They're Not Confessing. They're Bragging.

I am on record as saying that the Left was shocked by their loss in 2016 to Donald Trump.  They were so certain of Hillary's inevitability that they didn't bother to turn on the fraud machine.  It was in the bag.  The World's Most Qualified Woman against a reality-TV orangutan.  As Roger Kimball put it in a recent Quote of the Day:

The central fact to appreciate about Donald Trump is that he was elected without the permission, and over the incredulous objections, of the woke oligarchy that governs us. 

I am further on record as saying that in five years or so, someone will complete a highly detailed, meticulously researched and footnoted recounting of just exactly how the 2020 election was stolen - yes, stolen.

Time Magazine has published Chapter 1 already.  The story is entitled "The Secret Bipartisan Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election."  The title alone tells you all you need to know, but the story goes into detail.  The Woke Oligarchy wasn't going to lose again.  

I haven't done one of these in awhile.  Let us Fisk.

A weird thing happened right after the Nov. 3 election: nothing.

The nation was braced for chaos. Liberal groups had vowed to take to the streets, planning hundreds of protests across the country. Right-wing militias were girding for battle. In a poll before Election Day, 75% of Americans voiced concern about violence.

Instead, an eerie quiet descended. As President Trump refused to concede, the response was not mass action but crickets. When media organizations called the race for Joe Biden on Nov. 7, jubilation broke out instead, as people thronged cities across the U.S. to celebrate the democratic process that resulted in Trump’s ouster.

"The response was not mass action, but crickets."  Left unspoken is the fact that, had Trump won reelection, cities would have burned.  You're not supposed to realize that.  What you're supposed to concentrate on is that the "Right-wing militias" didn't do anything.  The Left was prepared to "protest."  "Mostly peacefully" I would imagine.  But "right-wing militias" would have been violent!  The pertinent phrase however, is "Trump's ouster."  They'd been trying for more than four years to achieve that, and now they had.

A second odd thing happened amid Trump’s attempts to reverse the result: corporate America turned on him. Hundreds of major business leaders, many of whom had backed Trump’s candidacy and supported his policies, called on him to concede. To the President, something felt amiss. “It was all very, very strange,” Trump said on Dec. 2. “Within days after the election, we witnessed an orchestrated effort to anoint the winner, even while many key states were still being counted.”

In a way, Trump was right.

Tell me something I didn't know.

There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.

"...an orchestrated effort to anoint the winner" was not right "in a way," it was completely accurate.  But the pertinent line is this one:  "There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes...."  Conspiracy.  Their word, not mine.  We can officially take off our tinfoil hats now.  Time has admitted there was a conspiracy.  You can argue that the purpose of the conspiracy was to prevent the torching of major cities across the United States, but it was still a conspiracy to ensure Donald Trump did not win a second term.

This next paragraph is where it starts getting really interesting:

The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted. For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President. Though much of this activity took place on the left, it was separate from the Biden campaign and crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors. The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election so calamitous that no result could be discerned at all, a failure of the central act of democratic self-governance that has been a hallmark of America since its founding.

"...an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted."  Lie #1, admitted to later in the piece.  Everything possible was done to "win the vote," and to hell with fairness, credibility and corruption.  Winning was everything, and you can't count on the voters to do the right thing.  Remember, the goal was to SAVE THE ELECTION.  Conspiracy.  Shadowy groups manipulating things behind curtains.  For our own good, you see.  And it was bipartisan!  Because Orange Man Bad!  But, while they brag about their success, they cannot come out and simply say "We defeated Orange Man!"  No, they have to wrap the conspiracy in wholesome cloth - the thing they were trying to prevent was "an election so calamitous that no result could be discerned at all"! 

So they destroyed the system in order to save it.

Let's take the next paragraph line-by-line:

Their work touched every aspect of the election. 

AKA:  They cheated as hard as they could.

 They got states to change voting systems and laws...

Unconstitutionally, but they didn't care about that.  That wouldn't be decided until AFTER the election was settled.

...and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits,

Hundreds of millions of dollars to steal the election for the conspiracists paid for by the conspiracists and the public coffers.  "Voter suppression lawsuits" is code for "making sure only eligible voters vote."  Can't have that.   But here's the kicker:

...recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. 

"Armies of poll workers."  Poll workers who shared one ideology - Orange Man Bad.  And millions of people voting using a method well known and recognized for its vulnerability to fraud, if the poll workers were so inclined.

They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. 

"Disinformation" like the Hunter Biden corruption story. demonetizing anyone who didn't toe the Leftist line, cancelling anyone who threatened The Narrative™.

They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. 

Like the story of the Red Wave, of how - at first - it would appear that Trump was winning by a landslide, but after all that mail-in vote was counted, the Right People would ensure that Trump lost!  This is known as Propaganda, and also "laying the groundwork."  See?  We predicted this!  Nothing odd about it at all!

After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result. 

They'd had four years to prepare, after all.

“The untold story of the election is the thousands of people of both parties who accomplished the triumph of American democracy at its very foundation,” says Norm Eisen, a prominent lawyer and former Obama Administration official who recruited Republicans and Democrats to the board of the Voter Protection Program.

Norm Eisen wouldn't know "democracy" if it bit him on the ass, developed lockjaw and was dragged to death.  Conspiracies and Shadow organizations have no part in democracy.

For Trump and his allies were running their own campaign to spoil the election.

That is, "not have it stolen from them" by conspirators bent on that very task.

