree the reversion to primal violence we see among out best educated when they profess to be standing up for all they believe as right and good.

Most people regardless of their intentions revert to animal instincts under the right conditions.

As with the theory of enlightenment political theory shows that democracy is also an illusion, an out of date concept as as unattainable as perfection through the accumulation of knowledge.

Democracy is the religion of our time, with many people believing in it the way ancients did their Gods.

The theory of democracy is that people will gather, study the issues, and then decide the direction they want their nation to take through an elective process that installs leaders with the same or similar beliefs.

First of all, this assumes that all the participants are well-versed in all of the issues and then come to a decision about which is best.

To begin with, the majority is not versed in all aspects of issues, and this is particularly true of the better educated among us.

Contemporary political theorists believe that those with the most knowledge tend to be at the extremes of the political spectrum, those most motivated in the political process seeking to push the largely politically ignorant masses to the direction of their choice.

Most of those in the middle are generally ignorant not merely about critical issues that affect their lives, but also about what they actually see as their own core values.

Some studies show that people interviewed said one thing about their beliefs, only to vote for candidates that largely did not reflect those beliefs.

These people often accepted thumb nail slogans as beliefs, such as pro-life or pro-choice, and often accept promoters of these beliefs as the sole source of their information and arbitrators of truth.

Most people are rarely exposed to more than one side of an issue and studies show this is as true in the era of the internet as it was pre TV.

And ignorance isn’t exclusive to the unwashed mass as the so-called enlightened would like us to think.

Educated people are often as ignorant politically because they are generally exposed to limited sides of issues, often imposed by if not a liberal educational system, then one so entrenched in the outdated concepts of the Enlightenment as to be utterly out of touch with reality. This is not a new issue. The ivory tower concept has plagued the educational system since the monks.

Right wing proponents try to portray this as liberal propaganda, but this misses the point as well.

As long as educational system sees itself as possessing the only avenue to truth and encapsulates education into simplified talking points that students take in and regurgitate like cows, those students will always be as ignorant politically as those who learn their truths on the street.

One very significant example is the how cursory social study education about the Civil War generally claims it was only about freeing the slaves, when the war was about much more than that. Some history majors get it, but most of the general population graduates with a very limited reality.

Specialization is also a problem because it further reduces what a student is exposed to, forcing perfunctory thumb nail lessons on general knowledge before plunging him or her into a world even more abreacted.

This kind of education does not expand a world view.

More troubling for the concept of democracy is human nature itself.

A number of studies show that most voters are not merely uninformed, but choose to be that way.

They do not seek out alternative views to their own.

People believe what they want to believe regardless of conflicting evidence and then to block out anything that disagrees with their own preconceived notions

In this regard, politics has become very much like sports and which people support a particular team regardless of who the members of that team are or what they stand for – once a New York Giants fan, always a fan, regardless of who the quarter back is.

Even the so called unaffiliated voter is a fantasy. They are simply people who do not know what they believe in.

One theory from the 1960s sees true believers on either end of the political spectrum desperate to motivate the ignorant masses to their side.

So we see a proliferation of scare tactics and smear campaigns as spin doctors in some think tank like witch doctors of old calculate what formula they might use to magically shift the balance of public perception.

The so-called fake news of today is largely an attempt to use these political touch s tones in order stir up support for one side’s cause with media and others desperate to find the right combination that will somehow connect with the special logic old time political observers claim influenced voting habits.

It is a precarious science at best – because manipulation can backfire, media seeming to be a dishonest broker in a game in which people believe it serves as umpire.

Worse still, it stirs up some primitive beast inside the masses that once unleashed with no longer be predictable or controllable, nor will it likely move in the intended direction, lashing out at all, good or bad, right or wrong, left for right.

For all the Russian conspiracies, the claims of sexism, or all the other media spin being spun, those who love Trump will continue to live him, those who hate him will continue to at him, and the rest of the masses will largely be confused by the constant agitation doing little to enlighten anybody except to create more and more hate.

