Tales From Baobaoan

Part One

We arrived in Baobaoan (pronounced:  Bab-ō-wän) on Saturday, July 24, 2021.  This was after spending eleven days in quarantine in Manila.  And we were required to spend six additional days in home quarantine before our local Covid test results proved negative.  Believe me, eleven days locked in a third class hotel room is just one step above jail.

Welcome to the Philippines.

To be fair, one can quarantine at the Hilton.  And there is even a Peninsula.  We just did not have the budget for that.

Baobaoan is my wife, Mira's, hometown.  It is a small village (barangay) of, I'd guess, around 1,500 people, northeast of Butuan City.  Surrounded by rice paddies, it is a provincial farming community, three kilometers off the main highway.

Mira's family had fixed up a small house right next door to one of her five sisters.  Fresh paint, new water pump, and most importantly, a new air conditioner.  It was pretty amazing:  We settled in with no issues.  Though with home quarantine and all, Mira's sister pretty much had to feed us for a week.

Robert & Neng

She still feeds us regularly.  Her name is Maria Theresa Seno Avilla.  Sobriquet:  NeNeng, but most often just Neng.  She and her family run the barangay's only carinderia, a small food stall.  It is really the only place to get prepared food in the whole village.  Needless to say, it is a busy place.

Her husband Robert does something with the farmers – He's a bit like an agricultural extension agent.  He also serves on the barangay council.  Given their roles in the village, Robert & Neng are pillars of the community, and as such, have really helped us settle into life here.

Junjun

Angelo Auman Seno, Jr. is one of Mira's four brothers.  He and his wife, Mae, and their four children split their time between Manila where she works, and Baobaoan, and nearby Magallanes where her family is from.  Junjun is really the entrepreneur of the family with a duck egg business, a coconut oil processing business, and a new recycling venture.  Duck eggs, or balut, are a popular Philippine delicacy.

Junjun's day job is working as assistant to Congressman Lawrence Fortun, who represents the First District of Agusan del Norte, and is currently running for vice mayor of Butuan City.

Wendy

Mira has another sister, Wendy.  She and her husband own one of the local rice farms, and she runs a small sari-sari store in front of our house.  The literal translation of sari-sari is assorted, sundry, or diverse.  But the best way I can describe a sari-sari store is as a Philippine convenience store.  They sell snacks and soft drinks, beer, and staples like flour and sugar.  Wendy is there everyday from 5:30 am till well after dark.  The problem is that every third house seems to have a sari-sari store up front.  I'm not sure how they all stay in business.  Wendy's store benefits by being on the main street and right next to Neng's carinderia.

In a community with only a few automobiles, and the nearest market about five miles away, the sari-sari stores provide a vital service.

Andrew

Andrew is Mira's nephew, the son of her eldest sister, Angelita.  He's young (21) and smart and ambitious, and always ready to take a walk with me.  This gives him an opportunity to practice his English.

Now what you need to understand is that the Philippine people are among the least judgmental that I have ever met.  But there is one area where Filipinos do tend to judge each other harshly:  Command of the English language.  So Andrew wants to practice his English, not only to help him in the job market, but also so that other Filipinos will respect his language skills.  It's a real thing here.

This is such an issue in the Philippines that I have found that people with moderate to even very good fluency will not attempt to speak English for fear that others will look down on them.  As an American this is very frustrating because almost everyone here can communicate in English – They are just too embarrassed to do so.  They never seem to understand that their English is always better than my non-existent Bisayan, and as a typical monolingual American, I can only judge them positively.

Hanna

Hanna is Wendy's oldest daughter and has just received a degree in math education from Caraga State University.  CSU is about five miles south of here and has a well-regarded College of Education.  She'll probably get a position teaching high school math.  The problem is she looks like a high schooler, herself.  But she's smart, tech-savvy, and she and her contemporaries represent the future of the Philippines.  She'll go far.

JR

JR is a family friend.  He works for the local egg cooperative surveying chickens.  Now, I have no idea what surveying chickens entails, but I presume that it has something to do with estimating egg supply.  He is married to a quiet, reserved young woman, who also happens to be one of the most beautiful women in Baobaoan.  They have a toddler named Harrison – Harrison, after Harrison Ford, JR's favorite actor.  Unlike many folks, JR is always happy to talk with me in English, and here, let me thank him for it.

Odette

On Thursday, December 16th, Typhoon Odette slammed into the Philippines.  JR evacuated his young family to the next barangay about three kilometers away, on the main highway.  They spent the night in the barangay hall.  This was extremely smart, because the rest of us endured a night of flooding not seen in this area in more than a generation.  In fact, Odette hit the Philippines as a Category Five hurricane.

Now, living all my life in eastern North Carolina, I've endured my share of hurricanes.  But I have never personally dealt with flooding.  We were told to expect, and prepared for, six to eight inches of water.  We got 18 to 24 inches.  That's in our house.  Some had a bit less, some had quite a bit more.  We had elevated our refrigerator about eight inches when we bought it.  When the water came, we realized that was not enough.  So we rounded up some help and raised it to about twelve inches.  A few short hours later, we rounded up yet more help and put the thing on the kitchen table, which luckily is sturdy enough to hold it.

Then we evacuated ourselves next door, to Neng and Robert's one second floor room, their oldest son, Kim's bedroom, where we spent the night.

Now about 6:30 that evening, when the water was really at its peak, Neng appears with a wash basin as an umbrella, and announces that she is going to cook dinner.  With her kitchen flooded the same as ours, she went around the corner to her parents, my in-laws.  You see, they had only about fifteen inches of water in their kitchen.  I have no idea how she did it, but about an hour later, we were eating hot rice and fresh, crispy spring rolls (lumpia).  And she fed the whole family – easily more than twenty people.  It was worth traveling halfway around the world just to meet this resourceful woman of quiet competence and genuine fortitude.

And that seems like the perfect place to end this first installment.  I hope to bring you more tales from Baobaoan soon.

