The Lowe-Down on Britain

Rupert Lowe asks:  Is the British government a criminal enterprise?

Lowe says that change can be driven through the ballot box.  Well as a politician, he would have to say that, right?  But as in California and Minnesota, I'm not at all sure that will work any more.

Lowe thinks that people will vote for things to get worse before they get better.  That is wishful thinking; I do not believe that people will do that.  Collapse is inevitable.

I mean in Britain you have an elite class and a government class who absolutely refuse to hold rapists accountable.  Mind you, over decades.  They minimize it, they dismiss it, they hide it.  And it doing so, they prove themselves worse than the actual rapists.  It is, in fact, criminal.

Can the government at large be guilty of accessory and/or obstruction?  Or aiding and abetting?  Because that is exactly what happened.  And Keir Starmer was the head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

And this is before we get to the vast crimes of the Covid "pandemic" response.  Weinstein wonders aloud if the mRNA "vaccines" were not designed to create immunity (which so clearly, they were not), but rather purposefully designed to create some future vulnerability.  To what, we cannot yet know.  But given the players involved, this clearly is a possibility.  This would certainly explain the unhinged enthusiasm for the jab from the powers that be.

Whether designed for immunity or future vulnerability, my question is, what other alternatives are there?

Well there is pure profit.  But to me, that does not adequately explain the multi-government fervor, both domestically and internationally.  And the punishments for noncompliance.  The governmental actions and supposed reactions were unexplained, dark, and sinister.  We may not know the tree, but we sure saw the fruit.  It was not merely profit-driven; just my opinion.

In any case, these same people are in charge of the election processes.  So my question is:  Have we reached the end of functional democracy?

I think we have.  These people must be dislodged and prosecuted.  Keir Starmer must be jailed.  Along with many thousands of his ilk.  And now, I hear that Andy Burnham will be even worse.

But how will this happen?

The answer is obvious.

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The Goals of Education

A teacher's final assignment

I think it is worth having a look at the actual text of the WHCD shooter's manifesto.  This guy sounds like any number of leftists that I have encountered over the last three decades.

And to be clear, at first this attitude could only be found on the fringes of leftist political thought.  But over this time period, I have watched this sort of thinking move closer and closer to mainstream left of center thought and argument.  Which of course meant that ever greater numbers of left of center types agreed with it.

Also, I am not sure what subject Allen taught, but let's hope it was not English or writing.  (More below)

Cole Allen’s manifesto in full:

Hello everybody!

So I may have given a lot of people a surprise today.  Let me start off by apologizing to everyone whose trust I abused.

I apologize to my parents for saying I had an interview without specifying it was for “Most Wanted.”

I apologize to my colleagues and students for saying I had a personal emergency (by the time anyone reads this, I probably most certainly DO need to go to the ER, but can hardly call that not a self-inflicted status.)

I apologize to all of the people I traveled next to, all the workers who handled my luggage, and all the other non-targeted people at the hotel who I put in danger simply by being near.

I apologize to everyone who was abused and/or murdered before this, to all those who suffered before I was able to attempt this, to all who may still suffer after, regardless of my success or failure.

I don’t expect forgiveness, but if I could have seen any other way to get this close, I would have taken it.  Again, my sincere apologies.

On to why I did any of this:

I am a citizen of the United States of America.

What my representatives do reflects on me.

And I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.

(Well, to be completely honest, I was no longer willing a long time ago, but this is the first real opportunity I’ve had to do something about it.)

While I’m discussing this, I’ll also go over my expected rules of engagement (probably in a terrible format, but I’m not military so too bad.)

Administration officials (not including Mr. Patel):  they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest

Secret Service:  they are targets only if necessary, and to be incapacitated non-lethally if possible (aka, I hope they’re wearing body armor because center mass with shotguns messes up people who aren’t

Hotel Security:  not targets if at all possible (aka unless they shoot at me)

Capitol Police:  same as Hotel Security

National Guard:  same as Hotel Security

Hotel Employees:  not targets at all

Guests:  not targets at all

In order to minimize casualties I will also be using buckshot rather than slugs (less penetration through walls)

I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary (on the basis that most people chose to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor, and are thus complicit) but I really hope it doesn’t come to that.

Rebuttals to objections:

Objection 1:  As a Christian, you should turn the other cheek.

Rebuttal:  Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed.  I’m not the person raped in a detention camp.  I’m not the fisherman executed without trial.  I’m not a schoolkid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration.

Turning the other cheek when someone else is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.

Objection 2:  This is not a convenient time for you to do this.

Rebuttal:  I need whoever thinks this way to take a couple minutes and realize that the world isn’t about them.  Do you think that when I see someone raped or murdered or abused, I should walk on by because it would be “inconvenient” for people who aren’t the victim?

This was the best timing and chance of success I could come up with.

Objection 3:  You didn’t get them all.

Rebuttal:  Gotta start somewhere.

