ROBOT LOVE: COURTING THE DARKIES

 

Scene 1: Party. Glass of milk in hand, a middle aged white man in a sleeveless V-neck sweater approaches a young, attractive black woman.

 

Jerrod: Hi. I’ve been watching you for a while and I think we should get married.

 

Roxy: What the…? Who are you?

 

Jerrod: Jerrod.

 

Roxy: Why would I marry you?

 

Jerrod: Well, like I said, I know a little about you. I’ve done some calculating and I think we are compatible.

 

Roxy: Mm hm…Mm hm. Well I have a boyfriend and…..

 

Jerrod: I know but your boyfriend has cheated on you 4 times and he….

 

Roxy: How the *&!@#%! did you know that!!??

 

Jerrod: I know your boyfriend well. He cheats on you and he takes you for granted.

 

Roxy: (sigh)…..I know he’s not perfect but he always knows what to say when he messes up. He writes these sweet poems. He tells me how beautiful I am. He brings me flowers and these cute little gifts all the time. He’s so thoughtful. Why should I dump him?

 

Jerrod: It’s all right here on this chart. See here? Time spent at current job, amount in 401k, my profile on the MMPI personality test, and so on. This mathematical formula here shows the projected number of children we would have, probable universities they would attend, value of our home adjusted for inflation, projected range of happiness, etc. Clearly…..Ok, I can see you are confused by some of this. See, the X and Y axes represent….Let’s just look at this pie chart.

 

Roxy: Mm hm…Mm hm. Well, I tell you what. Here’s my (fake) number. I’ll think it over.

(End of scene 1.)

 

Have you ever witnessed a teenage boy with a severe developmental disorder hit on a pretty woman? I have. It was sweet and kind of touching but also a bit creepy. It was awkward. So goes Republican attempts at wooing minorities. Like the cringe inducing title of this blog, conservatives aren’t overtly racist but they offend nonetheless. (Notice “developmental disorder” was used instead of “retard”? That kind of thing is important.)

 

It is almost a unanimous consensus that Romney’s loss is because of his poor showing with non-whites. Interestingly, no one blames it on anti-Mormon bigotry. George W. Bush got 44% of Latinos and 44% of Asians, and 11% of the African American vote. Romney got 27% of Latinos, 26% of Asians, and 6% of African Americans. The percentage of non-white voters is increasing by about 2% per election. If skin color and liberalism were like conjoined twins, the GOP would indeed be doomed. But the marriage of skin color to Democrats is like worn out Velcro on those shoes from the 80’s (Which, like the mullet, I’m desperately waiting for a come back). Mike Huckabee may have gotten 48% of the black vote in Arkansas’ governor race in 1998. If true, it is not unthinkable for the GOP to make increases on a dramatic scale.

 

Conservatives have long pointed out overlap with non-whites on social issues. It’s true that Latinos have a 53% out of wedlock birthrate but strong family values is still considered a part of the culture. Also, gay marriage is looked down on in the black community and both groups have strong religious roots. The church door may be wide open for the GOP to walk through. While the Catholic Church has a muscular social justice faction, American bishops are often clear and sharp-tongued about the incompatibility of abortion and gay marriage as well as the recent assaults on Church sovereignty through Obamacare. But minorities often agree on other issues as well. Most Hispanics do not believe in bilingual education or open border unlimited immigration and a majority of blacks and Hispanics also believe in requiring an ID to vote. This is not to say minorities hate government and are in love with supply side economics. They’re not. But just because Jesse Jackson gets doughy-eyed when gazing at the Fidel Castro poster in his bedroom, doesn't mean his racial counterparts are the same.

 

The left destroys everything it touches but one thing it has been wildly successful at is branding the right as bigoted. Some of it is intentional and shameless but much of it is pure ignorance. (See “The War on Men”) If a Republican dares to vote against a program for the poor, it must be out of hatred. Yet, for all the righteous whining about racial demagoguery, conservatives shoot themselves in the foot. Again and again and again. The clumsiness and insensitivity in discussing race can be, well, asinine. Rush Limbaugh’s Barack the Magic Negro song was not a big hit in South Central L.A. And, in a moment that surely made Latino Republicans wince in pain, when Ann Coulter was asked about Susana Martinez’ speech at the Republican Convention on The Michael Medved Show, Ann mocked her Spanish accent and said she changed the channel. She then talked about the brilliance of Condaleeza Rice’s speech but the damage was done. Conservatives think that because they feel race is meaningless, they therefore are not racist and they have the freedom to say stupid things about race. No. They don’t.

 

There is a belief among many right wing ideologues that if an attractive, conservative candidate comes along who is true enough and pure enough in their dogma, then conservatives from everywhere would rise from the ground and vote en masse, ensuring eternal victory. It is a stupid fantasy. Conservatives are right to abhor political correctness but while it is good and well to defend philosophy, it is equally important to cultivate relationships. In a marriage, is it important to be right all the time? Should a man point out when his wife’s posterior does indeed look big in those pants? Should a wife tell her man she just knew he wasn’t going to be able to fix that leak and he was an idiot to try? There are rules in relationships and Republicans are breaking them all when it comes to race. Embracing comprehensive immigration is good but that alone will not fix the problem. Everybody now knows the GOP needs minorities. Their attempts to make inroads will look like weak and shameless pandering. Some will argue that the policies themselves need to change, that the GOP needs to moderate. But if the conservative gospel is indeed good for everyone, why should it change? It shouldn’t. Presentation and marketing need drastic overhauls but that is just the beginning. For decades, Republicans virtually ignored these communities while Democrats mined them, exploited them, lied to them, and took them for granted. They are masters of identity politics and we need to play their game, not to pander, but to talk. The right way. And we don’t do that by starting out with, “WHAT PART OF ILLEGAL DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND??!!”