At one time, the United States was teeming with grit.  That is, people with grit.  Yet, today's average college graduate looks down on people with dirty fingernails.  Yeah, they don't even know what the word means.  You'll not find it in Cambridge or Stanford or Chapel Hill.  They don't know what the word means, and they surely do not aspire to it.

I am sure that there are any number of places in the world today where you can find true grit.  But if you are looking, you could do a lot worse than the Philippines.

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Tuesday was a Victory?

The conservative pundits have spoken:  Tuesday was a huge victory for Republican candidates and conservative ideas.  And if we define victory by winning, I guess that is true.

But I do not.

Let's start with the concept of winning itself.  Winning is fifty percent plus one vote.  That means you win.  But if you win with, say, fifty-one percent of the vote, it simply means that you lost with half of the voters.  I no longer blame the candidates for this failure – I'll come back to this below.  But come on, it's a pretty thin victory to start with.  Stop pretending this was some "big win."

Okay, you won.  But could we just for a moment look at what you lost.  Let's take the Virginia governor's race.  Due to the sheer insanity and intransigence of local school boards, and the recent (independent) press surrounding this, the race was largely about education.

I am not here to break it down for the reader; plenty of places for that.  But before you claim victory, surely we must acknowledge that half the state voted for the status quo.  Half.  And what they really want is more.  They voted for masking and lockdowns and vaccine mandates and CRT.  And for boys in skirts raping girls in girls' bathrooms.  And for the inevitable government coverup.  And for secret Gender Support Plans.  That is, secret from parents.  And, and, and...in general, for a completely out-of-control and increasingly authoritarian government.

Is it really a victory if half our electorate actively support this?

In Minneapolis, forty-four percent voted to shut down the police department.  That is forty-four percent of actual voters.  If we were to add in the citizens who could not be bothered to vote, and certainly those ineligible to vote, I think we can be sure that the popularity of closing the police department is over fifty percent.

So let me ask you:  Do you want to live in a neighborhood where half your neighbors don't support the idea of a police force?

Victory huh?

Look, I don't blame Terry McAuliffe for being Terry McAuliffe, any more than I blame Joe Biden for being Joe Biden.  No matter what you think of these guys, they are who they are.  And in the internet age, it's pretty easy for anyone to see who they are.  It is not McAuliffe's fault.  No, if you vote for McAuliffe, it's your own fault.

The fault lies with the voters.  Our neighbors.  Our friends and colleagues.  Our family members.  Certainly our friends and family who work for some level of government.

And our teachers.  I would be willing to bet that the largest single block of voters this week in Virginia were teachers.

These are the people at fault.

Teachers are doubly at fault because, for more than a generation now, they have failed their students.  I would argue largely on purpose.  If you want an electorate to support government overreach, you have to patiently dumb down the citizenry over several generations.  This is not a conspiracy; a conspiracy is simply not required.  This is rather what all true leftists want.  And who has been training our teachers for generations now?

This has become so ingrained that current teachers do not even realize what they are doing.  Why?  Because this started before they were even in school themselves.  Our teachers have no idea how completely stupid, er...ill-educated, they are.  They're teachers after all.  Yet, they cannot teach kids to think if they themselves never learned to think.  And you cannot teach what you do not know.  Yet, they are so completely full of themselves.  If you doubt me on this, I urge you to have a chat with one.

So you won on Tuesday.  Congratulations.

Meanwhile, the country is lost...

If you expect to maintain a democracy, you must first maintain a certain education level of your citizenry.  Democracies do not work with the completely ignorant.  If your average citizen does not understand the difference between a man and a woman, how long before the democracy collapses?

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The End of "Gradually"

The Sun Also Sets

Today, I saw a comment from Glenn Reynolds that he posted on his blog:  Nothing that’s happened with this pandemic has made me want the government to play a bigger role in health care.

Amen.  But I thought to myself:  Nothing that government does makes me want the government to play a bigger role in anything.

At one point, I would have questioned this:  But what about roads and bridges and airports and the military, etc?  But those days are gone now.  What with high-speed rail to nowhere, and a swampy and completely politicized military?  Today, government has lost the ability to even address basic and practical needs.

Ronald Reagan said that:  Government is not the solution to the problem; government is the problem.  Good sound bite.  But then he made a deal with Tip O'Neill to drastically lower tax rates.  Great, but what did O'Neill get in return?  Well, the two of them proceeded to grow government by some seventy percent while Reagan was in office.  Seventy percent.

Personally, I think O'Neill got the better end of the deal.  Any fool can look at the Laffer Curve and see what happens to government revenue when you lower the tax rate.  Politically he could never admit it, but O'Neill was no fool.  And so he made the deal with Reagan knowing that government revenue was about to explode.

Even if you want to make the argument that O'Neill was too lefty to appreciate or even acknowledge the Laffer Curve, he and his constituencies were definitely the beneficiaries of it.

And so, even during the "most conservative" administration of our lifetime, we got vastly more government.  But what did we taxpayers, er...citizens get?

So again, let's ask:  Is there anything that government does that we want more of?

And evidently, for more than half of us, the answer is yes.

Let's start with the biggest part of this constituency:  Government employees.  If you work for government, you want more government.  It is job security and a bigger fiefdom for you.  The same it true for health care workers and teachers and academics.  What's that you say?  Your university (or hospital or school) is private?  Well, where is the money coming from?

Another large yes constituency is big business.  At one time a fairly conservative lot, today big business is in bed with big government.  Hey, a large government with lots of regulations keeps the upstarts at bay and the profits flowing.  The reason big business is in bed with big government is because big government is good for big business.  So today, we have both the union hall and the boardroom voting for more government.

We can slice the American voting public in any number of different ways:  The black vote, the Jewish vote, feminists, Hollywood, lawyers, etc.  But most of these segments also want more government.

In fact, aside from the ever-shrinking Christian fundamentalist vote, I can only think of one group of people who do not want more government.  And no, it is not white males, many of whom are in the above groups anyway.  No, the one group that I can see that wants less government is small business and entrepreneurs.  Please note how this group crosses all racial and orientation lines – All of them.

