Claiming Scalps With Fake News

When the Left decide they want to eliminate someone from relevance in the socio-political sphere, they use fake news. Here are the steps they use to destroy someone:

1) Spin something out of nothing

Start with a wisp of something that can be spun into something BIG. Spin it in such a way that it will predictably whip up an emotional storm. Best to:

1. Use a word that is an un-deconstruct-able flashpoint, one that can't be argued against without the arguer losing his position in society (e.g., pedophilia).
2. Label from the standard Leftist list: e.g., racist, sexist, homophobe. 
3. Ensure there be no actual, factual basis for the charge, that it's been spun into something completely, dimensionally out-of-touch with all reality.

In the latter phase of the scalping, when the emotional froth is winding down and cooler heads try to unravel the initial accusation, it is critical that they have no way of taking it apart factually—because no factual basis exists for it. With absolutely no factual basis to support the charge, denials add weight to it.

2) Foment an hystericalized tsunami of fake news

Whip up a frenzy in the public using the fake news media network—otherwise known as the Leftist Media Bloc—to create a fait accompli destructive force that not only can't be stopped. Make it appear so massively powerful, and moving at such a speed, that no thinking person would try to stop it.

3) Claim your scalp

By the time the hysterical tsunami recedes, and the flopping fish and sand and debris do not add up to a substantial basis for the initial charge—the job, position in society, and life contentment of the target has been irremediably destroyed. What was created without a factual basis cannot be turned back by checking facts, putting things into perspective, and considering the actual harm the target was guilty of. 

4) Repeat

How I Went from #NeverTrump to #TrumpPossible

I was #NeverTrump, mainly because he's not really conservative. His natural instincts are all Leftist: trade protection, infrastructure investment, using government power against critics, etc.

What appear to be his conservative traits are actually those of right-wing Leftist dictators, e.g. nationalism. Starting with his seeming love for Putin and his tactics, he has a thing for Leftist strongmen, perhaps seeing himself in that mold.

Then there's the rest of the Russian stuff.

As Election 2016 progressed, however, a hopeful (necessary?) three-phase process materialized in my mind: 1) Stop Clinton; 2) Check Trump; and, 3) Get to Pence.

1) Stop Clinton

This necessity became clearer with the growing certainty that Hillary Clinton was an IMPOSSIBILITY. Perhaps, it occurred to me, this "orange-haired Jesus" was sent to us to stop her.

Could anyone else have done it? Unclear. He did. Step one accomplished.

2) Check Trump

Next step was to check the elected Trump. The checking of a president should happen naturally with the system of checks and balances designed into the Constitution. Media check the president. His own team checks him. Impeachment proceedings check the president, as well as what's written in the 25th amendment.

The "A"-word can certainly check the president in a big way, but even to discuss it borders on the illegal. Don't think it's not on everyone's mind, though.

3) Get to Pence

Whatever natural terms Trump might serve, Pence has an excellent chance of being his party's nominee to replace him the next time around—and he has a good chance of becoming the next president. History shows vice presidents often rise to the top spot, but not so much via the ballot box.*

They get there more often when the president is removed for some reason.

Perhaps the president becomes unfit for office due to illness or other reasons (see above). Maybe he decides he's had enough. The vice president is first-in-line for succession, and Mike Pence is that person at the moment.

And he's a true conservative, one who's served in Congress—and as governor of a state.

The first step has been accomplished, and the second is underway. Trump's team, especially, seem to be having a checking effect on him.

The final step of getting to Pence is a question mark, of course. With a president who has a sometimes mysterious hold on much of the American voting public, who can really say when he might let go of power?

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*the vice president has been nominated 100 percent of the time in the five elections since 1960 that have had at least one vice president running (Gore/Quayle were both 2000), and a vice president won these elections 40 percent of the time; the close and controversial Nixon (1960) and Gore (2000) elections, if gone the other way, would up the win percentage bigly.

Harmful Racism

An accusation of racism these days is equivalent to banishment from society. To be banished from society someone needs to have committed significant harm. Thoughts and speech about ethnic or racial traits do not by themselves cause significant harm.

They do not qualify as harmful racism.

Does everything qualify as harmful racism?

Racism that causes actual harm occurs when one's views on the color of skin—and how it affects human traits and behavior—substantially affects another's ability to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.

Thoughts on behavior of those with differing skin colors—perhaps drawn from a lifetime of experience and observation—do not by themselves qualify as harmful racism. Comments that result from such thoughts and opinions do not either.

Humor based on ethnicity or skin color is not harmful racism by itself. Making comments about positive traits of those of different races—blacks are better athletes, Indians are better mathematicians, French are better cooks, Italians are better lovers—do not qualify as harmful racism.