 

        Republican Approach:                                           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      










      “Hello…attractive…female.”                                                    

               Democrat Approach:

                        "Hey baby."


The fact is the GOP thought it enough to expect people to vote as citizens and not as a member of their race. It’s a noble sentiment but when you claim to be the party that embraces reality, you must accept that a lot of people just want to know who cares about them. Democrats resort to bribery and false promises because it’s easy. The conservative argument is more complicated but it’s also the right one. We have to start making it personal. We need to explain how Reaganomics got people back to work. We need to talk about the civil rights issue of our day, how Republicans want to improve public education with charter schools, vouchers, teacher merit pay, and other good ideas for their sons and daughters. We need to explain how the Democrats are siding with their union stooges and standing in the way. What conservatives need is an army of bright eyed, fresh-faced partisans walking through the worst parts of town, knocking on doors and saying, “I love you, I care about you, and I’m a Republican”. There will be many doors slammed in faces. Some may get shot. But some will invite them in and some will even listen. When that happens, things are going to get interesting.

LETTER TO MY DEMOCRAT FRIENDS

People always say every election is “the most important one ever” but this one may in fact be just that, which is why even hardened Democrats should reconsider their man.

 

 

Like a drunken sailor, the president needs an intervention. 

The Tenneseean, a newspaper from……Tennessee, recently endorsed Romney for president. It has endorsed a Democrat since 1972. Why the shift?

 

“The next president must be the one with the best chance to get the crushing, $16 trillion national debt under control, coupled with the more immediate need of enabling a vibrant job market.”

 

The Des Moine Register also hasn’t endorsed a Republican since 1972. It does now, along with the other three major newspapers in Iowa.

 

Greece collapsed when its debt reached 120% of GDP. Spain, Italy, Ireland, and Portugal, are close to catastrophe and U.S. debt is close to 100% of GDP. The European welfare state has failed yet this is where Obama wants to lead us. Some economists say that economies start to slow at about 90%. While it’s true that Japan’s debt is about 200%, their economy grew at a paltry .69% annually over the last 20 years while the U.S.’ rate of growth was 2.09%.

 

Debt matters. Entitlements more than double defense spending and the Congressional Budget Office projects entitlements to explode the budget, devouring 40% of not just the budget but the entire economy by 2050. The CBO also admits taxing the rich will not fix it. Taxes on everyone would have to skyrocket to balance the budget. We already pay over 200 billion/yr. on interest for the debt. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta stated the debt is actually a threat to national security.

 

But isn’t Obamacare awesome and don’t the Republicans just want to get rid of it?

 

Obamacare did do one good thing: More people have insurance now though it still leaves 30 million uninsured. The problem is that it didn’t even bother to tackle the three biggest cost drivers:  20% of medical costs are from fear of lawsuits, consumers can’t shop for insurance across state lines, and charging for individual procedures provides no incentive to reduce costs. Once Romney provides Obamacare waivers to all 50 states, there will be great pressure on Republicans to replace it with something and chances are high they would tackle one or all of these issues.

 

But isn’t Trickle-Down Economics a failure? And didn’t Bush cause all this in the first place?

No. Reagan dropped tax rates on all incomes and reduced regulation. The economy boomed. Unemployment rose from 7% in 1980 to 10.8% in 1982, then declined to 5.4% in 1988. The inflation rate declined from 10% in 1980 to 4% in 1988. Economists have blamed the current melt down on two primary issues. Liberals point to the failure of regulation. Indeed, the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed by both Republicans and Clinton. It allowed banks to merge investment and every day banking. But Obama didn’t change this. Conservatives point out that the other major reason for the melt down was government strong-arming banks to loan to disadvantaged borrowers. When Bush tried to fix this problem by reigning in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Democrat congressman Barney Frank basically said, “That’s stupid. We have nothing to worry about”. Oops.

But is deregulation really a good idea? 2011 Gallup poll said small business owners say complying with regulations is the most important problem facing them today. Even George McGovern, former uber-liberal presidential candidate who passed away last month, agreed. In fulfilling a lifelong dream by owning a hotel and restaurant, he was stymied by regulations. In 1992 he wrote for the Wall Street Journal:

I also wish that during the years I was in public office, I had had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day…Today we are much closer to a general acknowledgment that government must encourage business to expand and grow….Too often, however, public policy does not consider whether we are choking off those opportunities…

 

Not to be outdone by the uselessness of Obamacare, his only other major accomplishment was Dodd-Frank (Yes, that one.), a massive financial regulatory bill. A major gift to New York banks, it didn’t end “too big to fail”, left Fannie and Freddie untouched, and didn’t even bother to end the incestuous relationship between ratings agencies and the companies’ products they rate, another major cause of the meltdown.