Objection 4:  As a half-black, half-white person, you shouldn’t be the one doing this.

Rebuttal:  I don’t see anyone else picking up the slack

Objection 5:  Yield unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.

Rebuttal:  The United States of America are ruled by the law, not by any one or several people.  In so far as representatives and judges do not follow the law, no one is required to yield them anything so unlawfully ordered.

I would also like to extend my appreciation to a great many people since I will not be likely to be able to talk with them again (unless the Secret Service is astoundingly incompetent.)

Thank you to my family, both personal and church, for your love over these 31 years. 

Thank you to my friends, for your companionship over many years. 

Thank you to my colleagues over many jobs, for your positivity and professionalism. 

Thank you to my students for your enthusiasm and love of learning. 

Thank you to the many acquaintances I’ve met, in person and online, for short interactions and long-term relationships, for your perspectives and inspiration. 

Thank you all for everything. 

Sincerely, 

Cole “coldForce” “Friendly Federal Assassin” Allen 

PS:  Ok now that all the sappy stuff is done, what the hell is the Secret Service doing?  Sorry, gonna rant a bit here and drop the formal tone. 

Like, I expected security cameras at every bend, bugged hotel rooms, armed agents every 10 feet, metal detectors out the wazoo. 

What I got (who knows, maybe they’re pranking me!) is nothing. 

No damn security. 

Not in transport. 

Not in the hotel. 

Not in the event. 

Like, the one thing that I immediately noticed walking into the hotel is the sense of arrogance. 

I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat. 

The security at the event is all outside, focused on protestors and current arrivals, because apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before. 

Like, this level of incompetence is insane, and I very sincerely hope it’s corrected by the time this country gets actually competent leadership again. 

Like, if I was an Iranian agent, instead of an American citizen, I could have brought a damn Ma Deuce in here and no one would have noticed s–t. 

Actually insane. 

Oh and if anyone is curious is how doing something like feels:  it’s awful.  I want to throw up; I want to cry for all the things I wanted to do and never will, for all the people whose trust this betrays; I experience rage thinking about everything this administration has done.

Can’t really recommend it!  Stay in school, kids.

End of manifesto

Less of a manifesto; more of a statement, I suppose.  And, am I the only one not surprised this guy is a teacher?  Does this episode not perfectly encapsulate where our education system has brought us?  When education becomes indoctrination, this is the result.  And this is one goal of our modern education establishment.

The left will never admit it, but God, they love it.  And Cole Allen is not alone; far from it.  Today there are millions of young people just like this guy.  If you doubt this, I would suggest you talk with recent college graduates.  You might start with a few teachers.

The ultimate goal of our modern education system is to create an army of leftists, willing to use any means necessary to remake the United States into a socialist utopia.  It is worth noting that Allen is 31 years old.  So not only is he a participant in the education establishment, but he is also a product of it.

We are not going to defeat these people in the war of ideas.  They are completely immune to logic and rational thought.  For them, it is a religion.

It is no longer a war of ideas; it is just war.

Stop pretending otherwise.

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Burn It All Down

It would be better if young people laid in a field and looked at the sky

Peter Boghossian on the universities (three minute compilation video)

So, is this the correct position to take?

Here is where I am:

Question:  What is the mission of the academy?

Answer:  To teach people to think and how to think.  I mean, we could all go to trade schools.  We could have trade schools for medicine.  No, the core mission is teach young people how to think.

Are they doing that?  Obviously not.

So what are they doing instead?  Proselytizing leftist doctrine; like the religion that it has become.  And campuses are their cathedrals, attended by priests and monks and various other clerics and votaries of the left.

Don't believe me?  Talk to young college graduates.  Even if they are not overly political, they are completely unable to think.  They confuse narrative for thought.  This is how we get Queers for Palestine.

There is also a side-effect of all this indoctrination.  Even though they know absolutely nothing, they overestimate how much they do know.  After all, they have the parchment on the wall to prove it.

I mean for Christ's sake, what does a degree from Utah Valley University even mean?  For many so-called students, college is a very expensive four-year party.  They are not there to learn any more than the clerics are there to teach.  Do the time, get the credential, then tell everyone how smart you are.  Meanwhile I read that they no longer read books.  No surprise there.

To a large extent the students are there under duress.  They cannot get the jobs they dream of, unless and until, they get a piece of paper.  So they all go to the college that will give them the most valuable piece of paper that they can get.  And if you are forced to be there, you might as well have a good time.

But the clerics of the left, they are there leeching off their student-hostages and the rest of us.  Indefinitely.  The academy gives them a better income than they could make doing anything productive.  And it gives them authority to pontificate on all matters, political and otherwise.  They are missionaries:  Yes, of course we will feed you and your children; but first, we all must attend church.

There is no fix for this.  And no will to fix it.

Burn it all down.

And start over.

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The First Education Mayor

Why would younger voters elect Zohran Mamdani?