The President spent months insisting that mail ballots were a Democratic plot and the election would be “rigged.” 

And it was.  And Time Magazine is telling us how.  Conspiracies, voting rule changes, massive influx of mail-in voting, recruiting ideologically compatible poll workers, control of the flow of information, and millions of dollars in public and private funds. 

His henchmen at the state level sought to block their use, while his lawyers brought dozens of spurious suits to make it more difficult to vote–an intensification of the GOP’s legacy of suppressive tactics.

I love the Left's control of the language.  Isn't it fascinating that Trump has "henchmen," but the "conspirators" who opposed him were merely people of good intention, pure as the driven slush?  That his lawsuits were "spurious," but here's a list of the lawsuits brought and their results.  Note how very few were decided on the merits, and how many that were were decided in favor of the Republicans. 

Before the election, Trump plotted to block a legitimate vote count. And he spent the months following Nov. 3 trying to steal the election he’d lost–with lawsuits and conspiracy theories, pressure on state and local officials, and finally summoning his army of supporters to the Jan. 6 rally that ended in deadly violence at the Capitol.

No explanation of how Trump "plotted to block a legitimate vote count," just the assertion that he did, while this piece details a conspiracy of shadowy oligarchs intent on the very same thing.  Oh, and "violence at the Capitol."

The Capitol, aside from the razor-wire topped fencing and the armed National Guardsmen, looks a lot better than downtown Portland, Oregon.  What, a couple of broken windows and someone appropriated Nancy Pelosi's Speakers lectern?  One unarmed protester was killed by a Capitol cop, several more protesters died of natural causes, and the one cop who died after apparently being struck by a thrown fire extinguisher apparently showed no signs of blunt-force trauma.  Some coup attempt.  How many died in Portland?

The democracy campaigners watched with alarm. “Every week, we felt like we were in a struggle to try to pull off this election without the country going through a real dangerous moment of unraveling,” says former GOP Representative Zach Wamp, a Trump supporter who helped coordinate a bipartisan election-protection council. “We can look back and say this thing went pretty well, but it was not at all clear in September and October that that was going to be the case.”

There's that control of language thing again.  Our heroes were "democracy campaigners."  "Pulling off" the election meaning "making sure Trump loses."  Because they knew if he won there was the strong possibility of "a real dangerous moment of unraveling" as the extremist members of their side would go stark-raving. 

This is the inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election, based on access to the group’s inner workings, never-before-seen documents and interviews with dozens of those involved from across the political spectrum. It is the story of an unprecedented, creative and determined campaign whose success also reveals how close the nation came to disaster. “Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated,” says Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan rule-of-law advocacy group. “But it’s massively important for the country to understand that it didn’t happen accidentally. The system didn’t work magically. Democracy is not self-executing.”

Again, who's a conspiracy theorist?  And language once again - saving the 2020 election.  From Donald Trump: "...how close the nation came to disaster."

That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.

 

They weren't rigging the election!  Oh no!  Changing voting rules, implementing vote-by-mail, recruiting ideologically pure pollworkers, controlling The Narrative, silencing dissent, that's not "rigging the election" it's fortifying it!  

Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.

I'm not going to fisk the rest of the story line-by-line - it's far too long for that, but I will comment on excerpts like this one:

The usual tools of data, analytics and polling would not be sufficient in a situation where the President himself was trying to disrupt the election, (Mike Podhorzer, senior adviser to the president of the AFL-CIO) wrote. “Most of our planning takes us through Election Day,” he noted. “But, we are not prepared for the two most likely outcomes”–Trump losing and refusing to concede, and Trump winning the Electoral College (despite losing the popular vote) by corrupting the voting process in key states. “We desperately need to systematically ‘red-team’ this election so that we can anticipate and plan for the worst we know will be coming our way.”

And this is the paragraph that gives lie to the claim that it was "...an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted."  It is also an absolute psychological projection, as he accuses Trump of "corrupting the voting process in key states" when that was precisely what they were doing.  Refusing to concede?  Didn't Hillary tell Biden not to concede under any circumstances?  And winning the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote is how Trump defeated Hillary.  It's why the Electoral College exists.

The chief difference between the U.S. and countries that lost their grip on democracy, he concluded, was that America’s decentralized election system couldn’t be rigged in one fell swoop. 

No, that required that "Their work touched every aspect of the election."  Not just one.

The first task was overhauling America’s balky election infrastructure....

That has worked just fine unless a Republican gets elected.  Especially when the wrong Republican gets elected.

...Fox News surprised everyone by calling Arizona for Biden. The public-awareness campaign had worked: TV anchors were bending over backward to counsel caution and frame the vote count accurately. 

TV anchors "bending over backwards" and "framing" is also known as "Controlling the Narrative."  And it's nothing new, but was brought to new levels.

RTWT.  Try to keep your blood pressure down.  For all the high rhetoric, democracy in America is dead.  The Oligarchy is in control, and they're not giving it up.

Winston Smith has been Working Overtime

 

What. The Actual. FUCK?!?

Yes, this is a ... thing.

Pushing an Agenda

Foreign Policy magazine comes out with a shrieking Gloom-'n-Doom piece, A Moment of National Shame and Peril—and Hope subtitled "We may be witnessing the beginning of the end of American democracy, but there is still a way to stop the descent."

What has so frightened author John Allen, "president of the Brookings Institution, a retired U.S. Marine Corps four-star general, and former commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces in Afghanistan"?