 

 

If reelected, the next four years would be rough for Obama. He would face staunch opposition and he has been incredibly vague about his agenda. I don’t think he has one. This nation is at a tipping point and we need a president that accepts the crass reality of money. We’re broke. Maybe you admit that some of the above is true but just can’t bring yourself to vote for those racist bastard Republicans? See “The Oreo, The Coconut, and the Banana”, parts I and II for why conservatives are not racist and liberals are. Then read “The War on Men”. I’m not asking you to burn your American Communist Party card or to remove your I ©Obama bumper sticker. Just go into the booth on Tuesday and, secretly if you must, do the right thing for your country. Just this once.

My Grandpa Went to the Embassy Burning and All I Got Was This Lousy T shirt.

The Middle East is on fire. (Yawn) Again. It’s what they do. Christians have potlucks. Muslims riot. Prediction: The first one to get “Death to America” rubber bracelets to the malls in Cairo is a millionaire.

 

Why do they hate us so much? The endless stream of “experts” drone on about the American overthrow of Iranian democracy in 1953, our support for dictators, Israel, etc., etc. They are either ignorant or lying. The real reasons for this and anything else, really, are cultural and historical.

 

I once asked a friend with a Masters degree in Islamic studies whether the Koran condoned terrorism. She said, “It’s confusing”. The Koran is a bit of a Rorschach test. If you want to justify peace, you will. Violence and hate? It’s there, too.

 

Muslims have a long view of history. The crusades are an esoteric footnote to most Westerners. To many Muslims, they are still a foremost thought. One traveler to the Middle East remarked seeing an odd postcard. Nothing says, “Hey mom, wish you were here”, like a Crusader stabbing the belly of a pregnant woman. Probably the most ubiquitous tourist trinket in all of Turkey is the evil eye (pictured below). Why is the protective talisman always blue? The eyes of the white crusaders were blue . I have one in my own home but white people still come. 

 

 

 

 

Things weren’t always so backwards.  Math and science blossomed during Islam’s golden age from the middle of the 8^th century to 1258 A.D. While Christian Europe stagnated, Muslim culture thrived. Trade brought great wealth. Art, philosophy, and innovation flourished. What happened? Abu Al-Ghazali.

 

Islamic philosophy was once influenced by Hellenism and the Greeks. In a war of thought and debate, the Asharite Ghazali vanquished Mutazilism, which believed the injunctions of God were accessible to rational thought and inquiry. No longer was logic itself valid. Knowledge came only through the holy Koran. Al-Ghazali famously claimed that when fire and cotton are placed in contact, the cotton is burned directly by God rather than by the fire. This victory of revelation over reason arguably led to the feet of Islam being stuck in the mud of the middle ages for a millenium. As a consequence, today, more books are translated by Spain in a single year than have been translated to Arabic in a thousand years. It is why some Arabs still do not believe man has been to the moon. (So do some Americans but don’t get me started.)

 

As most religions do, Islam believes it has the one truth. But while Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists all believe there is some wisdom and truth in other religions, Muslims believe in the utter superiority of Islam. Nothing from the infidels is worth consideration. While Europe was experiencing an explosion of ideas and technological advances, Muslims rejected it all. The ironic exception is in military technology and tactics. Apparently, when it is kill or be killed, ideology loses its hold.

 

Judaism is a religion of government and law but is not universal. Christianity is universal but preaches acceptance of whatever government is in place. In Islam, which actually means “submission”, Allah has decreed that every human on earth should submit to Him and the theocratic set of laws that is Sharia.

 

 

 

The concept of victim hood in XFL running back Rod Smart’s jersey seems to encapsulate much of Arab and Muslim culture. It is embedded, fixed deep in the mind. Islam has been called “ROPO”, a Religion Of Perpetual Outrage. In Bernard Lewis’ “Islam and the West”, he describes an important Muslim concept: “God is justice and justice is God”. It explains much. Justice is an important value but its evil twin is vengeance. While Jews emphasize a people’s liberation and Christians emphasize forgiveness and personal salvation, Muslims emphasize reckoning, evening the score.

 

An Arab’s dignity is like the air he breathes. Honor -- personal, familial, national and so on-- is precious. When pride is injured, there is no “moving on”. It must be reclaimed. This concept is seen in such things as “honor killings”. Not extremely common, they are not rare either. One survey revealed that in Jordan, where it is actually legal, 20% believe Islam condones and even supports murder in the name of family honor.

 

Surrounded by modernity and wealth, to live as a Muslim in a Muslim country is to live in humiliation. With a supremacist belief system and the constant, objective reminders of their own failures, how can there be peace except that the “natural” order of the world be restored? There was once a time when Jews and Christians, the “people of the book”, were tolerated and respected. They lived in peace under Islam. But this was a time when the Caliphate was robust, dominant even. Maybe the festivals of rage we see now did not exist in 1000 A.D. because no one felt insecure when the prophet was disrespected.

 

The forces against moderation, tolerance, and peace are very strong. But we must keep in mind that Muslims are human beings. While it’s easy to focus on the bad, many who travel to these countries are struck by the extreme level of warmth, generosity, and hospitality. Muslims believe in chastity and virtue, in holiness and righteousness, in support for the poor and destitute and, yes, in submission to the creator of the universe. These aren’t such bad things. American Muslims are peaceful and productive and only about 20% of the Muslim world fully supports the harsh ideology of terrorist groups.