And more broadly, why have younger voters moved so far to the left?  Far enough to elect a socialist.

Here is Mamdani's platform.  He is not using the term socialist just to appeal to the young.  No, no, he is a flat out socialist.  Good for him.

My question is why would anyone vote for that?

Well, to support someone this far left, one has to be completely unable to think critically.  And critical thinking is a skill that is no longer taught to young people.  At least not in public schools.  And certainly not at the university level.  It is not the K-12 teachers fault; they, too, never learned to think critically.  So we have a generation of non-thinking educators teaching young people.  If the students don't get critical thought at home, they will just never get it at all.

This has been going on for generations now.  Each new generation one step further removed from the ability to think.  To the point where we are now:  No one can think at all.

So if you have a mayoral candidate who says all the emotionally appealing things, then obviously he the best guy for the job.  I mean, of course, rents should be frozen; anyone against that is selfish.  Of course, the city should open city-owned grocery stores; anyone against that does not care about poor families.  Right?  You get the idea.

Mamdani owes his win of the Democratic nomination to the education establishment, primarily to university schools of education.  He is the first real Education Mayoral Candidate.

And I do not think this is limited to New York City.  I suspect this is the primary reason for the Democratic Party's drift to the far left, nationwide.  This has been, and continues to be, a generational project among leftists:  Staff schools of education with ideological leftists, produce unthinking teachers, who produce even more unthinking young people, who then graduate into unthinking voters.

These schools are not really schools of education.  I do not think they actually give a hoot about education.  No, they are Schools of Youth Indoctrination.  And they have been wildly successful.

We saw proof of this last year with nearly half the country voting for the completely incompetent and inarticulate Kamala Harris.  No Harris may not be a socialist, but only the fully indoctrinated could vote for such a gibbering dimwit.  Sooner or later we will see a socialist elected to high office.  With Mamdani, we are watching this in real time.

Subjugated Capitalism

Is it possible to fight back?  Yes and no.  No, if you live in New York City, be prepared for the type of socialist utopia we have seen repeatedly over the last one hundred years.  The way these governments hang on, from Scandinavia to France to South America, is that they subjugate the capitalists to pay for the socialism that the majority of voters think they want.  Often times, as in Scandinavia, the capitalists are willing participants.

What happens in stable socialist societies is that the socialists reach an accommodation with the capitalists.  The socialists consume nearly all of the wealth that the capitalists produce, and with their bureaucratic leviathan and endless regulations, they ensure that the capitalists face little to no competition.  The entrenched capitalists acquiesce, and purr like well-feed kitty cats.  This produces a stagnant society, with little entrepreneurship or innovation, but one in which the socialists and the capitalists can coexist.

It becomes a sort of voluntary servitude:  The capitalists produce the wealth, and the socialists consume it.  What's more, you have to be willing to accept all the inefficiencies and outright graft that inevitably comes with socialist control.

So-called democratic socialism cannot produce the wealth required to fund itself and continue bribing the electorate.  Short of natural resources, socialism cannot produce any wealth long term.  So it is imperative for the socialists to retain the services of the capitalists.  It is the only way they can maintain power, which is their only real goal.

If you doubt this thesis, just look at China.  Where did the nation's current wealth come from?  It sure wasn't communism that provided it.  Yet the communists have been able to retain power and get rich themselves...by allowing some degree of capitalism and keeping the capitalists enslaved.  This subjugated capitalism is the party trick that the Soviet Union never learned, and that is why they ultimately failed.

What should you do?

Mamdani's nomination is the leper's bell of the approaching looters.  If you are unwilling to accept such an arrangement, what should you do?

Leave.  Take your taxes, your family, your business and any jobs it creates, your vote, and even your mere presence and go somewhere, anywhere, where you are appreciated and supported.

Leave before the income tax doubles.  Leave before the wealth taxes.  Leave before an intersectional tax code.  Leave before the reparations.  Leave before the inevitable exit taxes, already proposed in California, and I predict soon coming to New York City.

If Mamdani successfully opens city-owned grocery stores, of course with no sales tax, how long will it be until he triples the sales tax at privately owned grocery stores?  Supposedly to fund the people's stores.

Certainly he will implement congestion pricing.  But I predict it will not only apply to entering vehicles, but to mileage.  In the confines of Manhattan, would a dollar a mile be unexpected?  Two dollars?  I mean the space is quite limited and the planet is suffocating as we speak.  Naturally, he and his minions will be exempt because they are carrying out the important work of serving the public.  Quietly, ex-mayors will also be exempt, for their service.

On top of taxes, his fees and regulations will become impossibly burdensome.  So let's allow New York City voters to fully enjoy the government they elect.  But without our productivity.

Just leave.

They'll be fine.

