BLUSTER’S LAST STAND

 

According to the Washington Post, there has been a rash of patients seeking therapy for “Trump anxiety”. Omnipotentblog hasn’t sought counseling yet but I’ve been struggling with a judgmental attitude towards his supporters. Last weekend some guy was revving his open-piped Harley in front of the 7-11. “Trump supporter,” I sneered. As I walked inside, there was another biker at the counter with one of those lame club jackets. Another loser Trump supporter, I thought. Then the “BIKERS FOR CHRIST” member chirped at the clerk, “Thank you, ma’am! Have a good night!” God is funny.

 

There is a real chance of a contested convention and many are realizing the Republican Party is getting groin kicked regardless of what happens. The only question is what would be worse, having party insiders give the nomination to somebody else and alienating his supporters or having Trump as its brand and alienating everybody but the KKK and white construction workers. Of course, there are millions in the “blow it all up” coalition and presumably, some are good people who are just tired of an unresponsive and corrupt political class. And yet, Trump talks of riots if he doesn’t get the nomination. Given the anger and violence at some of his rallies, there might be.

 

Would this mean the demise of the party? Christopher Baylor, professor at Holy Cross says no. Baylor documents several periods of political party “realignments” in history. During those times, it was not individual candidates or the grass roots that drove change but organized interest groups. Groups like CIO and Americans for Democratic Action pushed Democrats to embrace civil rights legislation and force out the southern Dixiecrats. In the Republican Party, it was groups like the Christian Coalition who moved the GOP from being the party of mainline Protestantism to a more socially conservative evangelicalism. Baylor notes that Trump has alienated most of the natural Republican constituencies who could nudge the party in one direction or another. Free marketeers, Obamacare haters, anti-tax crusaders, interventionist neocons, he’s insulted them all. Also, though much has been made about his strong evangelical support (He loves “Two Corinthians”, you know.), most who actually attend church can’t stand him. Besides immigration hardliners, who’s left?

 

Marred by riots over the Vietnam War, the ’68 Democratic convention was contested. Tear gas canisters and “stink bombs” passed each other in the air. The Yippies nominated “Pigasus the Pig” for President. 119 police and 100 protesters were injured. It was said that America voted for Nixon that night. Nixon was reelected but in 1976, America chose Jimmy Carter. Thus illustrates the political cycle: One party is “dead”. The other shoots itself in the foot. The dead rise again.  

 

PIGASUS THE PIG

 

In another fiasco that threatened to destroy the Democrat party, the 1924 Democratic convention resulted in a record 103 ballots. D.W. Griffith’s silent movie “The Birth of a Nation” had resurrected the KKK and they exercised enormous influence over the convention. Other elements within the party like urban Catholics were turned off by the Klan. Tension between the groups produced episodic violence and conflict during the convention. When an anti-Klan plank was narrowly defeated, tens of thousands of Klansman in full regalia and party delegates celebrated in a field in New Jersey. Illuminated by burning crosses, they gave speeches promoting lynching and intimidation. Some believe this 1924 “Klanbake” was so distasteful it gave the presidency to Republican Calvin Coolidge. Did it destroy the Democrats? No. FDR became president in 1932 and continued the progressive agenda with a vengeance.

 

 

The Democrats have had 11 contested conventions total. In eight of those, the eventual nominee was not the leader on the first ballot. Only four conventions had ten or fewer ballots. Four times, these conventions produced the general election winner. It is noteworthy that two of these produced two of the worst presidents in history, James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce.

 

The Republicans have also had 11 contested conventions total. In seven of those, the ultimate nominee was not the leader on the first vote. Ten of the conventions were ten ballots or under with the highest being 36 ballots in 1880. James Garfield did not lead a single ballot until the final one. Three conventions had only a single ballot. Of these 11 conventions, seven produced the winning candidate for the presidency including Abraham Lincoln.

 

It’s true there have been few contested conventions in the modern era, the last being the 1976 Republican convention. But they are not some sort of strange, exotic animal. They are a staple of democratic republics. The idea is to prevent exactly what is happening now: One man has developed a passionate and loyal following and a group of 16 others split the rest. If a candidate doesn’t convince a majority to side with him, why should the minority be given the reigns?