And here I don't mean well-funded Silicon Valley types who left research fellowships at Stanford to start yet another California Goggle-wannabe.  All those people want more government.

No, I mean bootstrap entrepreneurs, in Atlanta and Cleveland.  And I mean small and family businesses across the country.

I could write a whole post on them.  But here's the point of this post:  There are just not enough of them.  We've lost.  And because we've lost, the yes to more government crowd has won.

And so that is what we will get.  More government.  Note this applies to whichever party is in power.  If Reagan did not stop it, did you really think that the Bushes would?  Or Trump?  The next Republican administration?  Don't count on it.

And more government means more incompetence and more incoherence and the end results of these vacuous attributes.  Incompetence reigns supreme.  Reynolds is absolutely correct.  Just look at the complete incompetence our wannabe tyrants have brought to the pandemic response.  Expect more of this.

In The Sun Also Rises, there is a famous line, Hemingway's response to the question:  How did you go bankrupt?  Hemingway's answer:  Gradually, then suddenly.

Perfect answer.  But surely this applies to countries as well – Just think about how the Soviet empire declined slowly for decades and then fell quickly.  So here is my question for you:  Where are we in this long, sad process?  Personally, I think we are at the very end of gradually.

Suddenly starts any day now.

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A Certain Type of Power

Let's talk about power for a few minutes.  Now of course there are all kinds of power.  But here, I want to focus on a specific kind.  Let's use an example.

I tell a lie.  I know it is a lie.  But perhaps it furthers my agenda.  Or maybe my agenda is power itself.  Either way, it is a lie and I know it.

You hear my lie, and you too know it is a lie.  Perhaps it is a subtle lie, but you see through it.  Or maybe the lie is quite ridiculous and obvious.

But in any case, we both know it is a lie.  Yet there is nothing you can do about it.  If you try to refute it, you will be gagged.

Note, this gagging need not be physical – I no longer have to disappear you in the middle of the night.  In fact, with a compliant media and big tech, I may not have to do anything at all.  Pinochet would have loved the police state quality of social media.

Now there is, I suppose, some power here.  I have lied and gotten away with it, and there is nothing you can do about it.  That's power, right?

But it is not enough.

No, what I really want is for you to not only hear the lie, but be compelled to repeat it yourself.  Not because you have come to believe it.  But rather as a demonstration of my complete and sovereign power over you.

So like it or not, you parrot my lie.

The Soviets were good at these power games.  But the true masters have proven to be the North Koreans.  Just look at how ordinary people publicly wept (often seemingly uncontrollably) at the death of their dear leader.  He did so much for us; I am just devastated by our loss.  It is a lie and everyone, in and out of the country, knows it is a lie.  But it is a lie everyone dutifully repeats.

Well maybe not everyone knows it's a lie.  Because after a while, some people, a good number of people, lose the ability to discern what's true from what is not true.  That is to say, they lose the ability to think for themselves.  Thinking requires effort and practice, a churning of the little gray cells, and many people would rather not put forth the effort.  Thinking is hard.  I find that even otherwise very hardworking people are susceptible to intellectual laziness.  This is why listening to loud music and watching sports are so popular; there's no thinking involved.  It also explains today's prominence of a partisan news media – Don't tax yourself, CNN will tell you what to think.

So in America, the lie might originate with the government.  Or just as likely, and just as troubling, it might originate with some other supposedly elite source.  The media or academia.  But it makes no difference because they all serve the same god.  And these three groups, government, media, and the academy, along with their courtiers in big tech, often serve their god by independently confirming what the others say.  Or censoring or disparaging any differing view.

It matters not how it is done.  The real problem is so many people are quite receptive to being told what to think.  And fully prepared to repeat it as a signal of their virtue, but also as a signal of their allegiance.  They may have never thought about it, but what difference does that make?  Besides, they confuse indoctrination with independent thought.  Actually, they lose the ability to distinguish between the two.  Indoctrination is their thought process.  So you see, they have thought about it.  And through their thought process, they have discovered the truth.  And obviously, you are intellectually inferior because you have not recognized the truth.  Clearly, you are not a thinker.  This is why, so often, they ooze condescension.  The irony here is completely lost on them.

How should we describe the power wielded over these people?  Power over the unthinking.  It is truly god-like.  The adherents accept indoctrination as articles of faith.  Their thinking is a form of religious fervor and submission.  They prostrate themselves to their gods.  The gods of power.

Let's look at some uniquely American examples:

We call that one individual they or even something completely unrecognizable to the English language.

We pretend that men can be women and women can be men.

Even professors of medicine are parroting:  Men can get pregnant.

We allow men in women's dressing rooms; we allow men to compete in women's sports; where we also allow men to beat up women.  Believe you me, Celine Provost knows all about this type of power.

Here's a question:  Why don't we see women, so-called trans-men, insisting on competing in men's sports?  It's just part of the lie we all tell.

We talk about inequality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunity and content of character.

We parrot:  Insistence on punctuality and proper grammar and test scores are evidence of oppression. 

We tell ourselves that there is nothing particularly special about Western Civilization.  And other cultures are equal or even superior to it. 

We replace the Western canon and classical music with inferior alternatives.  We dispense with blind auditions in favor of so-called diversity.  We tell ourselves that excellence will not suffer.

The whole discussion around voter ID is a lie, and everyone knows it.  Well everyone except for those who do not or cannot or can no longer think for themselves.

We wear masks even though we know the absurdity of it.

And the worst of us force very young children to wear masks.  I cannot decide if these people are power-hungry or obsequious to power.  Either way, their intentions are NOT good.

We get our vaccine and dutifully present our vaccination card to the restaurant hostess.  We publicly condemn those who do not.  We are not ashamed of this; it is a religious truth, an article of faith.

Oh, and Hunter Biden's laptop and the included emails?  Clearly a Russian disinformation campaign.

The North Koreans and the Chinese must look on in amazement.

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Invitation to Anger

A friend sends me a Horace Walpole quote:  No country was ever saved by good men because good men will not go to the length that may be necessary.