 

So what should our response be? If the question is how to change individuals’ hearts, the answer is easy: Love. It is what we are commanded to do even in the face of perplexing anger and insults. If the question is how their societies can change, it’s a bit more complicated. Unnecessary aggression or the return of insults never works but neither does appeasement. Maybe the Islamic Martin Luther is alive today. Maybe events some day will cause Muslims to reexamine Al Ghazila. Maybe they will want peace? Until then, I need to figure out how to get those bracelets to market. 

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous

Don’t vote for Mitt Romney. He’s a rich bastard. That seems to be the totality of Obama/Biden 2012.
 



 

"Let them eat cake."

 



In Hannah Arendt’s long-winded “The Origins of Totalitarianism”, she dissected the roots of anti-semitism. Her big conclusion? People hate the rich. While most Jews were poor, the monarchs in Medieval and Rennaissance Europe were often supported by Jewish bankers. Arendt believed that people have trouble understanding wealth not connected to power. A wealthy king? Not a problem. A rich person without a title? “We should look into that”. In “The Believer”, loosely based on a true story, Ryan Gosling’s character, a Jewish neo-nazi, asked, “Why do we question anti-semitism? Do we ask why we step on a cockroach?” And so, hatred for the rich, maybe like hatred for the Jews, is so ubiquitous because to many, it just feels right.

 

Do the rich deserve our contempt? I, for one, don’t care for them. Frankly, I’m jealous of their cool cars. But shockingly, the rich are like most of us, flawed but not evil.

 

First, let us dispense with one persistent and asinine belief. When the rich get richer, the poor do not get poorer. The economic pie expands and contracts. The supply of wealth is not finite and unchanging. When one person gets rich, they help their neighbor by creating jobs or introducing efficiencies into the economy. If you question this assertion: 1. Stop reading. 2. Slap yourself in the face. 3. Repeat #2.

 

The Robber Barons so denigrated a century ago donated enormous sums of money. Andrew Carnegie gave away 4.8 billion dollars (adjusted for inflation). The Carnegie Foundation currently has assets of 1.5 billion. J. Rockefeller was an ardently religious man who tithed and helped found Spellman, the first all black female college. His wealth has spawned 14 billion (a.f.i.) in donations since 1913 and his foundation gives about 137 million annually. Bill Gates recently challenged the world’s billionaires to pledge the majority of their wealth. About 40 of them have signed the pledge, including Obama supporter Warren Buffett, who pledged 99% of his wealth. Even if many of the rich aren’t particularly generous, most are actually confused taxophile Democrats. On average, the wealthy donate quite a lot. The top 7% contribute half of all America’s charitable giving. Those making over $300,000/yr. give an average of 4.3% of their income. Those under? 2.3%. Interestingly, the poor are actually more generous than everybody but the very wealthiest, giving 30% more of their income than the majority of the rich. Perhaps it is because they know what it means to need and to suffer.

 

 

Occupy Wall Street, a group of people allergic to soap and sense, has rightly called attention to the sins of Wall Street. But only 14% of the wealthiest 1%--about $300,000/yr.--work in finance. The rest of the top five are non-finance executives (31%), doctors (15%), lawyers (8%), and engineering and science types (4%). These are people who actually work. A lot. Complaints about astronomical CEO pay do seem justified, especially when some tank their companies and float away with a golden parachute. Yet, according to former Clinton Treasury Secretary, Robert Reich, the CEO market is highly competitive. CEO’s are not gods but they are usually uber-talented, hold advanced degrees, and work an average of 60 hours/week, sometimes 80-100. The stockholders and boards apparently think they’re worth it.

 

Do the rich commit crimes? Sure, usually white collar crimes. Violent crime is largely a phenomenon of the poor, however. The actual crime rate of the wealthy is difficult to come by as convictions are not tracked by income. What is clear is that nobody fears getting mugged in La Jolla and most of us feel relatively safe from getting defrauded when we invest our money with a financial expert.

 

I saw a bumper sticker recently that said, “If you are not a rich, white, male and you vote Republican, you’re an idiot!” Subtle. So why are many of the middle class conservative? Most don’t focus every bit and tittle of life through the lens of money and class. “You’re rich? Good for you”. We also recognize that targeting the wealthy can actually hurt us. The rich do not hide their money in goose down mattresses. They spend and invest. When they gold plate their toilet seats, they pay a small business to do it and hire a guy who lives across the tracks to install it. When investing is riskier because of higher taxes, they’re pumping less into the economy. Their focus becomes how to keep what they have through tax shelters and other avoidance schemes. How does that help the middle class?

 

Obama is staking his reelection on raising the top income tax rate. The Heritage Foundation estimates it would cost 800,000 jobs. It would bring in a paltry $460 billion over ten years when this year’s deficit alone was $1.5 trillion. He has remarked before that it isn’t all about the numbers; it’s about fairness. But it seems to me that the left doesn’t love the poor nearly as much as they hate the rich. Why? Maybe it’s because they value things like knowledge and art. It is unconscionable to them that an artist would starve or that a professor should have to drive a Chevy while those whose only skill is making money (how crass) have lots of it. Oh, and power. And therein lies the rubber duck. The combatants of class warfare won’t call it what it is: envy. It never really was about helping the poor. If it was, they would actually…..wait for it…..help the poor. This whole thing is just a good, old-fashioned power struggle.