Well, this:

The slide of the United States into illiberalism may well have begun on June 1, 2020. Remember the date. It may well signal the beginning of the end of the American experiment.

The president of the United States stood in the Rose Garden of the White House on Monday, railed against weak governors and mayors who were not doing enough, in his mind, to control the unrest and the rioters in their cities, and threatened to deploy the U.S. military against American citizens. It was a stunning moment. But, in particular, it was notable for three important reasons.

First, Donald Trump expressed only the barest of condolences at the murder of George Floyd, but he also said nothing about the fundamental and underlying reasons for the unrest: systemic racism and inequality, a historic absence of respect, and a denial of justice. All of these factors are centuries old and deeply engrained in an American society that systematically delivers white privilege at the expense of people of color.

Yes, he mentioned George Floyd, but he did not touch on long-standing societal problems at all. He sees the crisis as a black problem—not as something to be addressed by creating the basis and impetus for a move toward social justice, but as an opportunity to use force to portray himself as a “law and order” president. The reasons were irrelevant to the opportunity. Remember the supposed invasion of the southern border and his deployment of federal troops ahead of the 2018 midterm elections? The president’s failure to understand the reality of the problem was on full display when, on Saturday, he attempted to explain that his supporters, the so-called Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, “love African American people. They love black people. MAGA loves the black people.” Evidently his movement, MAGA, is a coherent thing, and it’s white, which leads to the next point about his speech.

Second, Trump was clear he views those engaged in the unrest and criminal acts in these riots as terrorists, an enemy. He said so, ostensibly as justification to deploy the U.S. military to apply federal force—his “personal” force—against the riots.

I'll admit, I was initially wary of the invocation of the Insurrection Act, until I discovered that, although passed in 1807 it has been used by several Presidents, mostly Democrats, since passage.  An incomplete list:

Rutherford B. Hayes (R), October, 1878 -- to suppress the Lincoln County War

Grover Cleveland (D), July, 1894 -- the Pullman Strike (look into that one.)

Woodrow Wilson (D), April, 1914 -- the Colorado Coalfield War

Herbert Hoover (R), July 1932 -- the Bonus Marchers in D.C. (definitely look into that one)

Franklin D. Roosevelt (D), July, 1943 (while the military was already quite busy with other things) -- the Detroit race riot.  Hmm, sound familiar?

Dwight D. Eisenhower (R), September, 1957 -- Protecting the Little Rock Nine

John F. Kennedy (D) - twice:  September 1962, and September 1963 -- the first for The Battle of Oxford, the second to enforce desegregation of Alabama public schools.

Lyndon B. Johnson (D) - FOUR TIMES: July, 1967 -- '67 Detroit Riot, April, 1968 -- Washington DC riots, April 1968 -- Baltimore riots, April 1968 -- Chicago riots.  1968 was a year of widespread riots.  Sound familiar?

George H.W. Bush (R) - twice:  September 1989, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands in the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo, May, 1982 -- the Rodney King riots in LA.

I had to go look these up, because no major media outlet bothered to inform me.  For them, history started yesterday.

As far as MAGA being a white thing?  Look here.  If the media won't tell you about how the Insurrection Act has been used in the past, what makes you think they'll admit that not all black people live on their plantation?

General Allen (Ret.) further states:

Finally, the governors have sufficient law enforcement capacity—and, if necessary, the combat power of the National Guard—to handle their respective crises. If not, they can ask for federal assistance. There is no precedent in modern U.S. history for a president to wield federal troops in a state or municipality over the objections of the respective governor.

Neither Eisenhower nor Kennedy got the permission of the governors involved.  Those governors were quite happy with the status quo.  "No precedent in modern U.S. history"?  Pull my other leg.  And the gist of the phone conversation Trump had with the various governors was "You have all the law enforcement capacity you need - use it, or I'll send in troops who will."  Seems it worked.

FUCK I'm tired of this shit.

Another Plastic Turkey Story

So the media has been ranting about Trump's march through Lafayette Park to St. John’s Episcopal Church, the victim of arson the previous night. 

ABC:  Police use munitions to forcibly push back peaceful protesters for Trump church visit

CBS affiliate WUSA9:  Tear gas, flash bangs used to clear protesters from LaFayette Square before surprise President Trump photo opp

AP News:  Tear gas, threats for protesters before Trump visits church

Time Magazine:  President Trump’s Big Moment in Front of a Church Shows He Has Missed the Point of the Protests

I could go on, but it's not necessary.  The story is bullshit, like so much coming from the media.  These days, nearly everything.

It's another Plastic Turkey! story, so good, so juicy it just HAS to be true!  ORANGE MAN BAD!!

Quote of the Day - Matt Ridley Edition

From his recent Uncommon Knowledge interview on his new book How Innovation Works:

The late Hans Rosling, who is one of the so-called Godfathers of rational optimism...he did a poll of a thousand people in the U.S. and they need to repeat it in the UK and a number of countries, and he said: "In the last 20 years, has the percentage of the world population that lives in extreme poverty halved, doubled, or stayed the same?  Which of those do you think is correct?"  In the US about 65% of people think it's doubled and about 5% think it's halved.  The 5% are right and the 65% are wrong.

That's striking enough, but then he says- "Hang on.  If I wrote those three answers on three bananas and threw them to a chimpanzee, the chimp would pick up the right answer 33% of the time.  It would do six times as well as human beings at answering a question about human society.  That's the measure of how much we've indoctrinated ourselves into global pessimism.