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Peterson's Message to Musk (and the rest of us)

On Tommy Robinson and Schools of Education

Peterson first discusses the abysmal treatment of Robinson by the government of Great Britain.  Britain has become a theocracy with dhimmi-servants running the government, the judiciary, and the police (my description not his).  Then Peterson moves on to our own nightmare, the university schools of education, which supposedly train teachers.  I have written about this existential threat before.

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The Path Out of Poverty

Maybe this path will not work for everyone.  But if you are reasonably intelligent and ambitious, this is the way.

• Get as much education as you can.
  
  
• At a minimum, you must learn and use proper English.  This is true no matter where you are.  If you are rich in Malaysia or Guatemala or Kenya, fine, you don't need English.  But if you are poor, master English.
  
  
• Get a job.  If there are no jobs, then you must make your own; find a need and fill it.  Do what needs done; haul water for your neighbors, plant the rice, whatever.  Do not wait for the work to come to you; you must go find the work.
  
  
• Do not have children.
  
  
• Find a partner doing likewise.  Do not look for a partner to raise your children.  Instead look for a life partner.  This is a subtle but important distinction.  Yes, children are a part of life; for many the most important part.  And no, it is not fair, but if you are poor, you simply cannot afford children.  And they will keep you poor.  So make your choice.
  
  
• Also regarding children, you must break from the mindset that only your children can and will care for you in your old age.  Once you breakout of the jail of the poverty-minded, you will discover that you can and should take care of yourself in your old age.  This view of children as retirement is a big part of what keeps people poor; because this mindset encourages people to have children they cannot afford.
  
  
• Get married.  But don't be in a rush.  Only get married if and when you find the right one.
  
  
• Still do not have children.
  
  
• Focus on your (two) careers; make something of yourselves.
  
  
• Never lie, never look for shortcuts.  These are popular strategies of the poverty-minded.  Be honest or stay poor.
  
  
• Along the way, read everything you can, both fiction and nonfiction.  You must learn to learn and learn to think.  These are skills that most poor people just never develop.
  
  
• Also learn to be considerate, grateful, friendly, respectful, and quiet.  Yes, be quiet.  If you think these attributes are beneath you, okay fine, stay poor.
  
  
• Do not surround yourself with poverty-minded people.  Leave them behind.  Leaving poverty most often involves leaving your community.
  
  
• Be faithful to your spouse.
  
  
• Only then should the two of you even consider children.

Yes, it is this simple.  If anyone tells you otherwise, they are lying to you – To serve their own interests, not yours.  The primary key to this path is to have children only when and if you can afford it.  If you cannot manage this, again okay fine, stay poor.  I realize this advice may run counter to the teachings of your faith and/or the desires of your family.  You simply must put these influences aside until you, and you alone, are ready.

And yes, of course this applies in the United States as well.  I have written on that specifically here.

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The Banality of Academic Group Work

Back in the eighties, American businesses, large and small, were scared to death of Japan, Inc.  I am not at all sure this fear was justified, but at the time, it was all too palpable.  Consequently, business schools in the United States started studying the way business and industry worked in Japan, hoping to emulate some of their success.

Well it did not take a lot of work or intelligence to realize that Japan has a consensus culture.  And their businesses are also run by consensus.  And the only way to achieve consensus is to ask everyone for their input.  And pre-internet, the best way to do this was to bring together all the key players and discuss the situation and come to the hoped-for consensus.

However long that might take.  And however good or bad the resulting decision.

What our crack business academics saw were groups of Japanese managers coming together to achieve some desired outcome.  And they said:  Hey, we need to do that too.

To be fair, business schools were previously teaching group collaboration.  But it was Japan, Inc. that supercharged the practice.

Now it just so happened that I was in business school in the late eighties.  And we students were early test subjects for this new urgency.  So the professors started assigning group projects.  The idea, ostensibly, was for us to learn to work together to achieve the best result.  Sounds great in theory.

And while the practice was new to me, at first I did not really mind it.  Just another way of getting the work done.  But it soon became clear, that in an academic setting, even at a top-tier school, as opposed to a real, profit-driven, operating business, some group members contributed more than others.  This was always going to be the case.  It is just human nature; some people are more motivated than others.

Yet I did have the opportunity to work with groups entirely comprised of smart, highly motivated individuals.  And I certainly have over the course of my career.  These groups prove the academics' theory is true if groups are in fact so comprised.  But most often teachers assemble academic groups with a diverse mix of contributors.  Here, and without apology, the academics fully expect the strong to carry the weak.

In a business, weak performers can be fired, or otherwise removed from a collaboration.  And even if this is not done, say for political or nepotistic reasons, everyone knows.  But in an academic setting this is never done because the academics do not really understand how things truly work.  They seem to believe that one must learn to work with and appreciate weak performers.  I never have.

Two immediate problems.  One, and the professors readily acknowledged this, is that groups tend to produce results that are better than what the worst-performing members could produce on their own.  But at the same time, inferior to what the best-performing members could produce on their own.  In the aggregate, coming in slightly above average.  This is just common sense.  I guess academics believe that slightly above average is still above average and therefore worth pursuing.