I like that, but my first thought was of Winston Churchill, who I regard as the savior of the Twentieth Century and for all his faults, a good man.  So, I proposed instead:  The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.  And I added:  We have to say Enough!

His response:  I’m not sure there are enough of us left to say enough.  I can vote, assuming it counts.  I can speak up, but will be cancelled.  I’m not sure how to stand up effectively.  I know there are a lot who would like to, but how do we do that within the system.  How do we do that and remain ‘good men’?

I was considering our exchange when I came across this piece from Abigail Shrier:

Last week, I spoke with [a] mother who discovered her 12-year-old daughter’s middle school had changed the girl’s name and gender identity at school.  The Gender Support Plan the district followed is an increasingly standard document which informs teachers of a child’s new chosen name and gender identity (trans, agender, non-binary, etc.) for all internal communications with the child.  The school also provided the girl a year’s worth of counseling in support of her new identity, which in her case was no gender.  Even the P.E. teachers were in on it.  Left in the dark were her parents.

This duplicity is part of the plan:  All documents sent home to mom and dad scrupulously maintained the daughter’s birth name and sex.  But Mom noticed her daughter seemed to be suffering.  Although far from alone in declaring a new identity – many girls in the school had adopted new names and gender pronouns – this girl’s grades fell apart.  She became taciturn and moody.

When the mother failed to uncover the source of the girl’s distress, she met with teachers, hoping for insight.  Instead, she slammed into a Wall of Silence:  No teacher was evidently willing to let a worried mom know what the hell was going on.  (Finally, one did.)

Now I don't know about you, but this made me angry.  The fact that they could and do keep this secret from the parents represents a callous disregard for parents and a level of unaccountability rarely found in our society.  Teachers – They don't work for you and they couldn't care less what you think.  And it's not as if they are truly putting the child's welfare first.  No, their priority is their own misguided sense of woke virtue signaling.  Above ALL else, they want to feel good about themselves.

This need alone makes them unfit for the classroom.  Gender Support Plan?  These kids are often not even reading at grade level.  Forget about math.  As a class, teachers are the absolute worst people in our society.

Must we become Walpole's implied "necessary bad men" to fix this?  Obviously, it is not enough to shout Enough!  Today this is an unfortunate reality.  No, we must get angry.

This morning, I read about a school board having citizens removed from their meeting if a citizen had the audacity to criticize them.  I thought, well if five hundred angry citizens showed up, they could not remove all of us.

Shouting Enough! is not enough.  We have to get angry:

I don't care what you call yourself, you narcissistic nitwit, but I'll address you as either he or she, and it is my choice which.  I do not care what you think.

And if you have a penis, you'll not disrobe with our daughters.  We'll arrest you for indecent exposure and place you on the sex offender registry. 

Show me a pregnant man, and I'll show you a person with an XX twenty-third chromosome.

In women's MMA, if you have an XY twenty-third chromosome, you are not a champion, you are a shameful woman-beater.  Go brag about it to your grandmother.  I dare you.

Sure, we can explore inequality of outcomes, but we will not start with the premise that all white people are racists.  We will not stand for that.  If we must discuss it, let's start with cultural factors.

If you bring your woke nonsense into my company workspace, I will fire you.

We don't want the unknown and unknowable flooding across our southern border and bused all around the country.  A nation without borders is simply not a nation.

If you need an ID to buy cigarettes and alcohol, there is nothing wrong (or limiting) about needing an ID to vote.  And honestly, if you are too stupid to secure an ID, you probably should not be drinking anyway.  Or voting.

If you are a convicted felon or a non-citizen, you do not vote.  There is no constitutional right to vote anyway.  And if it were up to me, we'd raise the voting age to 25.

We don't want our cities torched and we do want our police to maintain order.  If necessary, revoke city charters and compel state takeovers.  Send in the national guard, arrest the rioters; audit city hall, jail the grifters.

If the mayor of Chicago can move though the city with half a dozen firearms, I can move around with just one.  Disarming a law-abiding citizen should be a federal crime.

We will not tolerate antisemitism.  We'll deal with you as we once dealt with the fascist national socialists that you so obviously admire.

If your vaccine works, you need not worry about others.  If it does not work, there's no point in forcing it upon others.  You odious virtue signaling petty tyrant. 

Finally, it's time to put cameras and microphones in all K-12 classrooms.  It would be easy enough to limit access to current parents.  Montessori schools have been allowing parent classroom viewing (without informing the teachers) for years now.  Let's remember, public school teachers are public servants, not the minor deities they believe themselves to be.

Now you disgusting dishonest power-hungry maniacs, just leave me alone before I really get angry.

The problem of course is that half the country supports this nonsense, directly or indirectly.  We can get angry and confront them.  With dialogue, which they completely ignore and refuse and censor, or with violence, which if we are not careful is where this is headed.

Or, as I have argued before, we can separate ourselves from them.  If they want to live this way, I suggest we let them.  But let's not be a part of it.  If you are in California or New York or Chicago or Minneapolis, get out.  Leave them to the dystopia that they so strongly desire.  Withdraw your support and your tax money and even your mere presence.

Just yesterday, the people of California overwhelmingly suggested that they like the way things are there.  You think that will change anytime soon?  No, California voters want it this way.  Evidently, they prefer to step over used syringes to get to the ballot box.  Let's leave them to it.  There's no other practical option anyway.

So get angry.  And use your anger – To flee.

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On Being An American Expat in 2021

Should I still consider myself an American?

I have given up on our government.  In fact, I have no faith in any level of American government – Populated as it is with lefty politicians and a complete left-wing bureaucracy.

I have given up on our elites – Corporate, academic, journalists and other media players, military brass, the legal system, etc.  This is the outcome of fifty years of subpar and subversive education.

I have given up on half our fellow citizens (voters).  Ultimately, these are the people responsible for our mess.  I can no longer believe in respectful disagreement.  In the past, I believed that we all wanted the same things, but disagreed on how to get there.  Now, I no longer believe we want the same things.