ABCNNBCBS and all the rest of media, news and entertainment, are to blame for this.  Good news doesn't sell.

WHO Exactly is Living in a Bubble?

Interesting piece:  I’ve been a Democrat for 20 years. Here’s what I experienced at Trump’s rally in New Hampshire.

Pullquote:

You see, I was one of those Democrats who considered anyone who voted for Trump a racist. I thought they were horrible (yes, even deplorable) and had worked very hard to eliminate their voices from my spaces by unfriending or blocking people who spoke about their support of him, however minor their comments. I watched a lot of MSNBC, was convinced that everything he had done was horrible, that he hated anyone that wasn’t a straight, white man, and that he had no redeeming qualities.

Do read the whole thing.

Quote of the Day - Twitter Edition

Comment prompted by this Project Veritas video from yesterday:

ABC News: Multiple allegations against pedophile Jeffrey Epstein didn’t meet our standards for air.

Also ABC:

Check out these uncorroborated allegations against Kavanaugh in middle of his confirmation.

Also, here’s some Syria war footage that's actually from a KY gun range - Jason Howerton

Quote of the Day - Glenn Reynolds Edition

Like he needs a link from me, but I wanted to archive this one.  In response to the New York Times deputy managing editor Rebecca Blumenstein stating:

‘We are in no way anti-Trump.’
Glenn zings back:

ALSO, NO ONE IS STARVING IN THE UKRAINE
That ought to leave a scar.

Quote of the Day: Larry Corriea Edition

From his Monster Nation post The 2nd Amendment is Obsolete, Says Congressman Who Wants To Nuke Omaha:

In something that I find profoundly troubling when I’ve had this discussion before, I’ve had a Caring Liberal tell me that the example of Iraq doesn’t apply because “we kept the gloves on”, whereas fighting America’s gun nuts would be a righteous total war with nothing held back… Holy shit, I’ve got to wonder about the mentality of people who demand rigorous ROEs to prevent civilian casualties in a foreign country, are blood thirsty enough to carpet bomb Texas.

You really hate us, and then act confused why we want to keep our guns? But I don’t think unrelenting total war against everyone who has ever disagreed with you on Facebook is going to be quite as clean as you expect.

RTWT.

Quote of the Day - 4/11/13

From an LA Times Op-Ed by Burt Prelusky:

Frankly, I don't know what it is about California, but we seem to have a strange urge to elect really obnoxious women to high office. I'm not bragging, you understand, but no other state, including Maine, even comes close. When it comes to sending left-wing dingbats to Washington, we're Number One. There's no getting around the fact that the last time anyone saw the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Maxine Waters, and Nancy Pelosi, they were stirring a cauldron when the curtain went up on "Macbeth". The four of them are like jackasses who happen to possess the gift of blab. You don't know if you should condemn them for their stupidity or simply marvel at their ability to form words.

"...another round of organized violence and hands on learning...."

Over on the Book of Face, Mike Rowe gives another example of why he is The Man™. He cuts through the BS to the heart of the matter:

Off the Wall

Sharon Freeman‎ to Mike Rowe

Mike Rowe, I’m curious as to your opinion on the tragic death of the Boy Scouts of America?! I have several cousins that are Eagle Scouts, and I know that you are one also, so I feel you have somewhat of a vested interest in this matter. I didn’t have a problem with entire families going on Boy Scout camping trips, but to force them to become co-ed...I think that’s sad.

Hi Sharon

In 1974, I was a painfully shy twelve-year-old kid with an annoying stammer and a deep fear of trying anything new. I was also very awkward around girls. I dreamed of being near them, but in real life, their proximity made me sweaty and nauseous. So one evening, my father dragged me to the basement of Kenwood Presbyterian Church, where the boys of Troop 16 were in the midst of an organized brawl called British Bulldog. The rules were simple.

One kid stood alone in the middle of the room. On the far end, 25 boys waited for the scoutmaster to blow a whistle, at which point they’d bolt to the other end. During the charge, the kid in the middle would attempt to tackle somebody and lift him in the air long enough to yell, “1,2,3, British Bulldog!” That kid, if successfully lifted, would join the other kid in the middle of the room, and together, they’d go about the business of tackling and lifting other kids during each subsequent charge. In the end, the last one to be lifted was declared the winner – the British Bulldog.

I was immediately thrust into this pandemonium and hoisted into the air, despite my best efforts to remain grounded. Somewhere along the way I got a bloody nose. Others sustained busted lips, black eyes, and sprained fingers. Happily, the game was followed by a course in First Aid, taught by a local paramedic who showed us how to apply a tourniquet and administer CPR. It was awesome.

In the coming weeks, I learned how to tie a sheepshank, throw a boomerang, build a fire, and make a lean-to. I was given a Boy Scout Handbook, and told to memorize the Scout Law and The Scout Oath. I did, and a week later, after another round of organized violence and hands on learning, I was summoned to the stage in the basement. There, I stood by the flag, raised my right hand, and promised to “do my duty to God and my country, obey the Scout Law, help other people at all times, and to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.”

The Scout Oath was the first promise I ever made, and I tried my best to keep it. I also got busy earning Skill Awards and Merit Badges, a consistently frustrating pursuit that always seemed to highlight my chronic incompetence. The Scoutmaster, a retired Army Colonel named Mr. Huntington – often said, “I know you're uncomfortable, Mike. Might as well find a way to enjoy it.”