But the outcome is an inferior result; certainly inferior to optimal or best.

The second immediate problem is the result takes longer than necessary because of all the time spent coming to the magical consensus.  I mean the best group members have to spend time trying to convince the worst group members of the correct direction.  And even then, because consensus is the driving force, the group will elect a suboptimal approach.

This is what happens when the real goal is not an optimal and timely result, but rather a consensus-driven result.  So groups produce suboptimal and time consuming results.

Not to pick on Japan.  Because it is really American academics who are to blame for this nonsense.  But a great example of what I am talking about was the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, where indecision and delay led to more serious consequences.  Delay caused while they were trying to reach the Japanese cultural imperative of consensus.

Nevertheless, the idea that group consensus should determine our management and business direction took off in academic quarters.  Further, this idea infused other academic departments, most notably the notoriously less-than-rigorous education departments.  Education professors just loved the idea and added it to their pedagogical methods.

Over the decades since, as businesses will do, they have adapted what works and what does not work, into useful and productive business practices.  What I mean is that if a situation calls for group consensus that is what a business will do.  But if a situation would be ill-served by such a practice, they are not about to impose it to merely fulfill some academic standard.

But no matter what, top performers hate any practice which limits their, well, performance.  This is why you find the best people in entrepreneurial roles, not middle management.  Leave the corporate bureaucracy and academic claptrap to Boeing and Disney.

Now I have no idea if business schools are still teaching groups and consensus-driven decision making.  But they specialize in producing mediocre performers, so probably so.  But you know who is absolutely still pushing this?  Education departments.  The education academics in their wisdom have decided that groups produce higher quality pedagogical results.  It's nonsense of course because the same results happen in education that happen in business.  That is, the results are only better than what the worst-performing members could produce on their own.  But that seems to be perfectly okay for our educators.

So teachers, all kinds of teachers, have been taught to use groups.  Where a couple of generations ago, the teacher would have made an assignment to all individual members of a class, today they're likely to divide the class into groups and make the assignment to each group.

So has academic excellence been drilled out of our current generation of educators?  Do teachers even recognize the inherent problem of group suboptimal performance?  Do they even care?

I do not believe they do.

Why?  Because if a teacher has twenty-eight students in her class and divides them into seven groups of four students each, then the teacher has to read and grade only seven assignments instead of twenty-eight.  Yes, it is just that simple.

So this is the why; my theory anyway.  But there is one last problem.  Who pays?  Well the best, most motivated students of course.  Because they end up doing all the work.  This is not terrible; if assignments were made individually, they would be doing all of their own work anyway.  But group assignments do tend to be larger (because supposedly all members are contributing).  But naturally this is not what happens.  The lazy, unmotivated students contribute little or nothing.  And the bright, motivated students have to carry them along.

Strangely, this never seems to concern the teachers.

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* Apologies to Hannah Arendt.

Articulated Rage

Douglas Murray has long been one of my favorite commentators.  He has always been a rather levelheaded conservative.  But in this new video one senses an undercurrent of rage.  Which I completely share.

But I do not share his confidence that the people of Britain will stand up to the intolerance in their mist.  Or that the people in the United States will.  It is nice to think so.  But to believe that this will happen, in either of these countries, one has to believe that we have, still, a moral and principled public.  I no longer believe this is true.

Near the end, Murray says:  It is not Jews who should be fearful in the UK, it is the people who would make Jews fearful.  Dear reader, just ask yourself, is this true?  Or just wishful thinking?  Righteously enraged wishful thinking, sure.  But wishful thinking nonetheless.

And the UK and the US sit at one end of the spectrum.  Ask yourself also, what are the French going to do?  That is, their entirely useless government or their public which can be summed up as one big Gallic shrug?  And Germany, Belgium, Sweden?  The idea that these nations will do anything, at either the government or public level, is absurd.  These nations have not had anything resembling a moral, principled public in well over a hundred years.  The idea that they'll develop one to deal with the genocidal manics currently in their mist is ridiculous.

It is interesting to note that there are at least two types of genocidal manics running around the streets of London and New York.  Those we have allowed in through irresponsible (and anti-western) government policy.  And those we have created ourselves with an incompetent education system, capped with a college indoctrination program.  Our very own homegrown Hitler Youth.  If you listen to these sociopaths, they share all the self-righteous zeal of their progenitors.  All that's left is for them to re-enact their destiny.  And they will.

And if there was any doubt that the woke fanatics were transforming into our Hitler Youth...I think their performance since Saturday, October 7th finally puts that question to bed.

Oh sure, eventually, the Muslims will kill them.  I mean good Muslims can only suffer Queers for Palestine for so long.  Not to mention, the trans activists, other alphabet people, atheistic types, and those on the intersectional hierarchical spectrum.  But for now, can you just imagine the surprised glee of the Islamists?  For the unexpected help.  These useful idiots offer invaluable service, and faux intellectual cover, for the immediate program:  Killing the Jews.