 

One of the most important elements in the constitution is its checks and balances. Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist Paper # 51, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary”. What has not been discussed as much, however, is the idea that the constitution is a check on the people themselves. America is not a democracy but a Republic. We choose people from our communities to represent us and are forced to trust them. If they violate that trust, we throw the bums out.

 

During the bloody French Revolution, a popular phrase was “Vox populi Vox dei”. The voice of the people is the voice of God. One of the earliest mentions of this phrase is actually attributed to Alcuin in in 798 A.D. Addressing Charlemagne, he stated:

 

And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.^[

 

There are times when whole groups of people, indeed whole nations just go mad. There is no reasoning with an angry mob. Yes, there may be riots in Cleveland. We may even lose the election. But there is only one thing to do: The reasonable among us must sharpen the pitchforks and prepare for battle. When the inmates run the asylum, nothing good comes.

 

IGNORANCE IS BLISS: HOW ONE LITTLE THING COULD CHANGE THE WORLD

Omnipotentblog has mentioned Jonathan Haidt in previous posts. “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion” is one of the more important books you may ever read. Haidt found that people think of morality in six different domains: harm, fairness, oppression, loyalty and patriotism, purity, and submission to authority. Liberals focus primarily on the first two and sometimes the third while conservatives focus on all six.

 

Haidt also highlighted research that shows humans are not as rational as they think. He portrayed the human brain as an elephant and its rider. The elephant is the subconscious and the rider is reason and intellect. The rider likes to think he is in charge but the elephant goes where it wants. The rider devises post hoc justifications for why it turned right or left. This is profoundly important because liberal doctrine rests on the altar of reason. All the ideas Democrats are selling now owe their existence to the French Enlightenment. Thinkers like Rousseau, Voltaire and Condorcet believed humanity could create a new existence based on science and reason alone. Believing human nature was basically good, it followed that bad behavior was largely derived from ignorance or oppressive social structures. Tear down that scaffolding of oppression and teach everyone things like smoking is bad and you will have a world of happy, healthy people. This idea ruled the 20^th century. It should be obvious now that it doesn’t work but for liberals it is still full steam ahead.

 

In contrast, British enlightenment thinkers like Edmund Burke, David Hume and Adam Smith believed man was incapable of being purely rational. To them, utopian enlightenment was pure fantasy. The disastrous French Revolution and the success of the American Revolution would seem to prove their case but for liberals, history is boring and pointless. Full steam ahead.

 

These revelations from Haidt should be enough to make progressives question themselves but hardened faith is tough to change. However, Haidt’s third major point is tremendously important. It could affect serious change if the advantage is seized. Though apparently moderate, Haidt is still a liberal. He defends this in the book. But his research showed that, unlike himself, liberals are largely ignorant of how conservatives think. Haidt had liberals and conservatives answer questions posing as their ideological counterparts. Conservatives did well. They know how liberals think. Liberals, unable to think past the false canard that says conservatives are mean, selfish and ignorant, did poorly.

 

This general ignorance about conservatism is central to the American political story. What would happen if the scales fell from liberal eyes and they began to understand their foes? Without willful blindness, leftism would be on life support. And if the underclass finds out conservatives aren’t really out to get them, Democrats are done.

 

Maybe Haidt’s research is flawed and just doesn’t register the truly Machiavellian nature of conservatives? Not according to American Enterprise Institute’s Arthur Brooks. In “Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism”, he shows that conservatives donate more to charity and volunteer more of their time. In a landmark study on American religion, Robert Putnam and David Campbell showed that churchgoers are not just sour-faced Pharisees. Those who attend regularly are more generous to society on every level. Among the cheapest politicians in America is Joe Biden. Among the most generous? Dick Cheney.

 

“But Omnipotentblog, aren’t all the smart people on the left”? True, academia is dominated by leftists but George Orwell once said there are some ideas so absurd only an intellectual could believe them. For a movement allegedly based on science and reason, there are a number of core beliefs that science resoundingly rejects.