And all three of the above groups allow no room for debate anyway.  Why attempt to engage with anyone who does not wish to engage with you.  And in fact, wishes you dead.  Overstatement?  Okay fine...silenced.

Are there aspects of being American that I still value?  Sure, the place.  That is the geography and landscape.  The founding ideas and our founding documents.  The idea of the melting pot.  The lost ideals of individualism and self-reliance.  But these are all passé according to the tenets of the current bien-pensants.

I just cannot be part of it anymore.  For me, the stench of the Left's value system has become intolerable.  Yet, their values have become pervasive.  The stench permeates every nook and cranny of our society.  For me, their heavy-handed response to Covid was the last straw.

So I had to leave.  My wife and I have moved to her country, the Philippines.  I would never say that the Philippines is a better place to live than the US.  It has its own set of problems.  But unlike the US, they are not my problems.  I do not feel compelled to address them.

I do not know how long I will be away from the United States.  Perhaps indefinitely.  But I have given some thought to what it would take for me to return.  One or more red state governors will have to say no.  No, my state is not going to do that.  And if you cut off funds, we will cut off federal tax revenue.  And if you want to enforce it, we will arrest your agents for violation of state law.  And we will not allow our national guard to be nationalized.

What everyone seems to forget these days is that as large as the US federal government is, it largely depends on states to enforce its nonsense.  Stop!  If actually pressed, I think you'd be surprised at how impotent the federal government is, at least domestically.

And red state governors would also have to root out the lefty enablers within their own governments – Because even those governments are full of them.  Start with the universities.  If necessary, cut their funding entirely.  Ask yourselves:  What purpose do they serve?  Move on to K-12 education; fund students not teachers.

I feel sure that it is going to take this level of resistance, perhaps even more, for the US to begin to again feel like the US.  To feel more like the US than Europe or even China.  It may take war.  So be it.  Texas cattle ranchers versus New York and California educrats unsure of proper pronoun usage?  Versus the whole Chicago and Albany grifter establishment.

And if I am wrong?  Either about what is required or the will to get it done?  Well, the American experiment is over.  And the Philippines is a pleasant enough place to live.

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It's a Disgrace and You Should All Be Ashamed

Three minutes of common sense

Matt Walsh at his best.

When did mere common sense become so very radical?  And when do we ask ourselves:  Can I continue to be associated with these people?  I mean at any level.  As friends?  Colleagues?  Neighbors?  Family?  Really, any level:  Fellow citizens?

I don't know.  But I think we should all give it some thought.

I cannot even recognize people who want to mask children as...cognitively equivalent to schizophrenics.  Many are simply unthinking hysterics.  They may not be monsters (though some are), but clearly they should not be fully functioning members of society, much less running the place.

As for Walsh's closing comment, I assure you, they are not ashamed.  Just the opposite:  They are filled with self-righteousness.  They know better than you.  And you can be assured, they are better people than you.

I would simply note in passing that these are the least educated people in the history of western civilization.  They know absolutely nothing – because they were never taught anything.  They certainly never learned even rudimentary thinking skills.  And yes, that is a learned skill set.

Yet along with the lack of education and thinking skills, we find high levels of self-confidence and self-assurance in their beliefs.  They know they are right and are the smartest people to ever live.  How do they know this?  Well, they have been told this all of their lives...why would they doubt it?  They lack the humility to ponder and question.  The humility of wonder.

So we should not attempt to have a rational debate with these people.  They are not interested anyway.  As I see it, our only reasonable course is to separate ourselves from them.  Physically, intellectually, and certainly politically.  What that might look like, I have no idea.  I only know that it is becoming increasingly necessary.

Well maybe, I do have some ideas.  If you are in Chicago or Minneapolis or Seattle, I urge you to flee.  Yes, that is the correct term.  If your kids are in one of these crazy (and academically deficient) school systems, public or private, I urge you to move them.  If your boss and co-workers have gone woke, I urge you to quit – like her.  Go compete with them; they're not minding the store anyway.  And we all have choices about where to spend our money and who to do business with.

Ask yourself these questions:  Am I associating with people who share my values?  If not, is that okay?  Because sometimes it is.  But when does the chasm become so deep that something must be done about it?  When does the stench of their value system become intolerable?  And finally, can you tolerate the end results of their values?

Masked children, forced vaccinations, unnecessary lockdowns driven by wannabe tyrants, men in women's sports and in women's restrooms (with little girls...your little girls).  Censorship, blatant racism, rising antisemitism, and open borders.  Intersectional hierarchy.  A world divided into the oppressors and the oppressed; the guilty and their victims.  So-called educators more concerned with speculative ideas of gender fluidity and Critical Race Theory rather than, well, actual education.  Besides, correct math answers, proper grammar, and punctuality are evidence of oppression.  Burning cities, defunded police, increased crime and violence.  Real violence, not the silent kind.  Trump voters labeled as terrorists, and terrorists labeled as immigrants.  The personal agency denied black adults regarding voter IDs, and the spurious agency ascribed to ten-year-olds curious about their sexuality.  Sometimes without the knowledge of the parents.  If a child cannot consent to sex, how on earth can they consent to the start of a sex change?

And these are just some of the domestic social policy issues.  Add fiscal and foreign policies to this list and it's infinitely worse.  Runaway federal spending, inflation.  China policy?  Afghanistan exit plan?  Jesus.  Not to mention the unmerited elitism, smug self-righteousness, and sneering condescension that comes along with all of it.

The stench of it all is overwhelming and getting worse.

Understand, these are not good people with a different point-of-view.  I wish they were.  No, they are patently immoral power-seekers and their useful idiots.  They certainly view us as immoral.  Here I am reminded of the Charles Krauthammer truism:  The Right views the Left as stupid; but the Left views the Right as evil.  Well they are not merely stupid; they are evil.  Their goal is an undeserving elite caste ruling over compliant masses, and enriching themselves in the process.  It took me a long time to come to this understanding – Because it runs counter to everything we have been taught about America.  But look for yourself.  And ask yourself:  What is it they actually want?  Do you really think they actually care about what pronouns we use?  No, I think you will find only one answer:  Power.