In Troop 16, merit badges reflected merit. There was a boxing ring, where differences were often settled, monthly camping trips, frequent visits to the shooting range, weekly fitness tests, poetry readings from memory, and many other activities tailor-made to pull every kid out of his particular comfort zone. It was often humbling, but never humiliating. Failure was simply viewed as the most common symptom of trying. Consequently, the more I tried, the more I failed. The more I failed, the more I succeeded. The more I succeeded, the more confident I became. My grades improved in school. My stammer vanished, as did my awkwardness around girls.

One year at summer camp, I was called upon to sing a song of my choice at the evening campfire. It was parent’s night, and several hundred people from multiple troops were on hand. None were expecting me to belt out a tune from Tom Lehrer called “Be Prepared,” but that’s precisely what I did. https://bit.ly/2wJWpjm

If you’re not familiar with this little gem, give it a listen. It is without question the most inappropriate song a Boy Scout could ever sing in public, but I thought it was hysterical, and packed with excellent advice. Afterward, Mr. Huntington offered a general apology to the parents in attendance, and gave me latrine duty for the duration of the encampment. Later though, he pulled me aside and said, “Mike, that was the funniest damn thing I’ve ever heard. Great job!”

Six years and two-dozen merit badges later, I was an Eagle Scout. Thirty-five years after that, I became a “Distinguished” Eagle Scout. I’m still not sure what I did to “distinguish” myself, but I accepted the award with gratitude, and I’ve tried ever since to give something back to the organization that gave me so much. Which brings us to what you've called “the tragic death" of The Boy Scouts, and the frightful prospects of “forced co-ed camping.”

According to their official statement, https://cnn.it/2HOv7gY, the Boy Scouts are welcoming girls because that’s what the overwhelming majority of parents want. From what I can tell, no one is being “forced” to do anything. Nothing in their statement talks about “co-ed” camping or even co-ed Troop Meetings.

As I read it, The Boy Scouts are launching a separate program that serves girls. Yes, The Girl Scouts are pissed, and the reason is clear - they don’t want the competition. https://theatln.tc/2l0pq4f. But respectfully, is that argument even remotely persuasive? Competition is good, even among organizations that have similar goals. Especially now, with 90 million kids in this country unaffiliated with any youth-based organization. So I’m not opposed to building a program within Scouting for girls. But I am very worried about the future of Scouting in general.

When I left the organization in 1979, there were 5 million active members. Today, there are 2.3 million. With the recent departure of the Mormon community, that number will soon drop to under two million. Clearly, something is wrong. The question is what? Is it the past sexual scandals? Is it the more recent admission of gay and transgender members? I would imagine those are factors. But a 60% decline? That seems very unlikely. Besides, the drop-off started long before all that. Likewise, girls have always been excluded from The Boy Scouts, so I’m skeptical that welcoming them now, will fix whatever’s broken.

In my opinion, this kind of attrition can only explained by an increasing lack of relevance, or, the perception of irrelevance. Unfortunately, in situations like this, there's no difference between perception and reality. And right now, there's a perception that The Boy Scouts have gone soft. That's the real tragedy, Sharon, because I can’t think of anything more needed in our country today, than a youth organization that offers kids the same experience I underwent in the basement of Kenwood Church. Why? Because our country’s current obsession with “safe spaces” is destroying character faster than the Boy Scouts of today can build it.

Obviously, we want our kids protected from the hazards of a dangerous world. And clearly, the world we live it is a dangerous place. But safety is not the purpose of our existence, and this whole idea that kids need to be protected from fear, distress, discomfort, and disappointment is far more dangerous to the future of our country than anything I ever encountered in Scouting. You can’t build character in a “safe space.” You can only build dependence and entitlement, and you don’t have to look very far to see the results. Pardon my rant, but the stakes are high.

Too many kids are graduating from high school with no sense of who they are. Too many kids are leaving college with no marketable skill. Too many kids have never pondered a code to live by, or considered the importance of anything beyond the pursuit of their own comfort. It’s easy to call these kids “snowflakes,” but where do you suppose they came from?

We are the clouds from which the snowflakes fell. We are the ones who gave them trophies just for showing up. We’re the ones who told them that their feelings were more important than their actions, and that their dreams would come true if they simply followed them. Now, we are confronted with millions of dissatisfied young adults with no tolerance for beliefs that conflict with their own, and no realistic understanding of how life actually works.

I know I’m generalizing. I know there are many hardworking, conscientious millennials out there. I employ several. But I also know the “safe space movement” is real, and I can think of no better way to push back than to expose more kids to the brand of Scouting that I was lucky enough to encounter four decades ago. If by some miracle the dynamic I experienced in Troop 16 were available to everyone today – if Scouting could somehow recapture that combination of risk and wonder and pride and personal accountability - I believe their ranks would swell with the sons and daughters of millions of anxious parents, desperate to expose their kids to a program that prepares them for the real world.

I worry about The Boy Scouts for the same reasons I worry about The Girl Scouts and The Future Farmers of America and Skills USA and The 4-H Club and every other group that tries to elevate virtues like hard work, delayed gratification, and personal responsibility. I worry, because those ideas are wildly out of fashion, and organizations that have traditionally celebrated them are under enormous pressure to “evolve.” And so they do. But to what end? A 60% drop in membership?

If the Boy Scouts want to attract a new generation of members, they'll need to stand for something more than inclusion. Because being inclusive doesn't make you relevant. If I were calling the shots, I'd take a stand against the safe space movement and everything it embodies. And I'd do it in the most public way possible. But of course, that might also require a level of risk completely inconsistent with current orthodoxy.