 

One pervasive anti-science belief is that, as Thomas Malthus first wrote in 1798, there are too many people on earth competing for inadequate resources. Stanford’s Paul Ehrlich popularized this in 1968 with “The Population Bomb”. With apocalyptic certitude, he predicted hundreds of millions would soon die of starvation. Ehrlich later coauthored a book of hysterics with Obama’s science czar, John Holdren, which promoted infertility drugs in food and water, seizing single mothers’ babies, and forced abortions. Few theories have been more thoroughly disproven as Malthusianism but it lives on. In 2009, he stated his projections had actually been too rosy but they had been staved off temporarily because his book stirred action.

 

Another demonstrable falsehood is the notion that wealth is static: There is x amount of money.  Rich people hoard it. Without question, the size of the economic pie shrinks and expands because of government policies and other innumerable variables. The rich and the poor can get richer at the same time. This “trickle down” stuff is snidely dismissed except there’s this thing called math, which increasingly seems to exist for the sole purpose of disproving liberal doctrine.

 

The list of provably false liberal dogmas is long. Talk radio host Dennis Prager often says, “The facts of life are conservative”. It is why, as people age, they become more conservative. All this brings us to a potential solution. While knowledge doesn’t necessarily make people more moral, enlightenment can certainly make them more conservative. Because of the virtual monopoly the left has on higher education, what if a handful of wealthy conservatives like the Kochs or Sheldon Adelson donated money for college courses across the nation? They would be free and provide college credit. The major issues would be fairly debated between a liberal professor and a conservative, both making their case with real data on a level playing field. The rabid dogs guarding the p.c. thought bubble of college campuses would essentially be neutered. The charge of indoctrination would be defeated because nobody would be forcing anyone to take the class and there would be a liberal to counteract all the dirty conservative lies (i.e. truths). Government would have to mandate this, of course as one can imagine college administrators saying things like, “over my dead body”. It might be fun, however, to watch academics resort to total hysterics like mock self-immolations and nude sit-ins to prevent the dirty tricks of the right. You know, like honest debate. Fools they may be but they’re smart enough to know the truth is a dangerous thing.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR.

or...

 

LIBERAL LAMENTATIONS

 

The DJ held his finger an inch above the button in nervous anticipation. Then…cheers went up and the bass started thumping. Men kissed each other. Lesbians, well, they were still scowling but inside they were happy. The announcement outside the Supreme Court confirmed it: Gay marriage is the law now. Despite the imminent collapse of Western Civilization, seeing people so blissful is kind of touching. It’s not really their fault, of course. It’s straight people that don’t think much of marriage anymore despite the mountain of evidence for its positive benefits.

 

Most cheering this pyrrhic victory write off conservative anger as mere bigotry. They always do. But most conservatives know that gay marriage probably would’ve happened even without the courts. (Thanks, Millenials!) No, the current frustration isn’t about gay marriage per se; it’s about the rule of law. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the decision might be nice but it has nothing to do with the constitution. Justice Scalia argued, “Who do we think we are?” This argument about process seems petty and officious to the left and the perpetually ignorant (But I repeat myself.) Their aversion to the constitution allows them a simple doctrine: “I like this issue. I don’t like that one. Who cares how it happens?”  

 

Why does this matter? John Adams said, “We are a government of laws, not men”. Terrified of a tyrannical executive, the specter of King George III hovered over the constitutional convention. Media went ballistic over George W. Bush’s signing statements but when Obama stated, “Elections have consequences,” he meant his election, not the groin kicks he took in the mid-terms. Armed with a pen and a King George-sized ego he did the following:

1.        Despite settled law, he tried to sink the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Depository. He was spanked by an appellate court.

2.       Obama tried backdoor amnesty. Spanked again.

3.       Obama unilaterally made 37 illegal changes to Obamacare, one of which subsidized congress after they realized they would be forced to use Obamacare.

4.       Obama appointed the head of the National Labor Relations Board while the Senate was technically in session. Spankedagain.

5.       Forbes provides a good list of other constitutional violations but there are other lists far more exhaustive.

Obama’s lawlessness and extreme partisanship also encouraged an atmosphere where the IRS punished its foes and the EPA rejected 90% of Freedom of Information requests from conservative groups while accepting 90% from liberal groups. Also, though it gained little attention, some of the Solicitor General’s arguments at SCOTUS suggested there really should be no limit to executive authority at all.