Now, as a First Amendment absolutist, should these idiots, of both varieties, be allowed to spew their venom?  Absolutely, er...well maybe.  We need to clearly understand that they are calling for a second Holocaust.  Certainly the Islamists mean it.  Our Hitler Youth are too stupid to mean anything they say.  They should be held accountable nonetheless.

Let's come back to accountability.  Here, let's stop and ask:  Should incitement to Holocaust be allowed under our current conception of free speech?  And no matter where you come down on this question, it is a question worth asking.  As Bruce Bawer famously pointed out years ago now, tolerance of intolerance is not tolerance at all; it is suicide.  So how much tolerance are we going to allow before we say enough?  Personally I am not feeling very tolerant of this river to the sea crowd that we are currently witnessing globally.  Again, this is not some innocent slogan; they mean it.

And although they could not find the Jordan River on a map, our Hitler Youth are clear accessories.  Accessories to Holocaust.  Their parents must be so proud.

Back to accountability:  Who is going to hold them accountable?  Joe Biden?  His string-puller, Barack Obama?  New York governor Kathy Hochul?  Or New York City mayor, Eric Adams?  How about British prime minister, Rishi Sunak?  Or my personal favorite, London mayor, Sadiq Khan?  So that leaves our amoral and unprincipled public.  A public which tolerates immigrant rape gangs in the UK and castrating children in the US?  A public completely bullied, and frankly cowed, by nonsensical woke fanatics?  You know, the very same Hitler Youth.  That public?

Public support for our Hitler Youth is the problem.  But, but, we read, most people do not support the woke agenda.  Even those on the left do not support the woke fringe, we're told.  And sure, if asked, they may not agree with castrating children, immigrant rape gangs, vandalizing artwork, cancel culture, censorship, pronoun insanity, DEI nonsense, academic intolerance, open borders, and most importantly, the Oppressor/Oppressed narrative.  But they nonetheless vote for people who will not stop it.  Time and time again.

I have made this point many times before:  At least half the public either believe in the woke cause, fully support the cause, or tacitly support the cause.  And it is actually much more than half of the public because so many of these supporters do not vote or cannot vote.  But it is the tacit supporters who are the most pernicious.  If you are a moderately left-of-center voter, who excitedly voted for Barack Obama (twice), and then unexcitedly voted for Joe Biden, who goes on to support gender-affirming care for minors and all the rest of the woke agenda, well moderate though you may be, you are the problem.  Stop and read this paragraph again if you must.  You are the problem.

And if you are a left-voting Jewish American, who now finds the Biden administration rather weak on anti-semitism, you are also the problem.

These voters are the public.  The point is, it is the public that is the problem.  They will not save us.

So no, there will be no consequences whatsoever.  Much as I value and appreciate Douglas Murray, he's just understandably and wistfully wrong about this.  The moral and principled public on which he relies, well they no longer exist.  And without it, we will see our societies fall first into anarchy and then later into authoritarianism.

We have the unique distinction of witnessing the death of the West.  I did not think it would come in my lifetime.  Yet here we are.

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How We Got Here

Big pharma, a complicit medical establishment, corrupt & incompetent governments, a subversive & irredeemable education system, and a credulous populace with no faculty for critical thought

I have just finished watching the Netflix docuseries, Don't Pick Up the Phone.  It is just amazing to me how many people are willing to blindly follow authority.  Even if the authority is untrustworthy or incompetent or completely fake.  Yes, I am aware that there was a 2012 movie, Compliance, on the same subject.  But I never saw it.  I'm guessing not many people saw it.

Compliance is a choice.  And regarding Covid, most of us chose poorly.  Not all of us.  With much difficulty and some legal risk, my family and I completely eschewed the so-called vaccines.  I wish good luck to the rest of you.  But many of you will never pay for your recklessness.  However, there seems to be an increasing number of people who are paying dearly.

And yet, the mandates continue.  I realize that the world has always known and experienced evil.  Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, the Soviet Union, Jim Crow, etc.  Just to name a few cases from the last century.  But the list is endless.

However, the Covid lockdowns and mandates set a new and disturbing precedent for the breadth of evil.  I think you would be hard-pressed to find a previous example of evil on a scale this broad.  I mean, from the United Nations, to national governments, to state and local governments, to employers and schools, right down to the squawking Karens at the grocery stores.  That is, virtually all of our leadership class, and so many of our friends and family and neighbors and colleagues.  It's widely understood that we have the worst leadership class in generations.  But it turns out, we are surrounded by blind, unthinking, sequacious sheep.

Sure, I blame Biden and Fauci, and the governors, and the medical establishment, and the teachers.  But dear reader, those of you who have shown unquestioning compliance, are every bit as evil as Fauci's capricious pronouncements.  Especially if you have given these untested drugs to your children.