As we all know, in 1974, a chipped tooth or a black eye didn’t lead to lawsuit, and today, I’m pretty sure a boxing ring and a trip to the shooting range would make a lot of parents...uncomfortable. But that’s exactly the point. In a world that values safety above everything else, discomfort is never welcome. Neither is risk. And yet, discomfort and risk are precisely why my time in Scouting was so valuable, and why Troop 16 was the polar opposite of a safe space.

Anyway Sharon, that’s a very long way of saying that girls are not the enemy. The enemy is bad ideology, and the inability to effectively confront it. Do I favor co-ed Scouting? Hell no. I can’t think of a single good reason to put girls and boys in the same troop, the same tent, the same boxing ring, or the same game of British Bulldog. But I can think of many good reasons to include them in a unified effort to confront the siren song of “safe spaces.”

Someone has to challenge the insipid belief that safety is the most important part of living. Someone has to challenge the idea that feelings trump achievement. Someone has to challenge the idea that “crying closets” on campuses designed to console stressed out students who just can't handle their finals exams, (or the outcome of a presidential election,) will produce a responsible, productive adult.

It’s not enough to simply ignore bad ideas. The safe space movement needs to be confronted, and I’d love nothing more than to see Scouts of both genders lead the charge.

Mike

Lois Lerner is Frightened

The news is reporting that former IRS executive Lois G. Lerner and her deputy Holly Paz want their testimony in the Tea Party targeting investigation sealed because they're afraid of public reaction should the information be released.

They should be afraid. Everyone sitting in a seat of power in a government office should be afraid of pissing off the public. "Tar, Feathers," as Instapundit puts it, should probably be employed somewhat less than metaphorically from time to time, so as to reduce the possibility of "Rope, tree, some assembly required."

At least some of the corrupt Illinois politicians end up serving time.

Quote of the Day - Thomas Sowell Redux

In keeping with the previous post, this from Thomas Sowell's Townhall January 2013 piece, The Role of Educators:

Schools were once thought of as places where a society's knowledge and experience were passed on to the younger generation. But, about a hundred years ago, Professor John Dewey of Columbia University came up with a very different conception of education -- one that has spread through American schools of education, and even influenced education in countries overseas.

John Dewey saw the role of the teacher, not as a transmitter of a society's culture to the young, but as an agent of change -- someone strategically placed, with an opportunity to condition students to want a different kind of society.

A century later, we are seeing schools across America indoctrinating students to believe in all sorts of politically correct notions. The history that is taught in too many of our schools is a history that emphasizes everything that has gone bad, or can be made to look bad, in America -- and that gives little, if any, attention to the great achievements of this country.

If you think that is an exaggeration, get a copy of "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn and read it. As someone who used to read translations of official Communist newspapers in the days of the Soviet Union, I know that those papers' attempts to degrade the United States did not sink quite as low as Howard Zinn's book.

That book has sold millions of copies, poisoning the minds of millions of students in schools and colleges against their own country. But this book is one of many things that enable teachers to think of themselves as "agents of change," without having the slightest accountability for whether that change turns out to be for the better or for the worse -- or, indeed, utterly catastrophic.

Indoctrination

I came across this the other day - the syllabus for a University of Arizona "Honors" English class, English 109H - in fact, the syllabus states:

This is an honors class with work and credit equivalent to a year’s completion of ENGL 101 and 102. Expectations are high.

This is a class for incoming Honors freshmen, straight out of high school.

Shakespeare? Milton? (*shudder*) Conrad?

Nope:

English 109H: Fall 2017

DAMN, We Will Never Know: Kendrick Lamar’s and Kiese Laymon’s Hip Hop Literacies

Course Description

Morally, there has been no change at all, and a moral change is the only real one.
–James Baldwin
On April 14, 2017, twenty-nine year-old Kendrick Lamar, an American hip hop artist known for his pop protest music, released his fourth studio album, DAMN. Four years earlier, thirty-eight year-old Kiese Laymon, an American writer known for his work on Gawker and ESPN, published his series of autobiographical essays on American racism, masculinity, hip hop, and the deep South.

Using Laymon’s essays as a framework, we will study Kendrick Lamar’s body of music to events which boomed his controversy, including #BlackLivesMatter and ongoing police brutalities, especially those publicized by social media. By studying American values connected to what we call blackness and whiteness, we’ll explore conflict, contact, and coalition and ask: How does black American and white American social media allow for critiques of race, gender, sexuality, and violence? What does it mean for a genre of music and its accompanying culture that, by "tradition," enforces heterosexuality and masculinity—in the name of legal murders?

The goal of this course is to improve your ability to critically think and write. In addition to contextualizing and reshaping the Kendrick Lamar and Kiese Laymon conversations, you will conduct library and field research on your own controversy, which will be integrated into a semester-long project consisting of a research essay, public argument, and literacy narrative. If we can listen and read carefully enough, we can occupy other subjectivities; that is, to say, we can improve our writings and civic lives, which are connected to what happens outside the classroom. We will return to the same question at the end: Can we really act as witness to another voice, even for our studies of language and its adaptations?

Course Goals Goal 1: Rhetorical Awareness
Learn strategies for analyzing texts’ audiences, purposes, and contexts as a means of developing facility in reading and writing.

Goal 2: Critical Thinking and Composing
Use reading and writing for purposes of critical thinking, research, problem solving, action, and participation in conversations within and across different communities.