 

Conservatives are obsessed with this “Rule of Law”. It seems obvious that without it, we are Mexico. Maybe one reason the left doesn’t much care about this issue is their view of history itself. Woven into the Oval Office rug is a saying: “The arcof the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice”. Intellectuals like Francis Fukuyama and Obama uber-advisor Cass Sunstein believe that history is indeed always progressing. Sounds nice except that it’s, you know, stupid. There are notable examples such as slavery being mostly eradicated thanks to Western civilization which forced the changes on their unwilling colonies around the world. But liberty and prosperity have risen and fallen throughout the ages. Greece invented democracy and then lost it. Rome was at times a republic but succumbed to tyranny.  Its conquering plunged the world into the Dark Ages. Even the Muslim world was once tolerant and innovative. And now? European social democracies are close to bankruptcy, pseudo-totalitarian Russia is ascendant, and the Middle East is even more aflame than usual. The arc of history is more like Chutes and Ladders.

 

Western Europeans are a decaying and morally effete race but American liberals still try to emulate them. Greece’s implosion should be a case study for them. Debt played a major part, of course, but the real reason they’ll soon be eating out of garbage cans and dying because they can’t get their insulin is cultural. The top Greek pastimes are 1. Tax evasion. 2. Work evasion 3. Blaming Germany. Petty corruption is endemic. Everything from traffic tickets to building codes is negotiable so what’s astounding is that anybody could be surprised at this self-imposed calamity.

 

If liberals really wish to destroy the rule of law to get what they want, they should be careful what they wish for. Weather changes. American history is full of religious revivals. One terrorist attack, a war, a handful of scathing government scandals and ‘voila!’ America is conservative again. After LBJ? Nixon. Carter? Reagan. Clinton? Bush. See the pattern? Maybe conservatives should make a list of things that just won’t be enforced when we get power.

 

“Hey! Is that bicycle helmet made from an endangered Desert Tortoise shell?”

 

“Why, yes it is!”

 

“Where can I get one?”

 

“Ebay”.

 

In a brilliant piece, Kurt Shlichter laments how liberals are willing to destroy lives over wedding cakes and flowers. He argues that these scorched-earth cultural battles and the incessant chipping away at the constitution have bottled up conservative anger like never before. And human nature favors payback.

 

Schlichter recalled his experience during the Bosnian war. Rule of law had become primal law. Villages were slaughtered, untold numbers of women raped. God forbid, but if the apocalypse arrives (zombie or regular), one week after 24 hour Chinese food goes away, 25% of urban liberals will be dead. Mormons will do fine because their apocalyptic theology requires expertise at canning and freeze-drying. But “the coastal elites, the ones who brought us helicopter parenting, ‘trigger warnings’ and coffee cups with diversity slogans are uniquely unsuited to a world where force rules instead of law”. The survivors will be the people who always understood that the current façade of civilization hides a human nature that can be animalistic and selfish. Liberals who know how to compost might last longer but when THEY are finally killed and eaten, there will only be one thing left to say: “MORMONS GOT FOOD! GET ‘EM!”  

BALTIMORE BURNING: A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOBS AND THE TYRANNY OF GROUP THINK

30,000 B.C.
October 4^th

The first mob ever.

Tonda can’t find his club. He looks and looks but can’t find it anywhere.

Lana: “Hey, Tonda. I think I saw that funny looking guy over there, Atouk, with a club that looks just like yours.”

Tonda: “What the…?? Get him!”

(Atouk is beaten to death by the clan.)

Lana: “Hey, Tonda. Never mind. It’s over here!”

 

 

Atouk

 

 

Tonda

 Ever since, similar scenes have played out over the centuries until Michael Brown’s step father in Ferguson, Missouri screamed “Burn this bitch down!” after the officer who killed him turned out to be completely innocent. And who can forget the rocks bouncing off the shields of the retreating officers in Baltimore? Anger over another dead black man erupted into more looting, burning, and rioting. Once again, nobody really knew what happened but ignorance seems to be the gasoline that fuels these things. Six officers involved, three of them black, were charged with manslaughter and second degree murder. The evidence? They didn’t get Freddie Gray immediate medical attention when he asked for it. They didn’t beat him or give him a rough ride in the van to knock him around a little. They just didn’t believe that the man with a familiar history of crying wolf and causing drama when arrested was actually hurt. That’s what passes for “murder” when you have an angry mob calling for blood.