All we are doing is taunting the mob to action without any idea of what the mob will do once it acts.

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Death of Journalism in the era of a new King Lear

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

The New York Times today predicted today the death of print journalism.

This comes as no surprise since journalism itself is dead -- at least objective journalism.

While not everybody in journalism is as biased and unfair as is Maggie Haberman of the Times or countless other reporters from The Washington Post, most are.

It is the nature of the beast these days, an indication of contemporary journalism that in the glorious times of the past, would have been called “yellow” though these days wears the distinction of being called “fake.”

These reporters are people who have ceased creating a wall between their personal opinions and beliefs and fact we are powerful maybe power-hungry individuals with a diluted sense of purpose.

This is not fake news, but it is dishonest, corrupted news, part of a new breed of journalism that no longer requires ethical behavior by its journalists.

Unlike in the past when journalism has its ups and downs, this change is so fundamental that the industry is not likely to recover.

I guess them it is appropriate that The Times declares its death since it once claimed god as dead and plays as significant role in killing both.

Dysfunction in The White House has allowed these wolves through the gates as we watch a reenactment of a Shakespearean tragedy -- not the Macbeth we would have gotten had Clinton won, but a sad and pathetic King Lear with Trump playing both the king and the fool.

Media -- upset with its inability to steer the presidency to Clinton -- now seeks to flex its muscles to bring down Trump.

And it has had plenty of help from inside the White House:  a palace guard still loyal to the old king and three factions like three children to whom Trump has abdicated power -- all of whom work against each other to gain the ear of a king who listens to nobody but himself.

For a time, this kind listened to a worm named Bannon, who would bring down the king rather than concede power to either of the other two.

Although Bannon pictures himself as Darth Vader of Star Wars movies, he is really more like Gollum of The Lord of Rings: sneaky, slimy and vicious, powerless except for the trouble he can cause and clever enough to make use of an equally vicious and unethical media who would sell its soul to prove it still has power.

While media portrays Bannon as the anti-christ he clearly sensed a kindred spirit in them when served as unnamed source for stories he needed to undermine his enemies with in the White House.

And media without scruples was more than willing to comply since these leaks furthered its own agenda.

But media has no friends only temporary alliances and as Bannon has since found out turns on those alliances at even the slightest whiff of blood.

The big question remains how much damage has Bannon done?

Do the wolves roam free behind the castle walls to ravage the mad king at will?

Does Bannon’s banishment allow one of the other princes to step up in time to save the king?

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Welcome to the new morality

Sunday, February 11, 2018

In some ways, what we are witnessing in Washington DC these days is a personal war between two rich white men, the richest man on earth (owner of The Washington Post) and The President of the United States.

It is a tug of war that has the whole country torn apart because two men who hate each other and one which has vowed to bring the other one down.

The Washington Post is fighting to maintain credibility at a time when media objectively has hit new lows and has vowed to prove itself against a president who is not only not afraid of the Post’s historic power but has routinely defied it.

There are no rules in this war.

The Post has become the mouth piece of the opposition party and will make use anything and everything to discredit the president.

The Post and the Democratic Party’s latest gambit is the MeToo movement – which appears to be gaining traction in the New Morality crusade sweeping the country.

Yesterday, Screen Actors Guild – represents those in Hollywood who actually get paid -- came out with new rules regarding what is sexual abuse this after more than a century of misbehavior by actors and producers and others.

This is the latest chapter in a shameful tale of abuse Hollywood and the Democrats hope to sweep under the rug, in much the way some in the country want to erase history, such as the real events leading to and the aftermath of the American Civil War.

This is part of a new women’s vigilante movement that appears to have started when women successfully brought down Bill Cosby, and you have to wonder if and when it will discover rock and roll, and male performers and their relationship with groupies.

This new morality does not rely on God or Bible but some misguided crusade by self-righteous people who need to exert their vision of the world on others, often at the expense of due process.

This new morality insists on telling us how we should live our lives and what we should believe.