Goal 3: Reflection and Revision
Understand composing processes as flexible and collaborative, drawing upon multiple strategies and informed by reflection.

Goal 4: Conventions
Understand conventions as related to purpose, audience, and genre, including such areas as mechanics, usage, citation practices, as well as structure, style, graphics, and design.

Written Assignments

• In the first unit of the course, you will study and respond to various contexts according to different rhetorical lenses and write a Contextual Rhetorical Analysis of Public Protest Spaces reframing Black lives politics re-envisioned by music videos from Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. You may defend, depart from, or combine his arguments to develop your own inquiry.
• In the second unit, you will conduct both library and field research on an approved social justice controversy of your choice, which will culminate in an analysis of the issue, or a Rhetorical Analysis of a Controversy. An Annotated Bibliography, due before the big Essay 2, will complete the “Research Portfolio.” You will closely study U.S. state or Supreme court cases to develop your controversies.
• In the third unit, you will use this research to support an argument of public interest, called a Public Argument. You will create a video catered to a mobilized audience and present it to the class.
• For the final “exam,” you will write and curate your own literacy narrative, which you will publish on a class blog. The final project is semester-long and we will NOT spend time in class on it other than one session per month; you are expected to develop, collect, and write your materials throughout the course. Please start early and utilize the class resources and office hours.
• In addition to these larger projects, you will complete a series of in-class and out-of-class smaller assignments which build into the four major assignments. Homework (readings, journals, smaller pre-essay assignments and discussions), workshops, and participation are often the decisive suasion points for borderline grades. Do the work, come to class ready and willing to discuss and participate, and you will see that reflected in what you earn.

I'm not going to go through the rest of it, but here's an example of Kendrick Lamar's art from his album DAMN:


I'm reminded of this national championship debate performance.

Just saying.

Kiese Laymon's collection of essays How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America is a required textbook.

At least there's a textbook.  The title essay is still available at Gawker.  It's prose, but I'm unconvinced that what's being taught in this class is "critical thinking" or "structure, style, graphics and design."  And since when is the purpose of an English class "problem solving, action, and participation in conversations within and across different communities"?

Oh, and remember we're paying (a lot) for our kids to go to college for this.

The professor?  Sylvia Chan.

The Long March through the Institutions has been completed for a long, long time.

Oh, and read this QotD too.  It's pertinent.

Edited to add this I found at a linking site:

Quote of the Day

New one on me:

Newsheimers, the media affliction by which you just can’t recall what you previously reported.  Especially when it concerns Democrats.

Heh™

Right-Wing Media

I just got introduced to IntellectualFroglegs.com by a video over at American Digest.  The video is on YouTube - a wholly-owned subsidiary of Goolag - er, Google:


Watch that, if for no other reason than to appreciate the content creator's real mastery of the multimedia format.

If you had told me six years ago that the American Left would be self-destructing as rapidly and violently as they appear to be today, I'd have had you committed.  But bear in mind, their "long march through the institutions" has secured their (ever more tenuous) grasp on the reins of power.  They own academia, the media, and the entertainment industry almost completely, and that's still a lot of power, power they won't surrender easily.

Fake But Inaccurate

So there's been a lot of buzz about "fake news" in media and political circles.  But Newsweak's political editor, Matthew Cooper admits that its "Madame President" issue cover article wasn't written by Newsweak staff, and wasn't even read by Newsweak editors before it published:


How much other content is written and unvetted by Newsweak's staff?  And for that matter, other "news" magazines'?

As Instapundit states about Global Warming alarmists' rants, "I'll believe it's a problem when they start acting like it's a problem."

The Orthodox Media

Back in 2008 I wrote The Church of MSM and the New Reformation, an examination of media bias and a book review of sorts of Professor Brian Anse Patrick's The National Rifle Association and the Media: The Motivating Force of Negative Coverage. Professor Patrick examined a question very similar to one asked this year - how does the NRA thrive when it is so reviled by (what he terms) the "elite press" - in his case he examined nine publications: the New York Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report.

This year the media asked itself the same question with regard to Donald Trump: "How is it he's still so popular?" Or, as Hillary put it, "Why aren't I fifty points ahead?"

"Bias" wasn't the answer, Professor Patrick discovered:

It is not that liberal-conservative bias does not affect coverage at times. Or that other forms of bias do not exist. One would have to be naïve to the point of addle-headedness to believe otherwise. Elite journalists tend to identify themselves with politically liberal causes, and personal idealism cannot possibly be segregated from the interpretation of events. Doubtless, too, old fashioned economic concerns have killed many a news story. Many discern in the national media, some on the basis of good evidence a conservative bias supporting economic imperialism and mindless consumerism.

Additionally, the powerful forces of personal psychological projection interact with the amorphous nature of external events that media professionals must daily interpret, in ways that allow just about everyone to see what they need or want to see in the media. The Left sees bias for the Right; Right sees Left; schizophrenics and the devoutly religious see the Hand of God, devils, or aliens at work; we could also list racism, sexism, internationalism, and the exploitation of women and girls, men, animals, and classes. There are bugs and bugaboos in the media appropriate to nearly every orientation or fixation. So bias is often not just about what affects coverage, but also what affects perceptions of coverage.

That elite media may be biased for or against a particular issue or topic is interesting, and this knowledge may help an interest group rally indignation or manage its public relations; however it tells little about the overall functioning of media in society. This latter concern is the broader and more important idea, with larger implications. The overall ranking results provide such an explanation.