Some of us can and will avail ourselves of these options easier than others.  That's okay; we all do what we can.  Recognizing the problem and coming to understand that something must be done, that is the first step.

But sooner or later, you will have to do something.

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Greenwald Breaks Free

System Update Moves to Rumble  

 

I mean, really, how long before Google takes down this website?  Blogger (Blogspot) is a Google platform.  They already shadow ban much of this site from Google search results.  So we all must find and support new platforms.  I don't like the fact that Rumble charges monthly fees – If you want to take on YouTube, you must provide an equally accessible alternative with comparable pricing.  Nevertheless, we must not allow Google's censorship to remain unchecked.

Here, Glenn Greenwald does an amazing job of taking apart The Washington Post and their perfidious reporting.  Watch to the end; it's worth every minute.  The Post tagline is:  Democracy Dies in Darkness.  Of course it should be:  We'll Keep You in the Dark.  Or maybe:  Orwellian Totalitarianism Requires Darkness.

Greenwald shines a light on the whole enterprise.

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You Will Comply

Why the vaccine push?

Here's a question for you little totalitarians:  If you are fully vaccinated against Covid, why do you care about the vaccination status of anyone else?

Answer:  You don't.

So why the push, the increasingly hard push, to insist and mandate that everyone get vaccinated?  To argue that this has anything to do with health is disingenuous in the extreme.  No, you are pushing this because you cannot stand the fact that a group of people have a different perspective.  And you want to punish and humiliate them for it.

You have no interest in making a rational argument to convince people that your position is correct.  Rather, you want everyone to bow to your superiority and follow your dictates in spite of their own beliefs:  You may not want to get the vaccine, but you will because I say so.  That is a demonstration of real power; North Korean-like power.  You must be so proud of yourselves.  And you are – smugly proud of your self-righteousness and your ability to inflict your will upon the disbelievers, the heretics, and the dissidents.

It is the same with mask wearing.  But this is so much worse because you are actually injecting foreign, untested substances into people.  With ever-increasing levels of force and coercion.  This is an unprecedented level of power in our society and in the American experience.  We have all heard the expression drunk with power.  But I don't think this is adequate.  It certainly does not capture the sheer glee and schadenfreude on the Left.  No, no, what we have here is masturbatory power writ large.

One straw argument seems to be – let me see if I can capture the logic – that the vaccines are not one hundred percent effective and therefore, the virus can still be transmitted even from or to the fully vaccinated.  Well okay, so there's no harm if I wait for more testing, or God-forbid, just FDA approval.

No, this is not about health, this is about simple compliance.  Even obedience.

You will comply.  Or you will be made to comply.

I have noticed that for the first time in my life, I have started using the word "evil."  And I do not use it sarcastically or flippantly.  This is evil.  And if you support it, you are evil.

You are evil.

I'll tell you something else I am going to do for the first time in my life.  I am going to buy a gun.

I am not worried about Covid.  But I am scared to death of you.

Update, 9 August 2021

The thinking of those on the Left is really difficult to understand.  At least for me.  But here, I think Glenn Reynolds comes pretty close:

Many people simultaneously need to feel that (1) they’re morally and intellectually superior; and (2) that they play an important role in the world.  Mask- and vaccine-shaming allow them to do so easily and with no sacrifice.  The price, of course, is making the world at large a nastier and worse place, while not at all advancing — and probably even setting back — the cause they’re allegedly in favor of.  But it’s not about making the world a better place, it’s about feeling good about themselves.

Update, 10 August 2021

Ben Shapiro doing his thing.

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Why Bother?

What's the point of talking to the other side?

Over the last decade, it has become increasingly clear to me that the divide between the Left and the Right is irreconcilable.  For a long time, it was arguable that sports could be our one, last shared experience.  But today, just look at how the two sides view sports.  It is like we are not watching the same spectacle.  We certainly view the purpose differently.  Even in this last arena, where we once were united, now as in all else, we are divided.

Sports joins a long list:

We do not view the same television or movies.

Or any of the same media.

We do not read the same books.

We do not read the same journalism.

We cannot agree on our history.

We do not eat the same food or in the same restaurants.

We do not shop in the same stores.

Increasingly, we do not share the same language.

We do not even share the same weather.

Today it is so bad, that we can each observe a situation or event, and yet we cannot even agree on the facts of what we have just witnessed.  We cannot agree on what is a man and what is a woman, and even whether or not these exist.

Some of us want equality of outcomes; some of us want equality of opportunity.  Some of us view racism as the defining feature of this country, past and present.  Obviously, they have not traveled much.  Others know that the United States leads the world in race relations.  The difference here is vast and insurmountable.

Some of us believe that silence is violence and that actual violence is free speech.  And some of us believe that silence is silence and violence is violence.  And the best cure for bad ideas and bad speech, is more speech and differing perspectives.  But the cultural revolutionaries insist that you parrot their every thought.  Aloud.  Or else.

And beyond these real differences, we look down on the choices, observations, and opinions, of the other side.  We do not share the same moral outlook.  We do not share the same values.  And let's face it, we question the morality of the other side.

I know this is true for me.  Take Covid for instance.  I view the way the Left has dealt with this "crisis" as immoral.  At the same time, I refuse to use made-up pronouns.  And of course, they view this as immoral.  Even violent.

I view my wealthy, very left-of-center former friends as immoral.  As they preach their lefty doctrine from their million-dollar homes.  Oh, and look down their noses at average, hard-working, very middle class, right-of-center types.  You know, the guy working in the heat to keep their air conditioner running.

I am not wild about the religious right, and all their similar moralizing.  They can be very cruel to people with a different conception of God.  And certainly to people with no god.  But they hold so little power and influence; their judgements matter little in our world.