Who does that?

What is that?

Evil is the only word to describe it.

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Neopronouns Are For All of Us

Modern Compelled Speech

I wanted to write something about what's going on with pronouns.  But in order to do justice to the topic, I just did not know where to begin.  You see, little pronouns are big these days.  Luckily, UNC Greensboro had me covered with a handy one page explanation.

Find the original document just below.  Or click here to view it on their website.  Or start here:  UNCG:  Why Pronouns Matter.  Good stuff.

Sure, this is completely insane.  But my problem is not that transgender, non-binary, and/or gender nonconforming people use factitious pronouns (I note the document's passive voice construction).  They can be as crazy as they wish.  We can all be as crazy as we wish.

The first problem is right there in the first sentence:  Pronouns are words that a person may use to identify themselves instead of their name.  But unless you are in the habit of talking about yourself in the third person, surely the pronouns that you use to identify yourself are I and me and we.  It seems to me that what we have here is a very basic and fundamental misunderstanding of third person pronouns.  They are not ours in the sense that we do not typically use them when referring to ourselves.  No, these pronouns belong to others.  So that is my first problem:  Do we have a right to dictate other people's language?  Obviously, some people believe that we do.

Now some will argue:  Well, proper names are also used by others; and since we don't speak about ourselves in the third person, it is rare to use our own name when referring to ourselves.  And yet, no one would argue that your name is not your own.  But a name is a unique identifier for a person.  That is the definition of proper name.  On the other hand, pronouns are general, generic identifying substitutes.  If we make pronouns our own, they would become unique and lose their raison d'être.  Why?  Because they would then also become names.

But the larger problem with neopronouns is that their users and advocates expect us to join them in their madness.  They expect us to use their lexical creations.  And they further expect us to state our own pronouns in order to validate their insanity and grant the exercise some measure of legitimacy.

Now this may seem like a fairly benign exercise:  My name is Ben, and my pronouns are he/him.  What's the big deal?  But by participating in this exercise, you are signaling that you accept that pronouns are unsettled and subject to change, misuse, reversal, or outright fabrication.  And further, the reason pronouns are unsettled is because gender is fluid.  It's no big deal for Ben, but the problem is that it gives Xe license to run wild.  It is not so much that gender is non-binary, it is rather that gender is infinite, but at the same time evidently classifiable in the form of neopronouns.

Gender was once an exclusively grammatical term referring to words and language.  As best I can tell, we started applying this word to people in the late 20th century.  Fine, language changes.  Today, we generally view sex as a biological and therefore binary, and gender as a social construct and therefore non-binary.  To me, unless you argue that gender and sex are perfect synonyms, this distinction seems as valid as any other.  But it does present a problem.  Once we leave the moorings of binary biological reality, we enter a world of infinite possible creation.  And when coupled with insanity where does that take us?  All you have to do is a quick Google search to find out.  Here's a New York Times piece worth reading.

Think of it this way.  You go to a dinner party and there are maybe a dozen people there.  One person introduces herself this way:  My name is Mary Smith, and I am from the planet Ægir – in all seriousness.  Polite people may respond with:  Oh, I see.  But it takes an Orwellian atmosphere of intimidation for everyone there to then feel compelled to say:  Oh, nice to meet you Mary.  My name is Ben Johnson, and I am from Earth.  That's not tolerance or politeness, that's coercion.

But that is not all.  The document above suggests that you might even want to inquire how exactly to pronounce Ægir.  You know, it's important to get these things right.  Postmodern etiquette?  Merely contemporary good manners in the face of now acceptable subjective reality?  Or obsequious attentiveness to madness?

And then there's this:  Some people will use more than one set of pronouns, and you are encouraged to alternate among them in conversation.  Remember, they expect you to enter their fantasy world.  And if you refuse...what?  Well, some might begin to suspect you're some sort of bigot.  Just imagine the shame.

Here's a quick thought experiment.  Would it not be easier for everyone if we used sex to determine pronouns rather than gender?  I think the reason that this is not possible is that the people who argue most stridently that gender is fluid also believe that sex is meaningless.  Once you accept that a transgender woman is the same as a real woman, sex is irrelevant.

Some questions

So where does that leave us?  Sadly, the question becomes:  How far does one go to meet the demands of insanity?  And even if you argue tolerance above all, and politeness is best, when does politeness end and truth begin?  At a dinner party?  In a university lecture?  Testimony before congress?  How about a pre-op conversation with your oncologist?

Our Mary Smith, from the dinner party, was born in Topeka.  When does that matter?  Does it ever matter?

More questions:  Is Mary Smith insane?  Or is she a complete narcissist?  Or both?  And does that matter?  This gets us closer to the root of the problem.  I mean this nonsense is rife on college campuses today.  Can they all be insane?  Or have we simply raised a generation of narcissists?