The larger concept that lies behind the consistent ranking is a broad cultural level phenomenon that I will label an administrative control bias. It has profound implications. Administrative control in this usage means rational, scientific, objective social management by elite, symbol-manipulating classes, and subclasses, i.e., professionalized administrators or bureaucratic functionaries. The thing administered is often democracy itself, or a version of it at least. Here and throughout this chapter terms such as "rational," "objective," "professional," and "scientific" should be read in the sense of the belief systems that they represent, i.e. rationalism, objectivism, professionalism, and scientism. Scientism is not the same as being scientific; the first is a matter of faith and ritualistic observance, the other is difficult creative work. William James made a similar distinction between institutional religion and being religious, the first being a smug and thoughtless undertaking on the part of most people, the second, a difficult undertaking affecting every aspect of a life. The term scientistic administration would pertain here. Note that we move here well beyond the notion of mere gun control and into the realm of general social control, management and regulation.

In other words, journalists are statists. But beyond that, they see themselves as having a job in that state apparatus:

Previous to objective journalism, baldly partisan news media were the norm; under objectivity news became a scientific tool of social progress and management. The elite press continues also to serve this function, connecting administrators and managers not only to the world they seek to administrate but also to other managers with whom they must coordinate their efforts. So in this sense social movement-based critiques have been correct in identifying a sort of pseudo-pluralism operating in the public forum, a pluralism that is in reality no more than an exclusive conversation between elite class subcomponents - but this over-class is administrative in outlook and purpose.

--

Journalists acquire importance in the mass democratic system precisely because they gather, convey, and interpret the data that inform individual choices. Mere raw, inaccessible data transforms to political information that is piped to where it will do the most good. Objective, balanced coverage becomes essential, at least in pretense, lest this vital flow of information to be thought compromised, thus affecting not only the quality of rational individual decision-making, but also the legitimacy of the system.

Working from within the perspective of the mass democracy model for social action it is difficult to specify an ideal role model of journalistic coverage other than a "scientific objectivism" at work. An event (i.e., reality) causes coverage, or so the objective journalist would and often does say. Virtually all of the journalists that I have ever talked with regard coverage as mirroring reality.

--

The claim being advanced here, by assumption, is that journalists can truly convey or interpret the nature of reality as opposed to the various organizational versions of events in which journalists must daily traffic. The claim is incredible and amounts to a Gnostic pretension of being "in the know" about the nature or reality, or at least the reality that matters most politically.

An ecclesiastical model most appropriately describes this elite journalistic function under mass democracy. Information is the vital substance that makes the good democracy possible. It allows, as it were, for the existence of the good society, a democratic state of grace. Information is in this sense analogous to the concept of divine grace under the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic Church. Divine grace was essential for the good spiritual life, the life that mattered. The clergy dispensed divine grace to the masses in the form of sacraments. They were its intermediaries, who established over time a monopoly, becoming the exclusive legitimate channel of divine grace.

And here's the kicker:

Recollect that the interposition of intermediaries, the clergy, along a vital spiritual-psychological supply route was the rub of the Reformation. The clergy cloaked themselves in the mantle of spiritual authority rather than acting as its facilitators. Many elite newspapers have apparently done much the same thing, speaking and interpreting authoritatively for democracy, warranting these actions on the basis of social responsibility. Of course, then and now, many people do not take the intermediaries seriously.

It is not accident, then, that the pluralistic model of social action largely discounts journalists as an important class. In the same way the decentralized religious pluralism generically known as Protestantism discounts the role of clergy. This should be expected. Pluralism and Protestantism share common historical origins. American pluralism particularly is deeply rooted in the Reformation's reaction to interpretive monopoly.

Journalists, particularly elite journalists, occupy under mass democracy this ecclesiastical social role, a functional near-monopoly whose duty becomes disseminating and interpreting the administrative word and its symbols unto the public.

I told you that, so I could tell you this. Will Rahn is a political correspondent and managing director, politics, for CBS News Digital. He wrote an op-ed that published today entitled "The unbearable smugness of the press," in which he says (in part):

Journalists love mocking Trump supporters. We insult their appearances. We dismiss them as racists and sexists. We emote on Twitter about how this or that comment or policy makes us feel one way or the other, and yet we reject their feelings as invalid.

It’s a profound failure of empathy in the service of endless posturing. There’s been some sympathy from the press, sure: the dispatches from “heroin country” that read like reports from colonial administrators checking in on the natives. But much of that starts from the assumption that Trump voters are backward, and that it’s our duty to catalogue and ultimately reverse that backwardness. What can we do to get these people to stop worshiping their false god and accept our gospel?

We diagnose them as racists in the way Dark Age clerics confused medical problems with demonic possession. Journalists, at our worst, see ourselves as a priestly caste. We believe we not only have access to the indisputable facts, but also a greater truth, a system of beliefs divined from an advanced understanding of justice.

(Bold emphasis mine.)

I have news for Mr. Rahn - it's been apparent for quite a while that journalists act as a priestly class.  I think, at their worst, some recognize it in themselves - and wallow in it.

Which explains, I think, why more and more Americans are abandoning the Church of the MSM.

Still, it's nice to see self-confirmation of Professor Patrick's hypothesis by a member of media.

UPDATE, 11/11:  See also: At NYT, “Talented Reporters Scrambled to Match Stories with What Internally Was Often Called ‘The Narrative.'”

New York Times Inaguration Day Headline

(As seen on Facebook:)

"TRUMP EVICTS BLACK FAMILY FROM PUBLIC HOUSING!"