I see no point in engaging in any discussion with the Left.  Individually or as a group.  If we cannot agree on basic facts, there is no longer a point of origin.  We can no longer hash things out in the public square, nor in the marketplace of ideas.  We go on our respective television networks and preach to our own choirs.  Engagement with the other side is not part of the equation.  Yes, this is bad, but evidently, in 2021, this is the way we, all of us, want it.

And if you do try to engage, say on an individual level, with your friends or family or colleagues, I think you will find that their starting point is so foreign, that you do not even recognize it.

Dinner conversations that at one time were interesting discussions of current affairs, now revolve, exclusively, around children and their antics (but not their academics, which of course have become politicized).  Although, if we are feeling a bit reckless, we may venture into lawn care.  Just avoid discussing fertilizer choices or your new gas-powered lawnmower.

But let's face it, we no longer have "mixed" dinner parties.  No, not any of the out-of-date definitions of "mixed."  Thankfully, we have put that nonsense behind us.  Although, this too, is a point of contention.  No I mean "mixed" as in ideologically diverse.  Politically diverse.  Can't be done today.

Today's dinner party is an echo chamber.

We are all worse off for it.  But the worst is yet to come.

There will be blood in the streets.

There already is.

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Pandemic Redefined

How should we define pandemic today?

pandemic (noun)

1.  Conventional

Let's go with Merriam-Webster:  

An outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area (such as multiple countries or continents) and typically affects a significant proportion of the population : a pandemic outbreak of a disease. 

Of course, this usage can also be an adjective.

New 2020 Definitions

2.  Crisis not to be wasted by pro-government types

Crisis which allows vast expansion of government and government-mandated regulation.

3.  Excuse used by public-sector employees

An excuse not to work:  Excuse to not do your job, and yet, still get paid.  Particularly for government and public-sector employees.  See teachers.

4.  Virtue signaling event

An ideal virtue signaling milieu for left-of-center types.  See zeitgeist.

5.  Mass hysteria

Exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion or excitement among a group of people.  Also see, zeitgeist.

In fact, I would argue that 2-5 have really come to define the zeitgeist of our time.  It is truly shameful.  Yet half of us are smugly proud of it and half of us have been and continue to be victimized by it.

Update  8 July 2021

Today I read that global Covid-related deaths have reached four million people.  Yeah, that's a lot of people.  But in a world with nearly eight billion people, the mortality rate of Covid hovers around:  0.0005.  That's one-twentieth of one percent.  And the alarmists...er, I mean the politicians and the so-called journalists, are happy to include comorbidities in their reporting.

I should think that the lunacy of shutting down the global economy is more than obvious.  You have to be willfully blind not to see it.  Or, have completely ulterior motives entirely.

In other words, if you are part of this nonsense, or if you merely support it, you are stupid or unthinking or just plain evil.

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American Psychosis

Let's see Paul Allen's card...

Well, virtue signaling is a psychosis.

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How to Solve Illegal Immigration: Tax Remittances

To address this problem seriously, jail employers and tax remittances

While everyone seems to agree that this is a problem, to my mind there is little or no national will to really address it.  So we can build border walls and otherwise attempt to police the inflow.  Or, we can look for smarter, more effective strategies.  When and if we ever decide to get serious about the problem, I have two proposals.

The first is easy:  Start jailing employers.  And make a lot of noise about it.  Keep it up until all employers of illegal immigrants constantly fear arrest.  I have zero sympathy for these people.  They all know exactly what they are doing, and often take advantage of the truly vulnerable immigrants.  I know employers who pay next to nothing and work the immigrants like slaves.  Maybe worse, I know an employer who has sex with all his immigrant female employees.  How can they say no?  And what does he care if they won't have sex with him, he simply won't hire them, and there's a line at the door.

That's easy enough if we have the will...and the decency.  My second proposal is a bit more complicated.

Most people believe that taxes are about raising revenue for government expenditure.  And they certainly can be.  But taxes can also be used to alter behavior.  For an example we are all familiar with:  If we tax cigarettes highly enough, many people will choose not to smoke, if for no other reason than they can no longer afford it.

I am not sure who said it, but I have always liked this line:  Remember, if you tax something, you will get less of it.  It may have been Milton Friedman, who had a genius for stating the obvious.

So let's first ask why people come to the United States today?  Do they come here for the same reason that people came through Ellis Island a century ago?  To build a new life and become Americans?  I am sure some do – But those folks mostly choose the legal immigration route.  Today most people coming to the United States illegally have other plans.  They come here, they work as long and as much as they can, then they go home.  That's the plan from the get go.  If you don't believe this is true, just strike up a conversation with any of them.

And while they are here, they send money home to their families.  This is the whole point – To send money home.

So I would like to propose a tax that will not raise any revenue.  Or not much anyway.  Believe me, I am not interested in giving the government more money from any source or from anyone.  Let me explain.

Proposal:  Tax remittances at 50%.

Let's use an example:

A person (US citizen, legal immigrant, illegal immigrant, anyone) walks into a Western Union, as typically found in most grocery and convenience stores, to send $1,000 overseas.  I don't care where, this would apply to all overseas countries.  Here's how it would work:  $500 would go overseas and $500 would go to the IRS.  Plus any transaction fee Western Union charges.

Now this $500 tax paid could be later used as a credit on income taxes.  So, the person gets it back in full.  And ultimately no tax is paid.

So why the rigamarole?  Well notice this:  In order to get the tax back, one does have to file income taxes.  So American citizens and legal immigrants end up not paying the Remittance Tax.  And rightfully so.  They've already paid income taxes on their money.  They can do whatever they like with it.

So who pays the Remittance Tax?  Anyone who does not file income taxes.  And who does not file income taxes?  Illegal immigrants.  Notice also:  The reason to set it up this way is so the clerks do not have to determine if the person is a taxpayer or not.  Everyone pays the Remittance Tax up front.  Makes it easy; I'm not trying to construct a mini-DMV here.

But of course, the illegals are not going to pay it either.  No one in his right mind would be willing to pay a 50% tax.  So remittances would stop.  But remember what  I said above, the whole reason they are here is to send money home.  If remittances are outrageously taxed, they are basically unavailable.  And if remittances are unavailable, there is no reason to be here.