 

One last thing: if you still hate the rich, hate yourself. If you make $34,000/yr., you’re in the top 1% globally. Rich bastard. 

The Borg President

In what might be the world’s first ever anti-cyborg hate crime, surgically enhanced tech professor, Steve Mann, was assaulted by McDonald’s employees in Paris, France. My first thought? “Not surprised”. Parisians are the rudest people in the world. After looking at this guy, my second thought was, “You mean nobody ever smacked this nerd before?” The natural social order of the world was enforced by pimple-faced French teenagers. *

“Resistance is Futile”.

 In the movie “Star Trek: First Contact”, the Borg were a humanoid species wired together in one ship that shared one mind. They were part organic and part electronic like our friend above. President Obama has been criticized as a bit cold and aloof but it’s never been suspected he is part machine. However, he and his philosophical kind have much in common with the Borg and we should be just…as….wary.

On 7/13/12, the president gave a speech that talked about the virtues of government. He reminisced how his grandfather got the GI Bill and an FHA loan and how his single mother went to school on grants and scholarships. “Of course, I’m always struck by people who think, well, (I must be successful) because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help…Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system…that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Now when he said, “You didn’t build that”, he was talking about the roads and bridges. But he did seem to be saying something Americans don’t often hear: If you sacrificed your blood, sweat, and tears, if you risked every penny you had to create a popscicle stand or a multinational corporation, it really wasn’t that special.

Some say it was a gaffe but I think it was one of those rare moments where he spoke his heart. The idea is that because you live in a system with good education, rule of law, and infrastructure, you owe something to that system. That might be true if everybody didn’t already pay taxes for that system in the first place. The business men, high priced lawyers, and wealthy investors have already paid for the roads with gas taxes and for the public school down the street with their property taxes (And they pay double to send their kids to private school.) They already paid for the salaries of their congressmen and the defense of this country by being part of the 5% that pay 58.7% of all income taxes.

What is this liberal obsession with unity, sameness, the collective? The unity rhetoric has always struck me as pure baloney. They don’t mean it. How could they when class warfare is the mother’s milk of the Democratic party? Is there a conservative position they don’t view as primitive or hateful? What they really mean by unity is that humanity is improving and it’s only a matter of time until we all see the light. Theirs is the enlightened position. Liberals push higher education so much, not necessarily because half the professors are to the left of Castro himself, but because they really believe education equals enlightenment and enlightenment is liberalism. So all of humanity is on this march. Some individuals are slower than others but there will be unity one day.

What is instructive is how Progressives, the intellectual fathers of modern liberals such as Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt explained this thinking. With unlimited optimism they had deep faith in historical progress. The dangers of factiousness present at the founding were dust in the wind. They openly despised the Constitution with its protections for property and its idea of God-given Natural Rights. The people confer the rights on themselves. By the people, of course, they meant that perfect representative of the people: the state. Pure democracy was mankind’s salvation. The great irony, however, is their remarkably undemocratic tool for bringing about this whole project. The grand plan was essentially a fourth branch of government: a lifetime tenured, well paid bureaucracy unburdened by the ugliness of special interests, i.e. politics. The dream? An army of enlightened technocrats free to execute the “true” unified will of the people.

In “The New Freedom”, Wilson explained his utopian vision: “We are architects in our time…(and we will build a system of government and society) until finally, a generation or two from now, the scaffolding will be taken away….where men can live as a single community, co-operative as in a perfected, co-ordinated beehive, not afraid of any storm of nature, not afraid of any artificial storm…”

So when our president denigrates individualism and says we all have responsibilities to our society, when he says there are no red states and no blue states, just the United States of America, what he really means is that we’re all one big blue state and we need to get on with the business of letting go of the broken down ideas of the past. When we free our minds and enlighten ourselves, we will finally see his vision. We will become one and be unified in this great Borg ship, I mean beehive. It’s gonna happen. Resistance is futile.

*Steve Mann appears to be a stand up guy who only wants McD’s to pay for the repair of his equipment and to maybe donate some money to vision research.

The War on Men

THE WAR ON MEN

In the fantastic movie “Osama”, the image of Afghani women in burqas was haunting. The blue sheets, more apparition-like than human, seemed to float. The Taliban’s oppression was total, complete, devastating. And supposedly, if Republicans have their way, American women will be in burqas too. Of course, that’s asenine. But the Democrats are hanging their hopes on the Republican “War on Women” meme. The damning evidence? Republicans are against forcing the Catholic Church and all health insurance plans to provide “free” birth control. This “war” was first uncovered when ABC’s George Snuffalupagus questioned Romney and Knights Templar Crusader Rick Santorum about his thoughts on birth control. Rick should have said, “That’s a ridiculous question. Let’s move on”. Instead, he got sucked into making a philosophical argument that only celibate priests and 10% of Catholics believe in. The free-thinking, unbiased media wouldn’t let it die.