In Afghanistan recently, a woman was accused of burning a Koran. She was beaten with sticks and set on fire by a crowd in broad daylight. She, too, was innocent. Eight police officers were among those arrested for the lynching.

 

When Omnipotentblog was in Haiti in 1995, a mob attacked and beat a soccer referee nearly to death. His crime? After the match the referee was exposed by a player as one of the police force that, under the Cedras regime, had brutalized and tortured the community. Except that he wasn’t. The ref had red-carded the player during the match. The player didn’t much like it so he “outed” him to the crowd. The ref was totally innocent but, you know, ignorance is gasoline.

Occasionally mobs get it right, however, as in this instance when a mob in India stormed a jail and beat an accused rapist to death. The victim claimed he offered her $50 to keep her mouth shut. India has suffered a rash of highly publicized rapes recently and rather than ignorance, it was a banned BBC documentary that lit the fire. There is apparently an attitude rampant among Indian cavemen that if a girl is out past nine o’clock, she’s literally a slut and is literally asking to be raped. Literally. Mukesh Singh, awaiting trial for another brutal gang rape and murder stated, “A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy…Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes.” “It was her fault” she died because she fought back. Indeed.

 

 

Feminist of the Year--Mukesh Singh

 

Financial bubbles are a different kind of mob but they are emotion-driven groupthink nonetheless. In the Netherlands in 1637 during the Great Tulip Mania, a bulb called The Viceroy (manly name for a tulip) eventually sold for 14 times the salary of a skilled craftsman. Other things traded for single bulbs that year were 12 acres of land, four tons of beer and 1000 lbs. of cheese. The whole country had gone mad. Housewives, orphans, and mechanics were getting in on the action until someone finally said, “4150 guilders for a *%^#$! tulip? That’s nuts!” The market crashed. Panic ensued. A lot of people were ruined.

 

Much has been written about the stock market crash of 1929 but the cause was essentially the same. The Roaring 20’s put cash in everybody’s hands. Housewives, orphans, and mechanics wanted in on the action. Stock values climbed to absurd heights. Just before the crash, experts were proclaiming a new paradigm, a perpetual period of wealth and prosperity. 

 

 

Michael Lewis, author of “The Blind Side” and “Moneyball” has written several books on the recent crash and big finance. In “The Big Short” and “Boomerang”, he documents how the mortgage, housing and bond industries got so completely out of control. There were a few sharp-minded contrarians who saw the crash coming but the vast majority of financial geniuses thought the fountain of money would flow forever. In retrospect, it should have been obvious but they really didn’t see it coming. Worse, some who tried to warn others were shunned or even fired.  

Are we all slaves to this groupthink? Maybe. Probably. In “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion”, Jonathan Haidt describes the mind as an elephant with a rider. The elephant is our unconscious world view. Haidt’s research shows that we believe that the rider--reason and intellect--is in charge but the elephant goes where it wants. The rider makes up justifications for wherever the elephant decides to go. The implication of this suggests the bulk of humanity is immune to logic and persuasion. History, a most depressing area of study, sadly bears witness. French Revolutionaries, drunk on their own opinions, thought they could create a society completely ruled by science and logic for the first time in history. They created a “Goddess of Reason” to replace the superstitions of the church. During the Reign of Terror, rivers of blood flowed in the streets as mobs cheered the thud of the guillotine. Reason!

If Haidt is right, it means that things like Omnipotentblog are rather useless and uninfluential (sigh). So how do people change their minds? Do they ever? Yes. Haidt’s research shows that no man is an island. It is through relationships that minds are changed. People influence people, not arguments. The notion of a society based on individualism is lovely but it has its natural limits. Collectivist experiments have failed spectacularly but it’s also clear that God created us to travel in packs. Politicians, pastors, and educators, especially conservative ones, should take note. Armed with slick arguments, mounds of data, and the righteousness of being utterly correct, you will convince no one of anything until you convince them you care.