Sexual harassment, of course, has always been wrong, but has long been overlooked especially in the entertainment industry where budding actors and actresses put career advancement ahead of their moral principles.

The movement, however, has become a political tool, used by Democrats, as well as media, in a frenzy as vile as that of the Salem Witch Trials, but instead of targeting independent women, the way the witch trials did, it is now women targeting men who they believe have violated them in some way, in which any man can be accused of anything and have his reputation totally screwed because someone somewhere said something about him without due process of law.

This new morality is very selective.

Gillibrand recently made headlines with her call to interview women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct.

This comes at a time when the Democrats have used one of the Kennedys at its spokesperson and the rich sexual and criminal history that has long plagued that family.

The argument there is that we cannot just the past by president moral standards – when hypocritically, that’s exactly what MeToo, media and the Democrats are doing. We cannot raise questions about Teddy Kennedy, or even JFK, but will reach back for decades to contemn people we disagree with politically. God help us all if anyone dares mention Bill Clinton.

I had an argument last week on Facebook with a man who hated Socrates because he claimed Socrates was a fascist, and a model that Hitler used to build his empire. Not only was this person ignorant of history (since it was the Roman Empire Hitler claimed to represent), but also he imposed today’s morality on the past, judging people by a standard he no doubt learned from some obnoxious professor somewhere, who would also pass judgment on Robert E. Lee while being equally ignorant of who Lee was and what he really stood for. It’s easy to tear town statutes when you don’t know what they really mean and impose your own values on them.

This new morality has a more contemporary target in Gen. Kelly, who apparently knew about domestic abuse claims against one of his aides, but did nothing to investigate.

I did not know what the job description for the President’s Chief of Staff included investigating domestic abuse or devolving into the personal lives of employees when such misbehavior has nothing to do with their job.

But apparently, the new Morality Crusade thinks so and is calling for Kelly’s head on a platter because he failed to respond to the complaints in a timely matter. Conveniently, the call for his resignation would benefit most those who are most outspoken against him, namely the Democrats.

I suppose Kelly could have called the local police the way an ordinary citizen might have.

But Democrats and the media (in particularly the Washington Post) are suggesting the Kelly’s lack of action resulted in some kind of cover up and that an employee of the White House might not be prosecuted because of his position of power.

These New Morality Crusaders appear not to know or care about the distinction between a person’s professional role and his or her personal life and would stomp on the constitution by having the White House investigate an alleged crime more suited for the local police.

The crimes in question was no  workplace harassment but something in a person's private life that the new morality insist is now in the realm of public officials rather than police in the courts.

These moral crusaders want to make a case against Kelly as if this was a coverup.

Of course, this is very convenient for the Democrats who have been riding a women issue card since the campaign and feel now that they have some horse to ride on.

Gillibrand, a potential presidential candidate in 2020, apparently wants to pick up where Hillary Clinton left off as the standard bearer for this new and questionably unethical feminist movement. It would be quite a feather in Gillibrand’s hat if she could bring down Kelly and by default, The President.

Like all things Democrats do these days, this is an exploitation of victims for a political gain. While Gillibrand and others claim they are doing this on behalf of the victims of abuse, it is a self-serving exercise and dishonest. It also violates the basic premises of American freedom  for accused have their day in court and to be innocent until proven guilty.

But with the power of media such as The Washington Post (with its owner’s personal grudge against Trump) justice ceases to exist, and we basically have lynching in headlines.

This is a war between two super rich people, the owner of the Post (who is the richest man in the world) with a vendetta against the man in the White House who refuses to take seriously the power of the press. So for media, this Me-Too vehicle is a way of striking blow against a political enemy, regardless of how many other people’s reputations it has to destroy to accomplish this.

We are watching a major chapter of history unfolding where there is a new moral standard being imposed by people who profess sainthood but do not believe in God who believe in freedom only not your freedom to face your day in court who profess to be inclusive yet are exclusive anybody who disagrees with them. While behind the scenes, power brokers manipulate movements for their own purposes.