The Beaver State, Oregon, recently banned public schools from using Indian names or mascots for their athletic teams, saying they disparage Native Americans and reduce them to caricature. If even a small majority of Native Americans were actually offended, I would say this isn’t so outrageous. But they aren’t! Over 80% of real Indians (as opposed to fake ones seeking a Senate seat) don’t see the big deal. Why would activists disagree with most of their “misguided” compadres? What is so dang offensive? I don’t think Monty Montezuma makes brown people look bad. No school is nicknamed “The Pine Ridge Drunks” or “The diabetes-prone welfare moochers”. They are given names like “Warriors” or “Braves”. The nicknames evoke toughness, endurance, prowess, all positive traits you would associate with athletic competition. What does this have to do with a war on men? Plenty. The names evoke masculinity and it is this that liberals hate.

Liberals abhor war and violence. “Militarism”, a stupid word that simply means aggression, is a favorite of the left. Liberals also loathe competition. We are the generation where everyone gets a trophy so no one gets their feelings hurt. You can also see their hatred of competition in their discomfort with its ultimate form: capitalism. In free markets, there are always losers and this burns the heart of a liberal. Are not competitiveness and aggression simply forms of masculinity?

A professor of mine once asked the class why there are so few men in the (ultra liberal) field of social work. I remarked that many just don’t view nurturing and talking about feelings as particularly manly. To her eternal credit, she said, “No, I think it’s because there are a bunch of man haters in this field”. To some extent, she was right.

Adam Corolla in his book, “In Fifty Years, We’ll All Be Chicks”, laments that what was once settled with common sense or a fist, we now settle with hand sanitizer and lawyers. Largely a vehicle for toilet humor and the F word, the book actually gives serious social commentary about the blurring of gender lines. Gender roles have indeed become more confused. Intentionally.

Think of a small boy running a race against his classmates. He falls and skins his knee. The mother wants to run and hold him and say “poor baby”. The father spurs him to be tough and finish the race. Is this not a metaphor for the two great political philosophies? The battle so often is between compassion and standards. Both are a form of love, one feminine, one masculine. And when you focus this through the lens of politics, you begin to see that “Left” and “Right” is, more broadly, a simple gender construct.

The problem is that, while the right understands the left for the most part, the left doesn’t seem to understand the right. At all. Conservatives see competition as simply a medium for creating greatness. And, in a way, is not war itself merely the enforcement of “standards”? (Respect my boundaries. Do not steal from me, etc.) But if you have a narrow view of love and compassion, if you think that the only way to help the poor and the downtrodden is to say “poor baby”, then you will view the other way as simply evil. How could it not be? Liberals despise manliness because they think it crude, thuggish, violent, and worst of all, uncaring. It must be the cause of so much hurt and pain and it must be banished.

So goes the war on men.  

POLITICS, RELIGION, AND DEVIL WORSHIP: What voters and Christians can learn from the notorious Aleister Crowley.

So I was listening to Rush Limbaugh the other day and he said something about Obama hating kittens. Then I saw a photo of an Occupy Seattle anarchist throwing a rock through a Nike store window while wearing…wait for it…Nikes. I thought to myself: This is going to be a nasty year for an election. The Republican primary was bad. Oddly, the conservative alternative to the last Republican nominee is now considered a flaming liberal. Some “conservatives” even said they could never vote for Romney but the same was said by Hillary’s supporters about Obama in 2008.

Are we more divided than ever? More vicious? No. Abe Lincoln once insulted a man so cruelly on the floor of the Illinois senate he made him cry. Fistfights among elected officials were not uncommon in those days. Alexander Hamilton fought and was killed in a duel because he’d been…BESMIRCHED! Politics has always been rough but the passion it ignites is nothing compared to that of religion. Sensible people say you should never talk about either in polite company, hence my gutless choice to use the pseudonym Cornholio and not my real name, Bartholomew Cornelius Polkinghauser III.

And what about Devil worship? Aleister Crowley has been called the most evil man who ever lived. I wouldn’t go that far. However, being the father of modern occultism and a specialist in all sorts of perversions and bad habits, he was not exactly well behaved. Crowley was born in England in 1875 to deeply religious parents. They were strict and harsh. His father died when he was 11 and his mother’s religiosity took on a rigid, even bizarre quality. She railed against the evil of the world and cursed mankind daily. Crowley received little better treatment. He had little affection for his family and came to outright despise his mother.

As a teenager, Crowley worshipped Satan. Later, as experiments with séances, sex rituals, and other sorts of silliness progressed, he believed in neither God nor Satan. His religion, sort of a mix of Hedonism, Neitzsche-ism, and spirit worship still influences weirdos to this day.

Crowley was a world-class chess player and renowned mountain climber who set records that lasted for decades. He traveled the world and was a fairly accomplished poet. He was quite literally a genius. Yet, Crowley was also a narcissist who used people like handkerchiefs, stupidly wasted a large inheritance and then mooched the rest of his life, slept with a battalion of women and men, experimented with all manner of drugs, struggled with heroin addiction, left a man to die on a mountain top, abandoned his wife and children, and raised two other children in his care like animals. One day he asked his girlfriend how he could prove his love. She said, “eat my poo”. He did.

An interesting man, very little in Crowley’s life is actually instructive. He was good at spotting hypocrisy, however, and there was a quote in Martin Booth’s excellent biography I found rather remarkable. Crowley stated, “In a way, my mother was insane, in the sense that all people are who have watertight compartments in the brain, and hold with equal passion incompatible ideas, and hold them apart lest their meeting should destroy both.”

