File under “Sensitivity Editing”: The New York Post is reporting that Roald Dahl books editor’s “woke” consultants were all under 30 and had “non-binary, anarchist” project manager. I guess if you’re down with the woke culture of accountability, censorship, and mind control, then identifying the subalterns who do the dirty work authoritarian desire sounds bigoted. It’s supposed to sound that way because then you will fear telling the truth about it. Not me. It’s going to get a lot uglier over here. So strap in. Want to know why I’m so passionate about all this? George Orwell.
* * *
File under “Technocracy”: The National Review provides a useful example of the anti-democratic and technocratic heart of progressivism. In debating the question of whether the Biden administration can forgive students of their college debt, Sonia Sotomayor, the senior justice on the so-called left of the Supreme Court, warned that judges would seize greater power if agency authority to carry out acts of Congress were diminished.
“What you’re saying is now we’re going to give judges the right to decide how much aid to give them. Instead of the person with the expertise and the experience, the secretary of education, who’s been dealing with educational issues and the problems surrounding student loans, we’re going to take it upon ourselves, instead of leaving that decision in the hands of the person who has experience with these questions.” Sotomayor said this to Nebraska state Solicitor General James Campbell, who was arguing against the Biden administration.
Charles Cooke of the National Review points out that the issue before the Court is this: “Does he [the President] have the power to do it?” There is no provision in the US Constitution that gives bureaucrats unlimited power on the grounds that some people consider them to be experts, he correctly observes.
Cooke finds the same problem in a case from last year concerning the EPA, with Justice Kagan authoring the dissenting opinion. “In statutory cases such as these,” Cooke writes, “the risk is not that the Supreme Court will claim a role for which it is not suited, but that, absent the court’s deliberation, the executive branch will claim powers that rightfully belong to Congress.”
“If, as Kagan seems (selectively) to want, the Supreme Court were to habitually abandon the playing field whenever it was presented with statutory questions,” Cooke continues, “then the role of deciding which powers the executive branch has been delegated would henceforth be performed by the executive branch—which, having been given carte blanche to interpret the laws however it likes, would start doing whatever it wished to do without reference to the law as written.” Bingo!
* * *
File under “Fake News”: From The Guardian: “The US justice department has said Donald Trump is not entitled to absolute immunity in civil lawsuits related to the US Capitol attack on 6 January 2021, which he incited in an attempt to stop certification of his election loss to Joe Biden and which is now linked to nine deaths, including law enforcement suicides.”
First, Trump didn’t incite an attack on the Capitol on January 6. There is nothing in his speech that day or anything he ever said as president that could even remotely be interpreted as incitement.
This is the phrase Democrats harp on: “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” That’s standard in political discourse. Democrats talk about fighting like hell all the time, an easily documented occurrence. However, Trump specifically told the crowd that he expected them to be peaceful: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” Marching to do what? To “demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.”
The First Amendment to the US Constitution protects the right of citizens to do what the President told them to do. The Amendment guarantees that individuals have the right to express themselves freely without censorship or fear of punishment by the government. It protects the right of individuals to assemble for peaceful protests, marches, and other public demonstrations. It guarantees that citizens have the right to bring their grievances to the attention of their elected officials without fear of retribution.
The group that was assembled on January 6, as well as President Trump and all the speakers who addressed them, had an entirely legitimate purpose in gathering and speaking that day (it was a permitted event). The attempt to portray activities protected by the First Amendment as untoward by the corporate state is contemptuous of democracy and the rule of law. The January 6 rally was an instantiation of democratic action.
Second, the attempt to associate deaths the occurred on that day to the January 6 rally is as absurd as accusing Trump of inciting a riot (let alone the insurrection the Capitol riot wasn’t). Kevin Greeson and Benjamin Phillips died of cardiovascular disease. The manner of death in bother cases was determined to be “natural.” They had heart attacks in the excitement of the moment. Rosanne Boyland died accidentally of “acute amphetamine intoxication.” However, a police officer can be seen beating her dead or unconscious body, so it is hoped that a full investigation into the circumstances of her death is forthcoming. Ashli Babbitt was shot to death by a Capitol police officer.
Officer Brian Sicknick suffered a stroke several hours after the event. Four officers committed suicide after the event. Why they committed suicide is unclear. Based on the January 6 footage I have seen (and there is a lot of it), given that many officers were caught up in what has the hallmarks of a police riot, we might consider the psychological toll that losing control and attacking the citizens one swore an oath to protect takes on people.
However, none of these deaths has anything to do with the peaceful rally that occurred on January 6, 2001.
* * *
File under “Fact-checking”: Yesterday, I wrote the following comment on Facebook concerning reports vaccine injury: “People didn’t say anything because they were afraid of what would happen if they did. I was unafraid and told people what I knew. Many chose to disregard what I said because they were determined to harm themselves and others or because they believe I’m full of shit or disagree with me politically. I cannot be responsible for the fact that people ignore me or disregard my warnings. I do what I can.”
Facebook censored the post to which these remarks were attached. The important piece of that post were my remarks, so I shared them again and expressed my hope they would stay. I also noted that the day before yesterday that my wife had a post censored by Facebook for citing a Lancet study. Let that sink in. We’re supposed to only listen to the experts. Follow the science, they tell us. If Lancet is censored by Facebook, what are the fact-checkers actually up to? Isn’t it curious, I suggested, that the idea of disinformation only became a widespread concern when social media became a disinformation machine?
* * *
File under “Persistent Life-Course Offender”: Have you seen this video: https://fb.watch/j223IJ1GcZ/?
This is cluster B personality disorder, in case you wanted an example of what it looks like in the wild. Affected kids display this personality disorder early in their development. I’m not sure whether it is unavoidable, but you need to be able to see it and understand it so that you do not become a victim of emotional blackmail. On the question of whether this is an intrinsic developmental outcome, we are seeing it a lot more of it, so I suspect it’s probably something going on in our culture.
I need to note that many, if not most of the people who make up Antifa apparently suffer from this disorder (or cluster of disorders). Antifa members don’t stand for anything remotely regarding social justice. What they are is an instantiation of the birds of a feather phenomenon, a bunch of disordered individuals coming together and, in their case, engaging in a type of emergent group therapy that involves terrorizing other people.
This young person will in time find others like him and will enjoy allyship with people who will use him in the project to disorder the world. This reality gives us an insight about how we might intervene, namely by confronting the project that will use him as a subaltern.
freedom and reason 