And this is why neopronouns have exploded.  No self-respecting sui generis narcissist wants to use someone else's pronouns, much less something as mundane as he or she.  Of course not.  By definition, these narcissists are without equal.  They'll create their own unique pronouns, thank you very much.  And fully expect you to use them.  Be sure to write them down and get the pronunciation correct.  And for those who are not super narcissists, but perhaps have only a somewhat narcissistic personality, you know, your garden-variety narcissists; they may be happy to use non-original but sufficiently esoteric neopronouns because they still achieve the goal.

Now you may ask, what is the goal?  Look at me, I'm special, I'm so special that I have my own special descriptors, look at me!  Look. At. Me.  I insist.

But what we really have are narcissists and cowards and tyrants:  The narcissists who demand others refer to them as Xe, the cowards who indulge them, and the tyrants who enforce the madness.

What is going on here?

Now, I have no doubt that there is quite a bit of overlap between these three groups:  The narcissists and the cowards and the tyrants.  But just for a moment, let's consider these as three distinct groups.

We can just about understand the narcissists and the cowards, right?  Don't like them, but we have all met them and understand them.  Best to ignore them.  Surely, let's not contribute to their psychopathology.  If you can ignore your narcissistic colleague or neighbor, I urge you to treat these people the same way.

To me, it is the enforcers that are so interesting.  We are talking about university types here.  Both students and faculty.  Oh, and the countless ancillary bureaucrats attached to the modern university.  With their idle...little minds.  Sure, some of these people are certifiable.  But all of them?  Just can't be.

It is important to understand that university communities are moving from mere encouragement to use preferred personal pronouns, to vigorous insistence on it.  Some have made it mandatory, threatening students and staff with disciplinary action for failing to observe and/or participate in the new standard.  More will follow.  And no doubt the good little conformists they produce are already carrying this nonsense with them into the workplace.

We need to add that labeling pronouns preferred has become taboo.  You see, preferred implies that their use is optional.  And if your proper name is mandatory, so are your pronouns.  Today's bien-pensants simply refer to these as personal pronouns.

One final note on the latest tenets of pronoun usage.  If one fails to offer their preferred personal pronouns, that's perfectly fine.  But, we should then make no assumptions about what their pronouns may be.  So instead we should use their name in place of pronouns altogether.  Each and every time:  Ben had a paper due yesterday.  But Ben turned it in late.  It is not like Ben to be late.  My guess is that the awkward language is purposefully designed to encourage everyone to offer pronouns.  Most people, especially young people, don't like to be singled out.  No Ben, we don't have to speak like that about you; but you never gave us your pronouns.  Why don't you do that now?  So Ben, too, adopts preferred personal pronouns and accepts all that goes with it – Just like everyone else.

So what are they up to?

Two things come to mind.  One, old Soviet-style humiliation.  They want to coerce you into publicly stating something you know is untrue.  They know it is untrue.  And they know that you know that it is untrue.  And they know that you know that they know.  But there is power in coercing you to not only state an untruth, but also to help them enforce it.  With all due and proper self-righteousness comrade.  Yes, there's real power in forced self-humiliation.

I have used the North Korean example before.  When the Dear Leader died, all, and I do mean all, good little North Koreans wept uncontrollably.  Why?  Did they really believe that a great man had just died?  The idea is ridiculous.  No, it was simple fear of the powerful.  And fear that their family, friends, and colleagues might turn them in.  For what?  Insufficient grief?  Well let's put it differently:  Insufficient allegiance to the narrative.  Sound familiar?  Is their artificial grief any more absurd than calling someone Xe?  So they all participate in the lie as an exercise in power dynamics.

Surely this is what we are seeing on college campuses today:  A demonstrable allegiance to a narrative.  Stop and let that sink in.  When did the goal of liberal arts education morph from developing a faculty for critical thought to fostering an allegiance to a narrative?  If you think this comparison is hyperbole, just listen to Yeonmi Park talk about North Korea and Columbia University.

Which brings me to my second point:  To what end?  Well the narcissists and the cowards are just useful idiots with a richly concocted fantasy that the tyrants can exploit.  I personally believe that it could be any ridiculous fantasy, it's just that gender identity theory is the one at hand.  I mean it is so preposterous that if they can feed it to the masses, by whatever means necessary, then they can tell the masses anything they want.  Peak Covid hysteria has presented the tyrants with a similar opportunity.  And one cannot help but notice the tyrannical overlap.

There's also critical theory and intersectionality and 1619 and any number of other exploitable theories.  But come on, the absurdity of gender identity theory with its attendant public declaration of pronouns.  And the demand to prostrate oneself to use the correct pronouns of the petty narcissists?  For the tyrants, it's just too good to pass up.  Of course it is.

If you believe that the man over there is a Xe, or better yet, a she, or at least pretend to believe, odds are, you'll believe anything that those in power tell you to believe.  And if you believe them, you will do what they say – Regardless of which end of the gun you are on.

Those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

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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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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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