Psychologist and Christian James W. Fowler wrote a marginally readable but important book that explained beautifully those watertight compartments in the brain. “The Stages of Faith” is about the way humans see the world. The first two stages are in childhood. Roughly, stage three is when an adult accepts blindly without examination the values he or she was taught. Stage four is when childhood or societally dominant values are indeed challenged and maybe even rejected. Personal responsibility is taken for one’s beliefs. The problem is that contradiction or paradox is simply deflected.  Those watertight compartments still exist. Stage five is when a person becomes less self-absorbed and accepts the fact that truth is often complex and confusing. Paradox can be incorporated without inner turmoil. Not necessarily a postmodern rejection of objective truth, respect for other belief systems develops. Stage six is when one begins to understand that all humans are universally connected in a way. Truth may still exist. Good and evil may still exist but tribalist us vs. them thinking disappears. After deep examination of his thoughts and beliefs, he focuses even less on the self and actually lives the principles of absolute love, justice, and selflessness. He is willing to consistently sacrifice himself for the good of others. Sadly, the research shows these latter two stages are exceedingly rare.

When liberals blindly view the rich as enemies and conservatives as selfish and evil, when conservatives think Obama wants to ruin the economy, or that every liberal is godless, immoral, and hates America, when churchgoers think every nonbeliever is wicked and capricious*, they are holding on to those watertight compartments. Being in the mushy middle is not the answer. I have taken a side and believe it is the right and moral one. But not every fact or event can be Limbaugh-wedged into a neat little package of ideology.

So when I’m confronted with the sharp sword of truth, I hope I recognize it. I pray my mind is not made of iron or water. I pray my mind is made of clay: solid and firm, yet soft and compliant. I hope that sword sticks.

 Phillipians 1: 9, 10.

*Yes, I’m aware of Romans 3:12

Should We Bomb China?

3/15/12

Places I would like to bomb (in no particular order)

1. Iran
2. Russia
3. North Korea
4. North Sudan
5. Syria
6. Venezuela
7. Gaza Strip
8. Pakistan (“Bin Laden was our neighbor?? Whaaaaat???”)
9. France
10. Greece
11. France again.
12. Sacramento (for obvious reasons)
13. North Dakota (South Dakota should stop messing around and just take their oil)
14. Canada (Too cold. And…who would miss it?)
15. Denmark (Happiest people in the world? Screw ‘em)
16. Sweden (Too many good looking people in one place)

Should China be on the list? Liberals should support this because it would also take out their most hated enemy: Walmart. China bashing is popular. Obama is talking tough about “suing” China for holding back on rare earth minerals. Romney has all but promised a trade war if elected. And why not? They send us poison milk, poison dog food and poison drywall. They pirate our movies, steal our technology, deflate their currency to make exports cheap, persecute Christians and other religions, imprison dissenters, force abortions, and harvest the organs of prisoners. They veto nearly every sane attempt by the U.N. to stop evil in the world. And now they are building up their military like never before. Also, they eat rats and that’s just gross.

The Republican presidential candidates talk tough about China because getting tough is the Republican answer to everything. Iran? Yeah, kick its butt! Low test scores? Yeah, kick its butt! Exactly. It doesn’t always make sense. Conservatives applaud Nixon’s détente with China, and yet, today’s China is not half as evil as the Maoist regime of 1972. The tough talk that is ashamedly necessary during political campaigns always yields to the same caution from Democrats and Republicans alike. So why all the current bloviating? Well, their economy will, in fact, surpass ours, probably by 2020. Is their ascendancy signaling our own decline? If so, what do we do about it?  (Sigh) It’s complicated.

China’s military budget has exploded in the last few years. They’ve had the bomb since 1967 but spending on conventional forces is up 11.2% this year after 12.7% last year. Having moved on from the disastrous rickshaw-with-mounted-scattergun era, they are now building carriers, developing stealth fighters and nuclear submarines. They are asserting naval authority in a big way. China consistently states this is only a reaction to Obama’s new emphasis on AsiaPac and the subsequent muscle added to the region. However, the growing Chinese arsenal makes India and other neighbors like Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines, which have maritime disputes with China, a bit nervous.

Chinese imperialism seems unlikely, however. Unlike Japan, it’s just not in their history or culture. Deeply concerned about harmony and unity, (see Taiwan obsession) they have always been somewhat isolationist. Other powers could not resist the urge to expand. China has. It is true that Mao had designs on the world; He once remarked that if half the world had to die for the glory of socialism that would be acceptable. Nice. But Mao is an anomaly.

Much more likely than actual war is a trade war. Some responsible voices like Robert Samuelson of Newsweek, a fantastic writer on economics, actually think this might be a fight worth picking. The U.S. may have lost about 2.8 million jobs to China in the last decade. A trade war would be devastating in the short run but the long-term danger of a 20% trade disadvantage due to currency manipulation may be too damaging.

Some say we’re already in a currency war with China. The Federal Reserve has sharply increased the supply of dollars, thereby weakening their value. It makes our imports cheaper but it also hurts anybody with a savings account. It puts us at greater risk for inflation and it is one of the primary reasons gasoline is so expensive since oil is pegged to the dollar.