Again, there would be no reason to be here.

Now is this a complete solution?  Certainly not.  I am a big believer in Thomas Sowell's injunction that there are no solutions, only tradeoffs.

People would still come here illegally; they would just look for other ways to get money home.  And the whole remittance process would be pushed underground.  Instead of going to the supermarket, illegal immigrants would find their way to the backroom of some shady convenience store, where some greasy guy and a couple of toughs would take his money, and for a fat fee, someone overseas would provide money to the family.  See Hawala.

Pricey.  And probably less than trustworthy.

So people would carry their own money and money for others.  No doubt, we'd see cash mules.  People would mail money.  I'm sure any number of ways would spring up to get money home.

So I am not suggesting that this proposal completely solves the problem.  But it does make it more inconvenient and more expensive to send money overseas (if you don't file income taxes).

Currently this much is certainly true:  No matter how easy or difficult it is for illegal immigrants to enter the US, sending money overseas is extremely easy and cheap for anyone.

It should not be.

Ultimately, a Remittance Tax would work like any other so-called sin tax.  If we tax remittances by illegal immigrants, we'll get less remittances by illegal immigrants.

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The Current State of Information Consumption

Today, everyone gathers their own collection of information sources.  We all choose where to get our information and what websites, writers, and other content-producers to follow and trust.  Someone should simply package this as an app with an attractive, user-friendly interface, and call it YourDaily or some such.  But it can't be like Apple News, with only Apple-approved sources.  It must be completely customizable by each user.

Note also that while I will sometimes continue to subscribe to journals like the ones listed, it is becoming much less important to do so.  For me, there must be multiple writers, that I want to read, at any one source for me to subscribe.  Why should I subscribe to The New York Times when I only want to read Bari Weiss.  Luckily, she recently solved that issue for me.

While this has been coming for some time, what we are witnessing in 2021 is the disintegration and fragmentation of the opinion journalism business.  If I want to read Bari Weiss, I no longer have to subscribe to The Times; if I want to read Glenn Greenwald, I no longer have to subscribe to The Intercept; if I want to read Andrew Sullivan, I no longer have to subscribe to The Atlantic.  I can subscribe to all of these writers directly.

This is a power shift away from publishers and editors to individual writers.  My thinking is that this will be healthy for the diversity of opinion available from high quality sources.  These writers, and others, no longer have to appease their bosses (or their newsrooms).  Sure, they are still answerable to their readers.  But they can each individually decide how that will affect their writing.

The internet continues to displace the gatekeepers.  And that is a good thing.  I certainly don't need the likes of Dean Baquet and A.G. Sulzberger and their ilk to tell me what to read.  Or importantly, what writers and opinions I must pay for.  I don't even need Apple to give me a list to choose from.  No, I'll make my own list, thank you very much.

Now for those of you who argue, but your information sources are not balanced, you are absolutely correct.  So I do tend to follow the opinion headlines at The Times daily.  For me, I'll read maybe one or two columns a week there – Or, until I hit my limit of free articles.  Because I refuse to pay for routine condescension and disdain.  I do the same with The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and several others.  Because yes, it is important to hear the other side.

On balance I would argue that I read more left-of-center material than your average, supposedly well-read, left-of-center bien-pensant reads right-of-center material.  Don't doubt me on this; just ask them.  They sneer at the idea.

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The Complete Hypocrisy of the Left

Every time I encounter some lefty-type preaching their sanctimonious drivel, I compliment them on some article of clothing they happen to be wearing.  They are always completely oblivious to the irony.

Better yet, tell them how much you like their Volvo.  Or their Subaru.  Or even their Prius.  They'll eat it up.

What?  You got a new Tesla?  It's lovely!

Yes comrades, you too, benefit from capitalism.  Otherwise, you'd be driving a Lada-like contraption with faulty brakes and dressing like a North Korean.

Now I'm sure the good folks at North Face are not socialists.  Rather, no doubt, they consider themselves to be responsible capitalists.  Right?  The problem is they are complete hypocrites.  As are almost all left-of-center types.

What?  You don't like three-dollar-a-gallon gasoline?  Well, you voted for it.

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The Religion of Government

Louis Rossmann's New York City Adventures Continue

"Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together."

Does anyone really believe this?  Sadly yes.  But I don't think for a minute that Barney Frank believed it when he said it.  And Obama did not believe it when he quoted it.  But I know there are millions of useful idiots who buy into the idea.  That's why Frank and Obama and others use the line.

I know what Obama and Frank know, but dare not admit:  Government is simply the name we give to those people in charge.  It is simple.  It's about power.

What I do not understand is why and how so many people can be deluded by this idea.  But people are stupid and maybe it is just as simple as that.

This is not an argument against government.  I am not an anarchist.  I want infrastructure and security and justice as much as anyone.  It is not a question of government existence, it is rather a question of government scope.  This is the philosophical question underneath all political questions.

And when we see how bad government can be, both here in the US and abroad, it just boggles the mind how anyone could want more of it.

In this video, we get an update on Louis Rossmann's New York City adventures.  This is a follow up to a post from last month.  Here's a question for the government faithful:  If government is what we choose to do together, who chose for government to act this way?

No one.  So we must admit that government is more than that absurdly naive idea.

Are some governments better than others?  Absolutely yes.  Some are more efficient, responsible, and responsive than others.  So is there any indicator as to whether a government is good or bad?  Let's say we remove cultural differences.  For example, some cultures are more accepting of corruption than others, and surely this has an effect on good government.

So rather, let's look at the different governments in one country.  Ours.  And ask the question again:  Is there any indicator as to whether a government is good or bad?

Here's a proposition for you:  The more government you have, the less responsible it tends to be.

It is worth remembering that everything government does – everything – is at the point of a gun.  But let's not blame government for doing what government does.  Government is what government is.  Rather it is time to blame the people who vote for more and more of it.  It is truly a religion, and these are among the most religious people I know.

And as with any religious conviction, there's no place for reason.

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