China is our 3rd largest importer, buying 104 billion dollars of our soybeans, aircraft, computer parts, and other products in 2011. Over the last decade, the trade deficit has actually narrowed significantly, from roughly 5.8:1 to about 3.9:1. As China’s economy grows it buys more and we are still a country that makes things. We are still the world’s top manufacturer. Also, cheap Chinese labor is not so cheap anymore. American manufacturing is actually starting to rebound a little. The minimum wage across China rose a whopping 22 percent in 2011 forcing factories that make things like sneakers and t-shirts to go to places like Bangladesh and Vietnam. And while China exports much it does, in fact, import more than it exports. China has a trade deficit?? Yes.

Also, some argue that the U.S. may be as much a culprit against free trade as China itself. Putting tariffs on China would invoke retaliation with the World Trade Organization and would expose all kinds of U.S. hypocrisy like all the tax breaks we give and our subsidies for private companies like Solyndra.

So should we bomb China? My heart says yes. I mean, if Sweden’s on the list, why not? But my head says, “Um….I don’t know. Stop bothering me. I have a headache. I’m going to bed”.

The Oreo, the Coconut, and the Banana Part II

Black on the outside, white on the inside. Brown on the outside, white on the….etc. etc. These racist terms, all from the left, are used to pressure non-whites to act non-white, but not simply to talk or dress like your ethnicity; you must take part in the struggle. You must be a leftist.

To say the left is racist is like saying Christians hate Jesus. The left is all about equality and  uplifting the downtrodden. Talk of a minority’s flaws is often shut down swiftly, the fear being that any honest discussion of problems will only breed more racism and contempt. When Bill Cosby encouraged blacks to stop blaming whites for all their problems, he was met with nothing but derision from Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Acknowledging racial differences is so anathema that when it came to the fact that African Americans typically score lower on IQ tests, California simply banned them from being administered to blacks, citing the tests’ cultural bias. Thus was born the Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity (That’s right, the B.I.T.C.H.). It showed that if words like “honky” and “dynomite” were used (It was 1972 after all.), blacks would score better. They did. Are these IQ differences real? Maybe. Maybe not. It actually is a bit complicated. But really, who cares? Apparently, the left does.

The left is indeed all about uplifting the downtrodden. But if we strip away politics and frame racism as simply a belief in inferiority, here is where we can start some trouble.

I remember walking to a taco shop one day. A woman had a t-shirt that said, “Black Woman. Mother of the Earth”. This saddened me because Darwin’s seminal work was actually a scientific argument for racial superiority. The true title was“On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”. I never hear talk about evolution’s implications for race. If you are a Neo Darwinist, an atheist, you, by definition, believe that blacks are closer biologically to monkeys than are whites and other races. How many of these types are on the right? Not many. For all Richard Dawkins’ claims to enlightenment, he is a simple racist. For those who believe the universe was created, even those who believe in theistic evolution, the answer is different. Scientific Adam may have had dark African skin but the first man, black or otherwise, was made in the image of God.

Perhaps what best illustrates the left’s marriage to racism is the period known as “The Progressive Era”, 1900-1917. New ideas and political energy spawned minimum wage laws, antitrust statutes, assistance to immigrants and the poor, and women’s suffrage. Hillary Clinton compared herself to the Progressives, people like Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Stanger, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. Left out of the glowing tributes to the heroes of this era is the ubiquitous racism that characterized the time. This is when Jim Crow flourished and lynchings were most abundant. A firm believer in eugenics, Stanger founded Planned Parenthood "to stop the multiplication of the unfit." She called the endeavor, “The Negro Project”. Woodrow Wilson sympathized with the birth of the KKK because of the unleashing of “an ignorant and inferior race”.

The left worships education and intelligence. Barack Obama was a former editor of the Harvard Law Review. The left swooned. The right yawned. For a lefty, the highest goal is enlightenment, which cannot exist without education. To be valued and special is to be enlightened. The right, however, values wisdom. A man with a 5^th grade education can be wise. Wisdom needs only experience and openness. Self reliance, loyalty, honesty and reliability are the values of the right. So, inherent in the left’s worship of knowledge is the obvious: a condescending, patronizing view of those who don’t graduate high school or worse, those who attend mediocre universities like Idaho State (See Palin, S.).

The sinister side of the left’s care and concern for minorities (which is often genuine) is a paradox: freedom to do and say the ugliest things. Democratic Sen. Harry Reid called white Supreme Court justice Scalia "one smart guy” while proclaiming the black Thomas "an embarrassment to the Supreme Court," adding, "I think that his opinions are poorly written." A number of cartoons portrayed Condaleeza Rice, PhD., as Aunt Jemima, Butterfly McQueen from "Gone With the Wind," a fat-lipped Bush parrot and other racist clichés. She was branded as inexperienced and incompetent. When former Republican National Committee chairman, Michael Steele, ran for senator in Maryland in 2006, he was depicted in black face with huge red lips by liberal blogger Steve Gilliard. Oreo cookies were rolled down the aisle at Steele during a gubernatorial debate in 2002.

So when Newt Gingrich got snarky with Fox News’ black liberal commentator Juan Williams asking typical leftist tripe in a debate, liberals instantly saw it as evidence he was racist. How? When you’re a racist, race is just the first thing that comes to mind. Simple as that.