Harmful racism requires harm

Thoughts, words, and jokes that incite something ugly—mob action, violence—qualify as harmful racism. When thoughts, speech, and jokes lead to someone not being able to capitalize on an economic opportunity—getting a job, advancing in a career, etc.—that qualifies as harmful racism. If someone is unable to pursue happiness—by living in a certain neighborhood, sending his kids to a certain school, or spending his money where he wants to—that qualifies as harmful racism.

If a man cannot receive the best healthcare available for himself, or his family, because of his race that is harmful racism.

Harmful racism requires power to harm

Most people who engage in thoughts, comments, or jokes that deal with matters of ethnicity or race cannot cause harmful racism. That's because most people lack the ability to cause substantial harm to others. Only those with power of life, liberty, and happiness over others can actually be guilty of harmful racism; only they have the ability to cause substantial harm.

Someone in a position of power to cause harm to others, who makes comments that deal with matters of ethnicity or race—but whose actions benefit (or do not harm) those he's commenting about—is not guilty of harmful racism.

Freedom of speech releases racial tensions

Suppressing ethnic humor, comments on race, or even thoughts related to differences between people of different races and ethnic backgrounds may lead to substantial harm to those of different races. When such thoughts, words, and humor are suppressed it can build up to something harmful.

Allowing people to think, speak, and joke freely—the marks of a free society—can lead to a lessening of racial tensions, and changes in racial thinking. Freedom of thought and speech gives others a chance to: a) discover what people are actually thinking around them; b) engage in meaningful, helpful discussions; and, c) laugh about racism—thereby releasing some of the potentially dangerous social and political tensions that surround the issue.

Transgender Bathroom Use

One of the horrible truths reality will present you with if you decide to go through with a sex-change operation is that the entire rest of the world may not immediately adjust to your new gender status. Your life may get a bit more complicated on various fronts, one of which is bathroom use.

If you thought you could undergo such a complete changeover in your life without suffering some consequences, or that others would be so sensitive to your every need that you would never encounter difficulties, you were either suffering great delusions—or were not properly informed or briefed before you began your transition to another sex.

As it is, when you go to a public place, and are worried about bathroom use, you have a number of responsible options you can employ:

1. Hold it in—this might work if you have a large bladder (or intestine), especially if you do a little planning (see following option).
2. Go before you get there—use the facilities where you live, or somewhere between where you're coming from and the public place you're going to. Convenience stores, gas stations, shopping malls tend to have single-person restrooms; it's your job to find and use them.
3. Use a single-person restroom—many public places have single-person restrooms for anyone to use, and if you're the only one in there and you lock the door behind you, life goes on.
4. Use a restroom reserved for those with special needs—what used to be called handicapped bathrooms, or those set aside for disabled people, are designed to be used by all those with "special needs". You now qualify in this category: you have special needs and may now use Federally-mandated public restrooms.
5. Ask someone to stand outside—a time-honored tradition for special bathroom use, one that's been used by parents, coworkers, and friends since time began, is to have someone stand outside the facility to fend off other users.

Of course, you could always use the facilities as anyone else would, by doing your best impression of a person of the proper gender for the facility, not intentionally drawing undue attention to yourself, being as unobtrusive as possible, and not making anyone uncomfortable around you.

For the most part, nobody's paying too much attention to you (sorry). You're not being excluded, you're barely being noticed. Your not being marginalized. Your rights are not being infringed. It's just that few even care you're there—if you behave like a responsible person.

So you don't need to make a Federal case of it, create a victimhood movement, accuse the rest of us of intolerance and bigotry, or burn the whole world down around you. You can instead behave in a responsible manner, take your life in your own hands, and make the best of things.

You were the one who decided to change your gender, adjusting to the world as it is now on you.

SOURCE: "Bathroom Bigotry", The Catechesis of Caroline; February 25, 2017.

When We Vote Our Conscience

When we vote our conscience . .

We best enact our civic duty . .

We stay true to ourselves by finding the candidate who best matches our values—and what we want for our country.

We elect those most committed to protecting our Constitution and individual rights . .

The U.S. Constitution and our individual rights are what make our American experience special and unique in the world. They are what's most precious to our existence here and they must be preserved.

We ensure the system designed by the Founding Fathers functions to greatest benefit . .

The U.S. Constitution was designed with a distrust of government—and of those who might work it to their own benefit. As the first modern representative democracy in the world, a system of checks and balances was considered necessary to counterbalance government power, while also protecting the majority from dangerous minorities.

Only by voting in those most committed to protecting our Constitution do we make this system work to protect us and our country.

We give ourselves—and our nation—the best chance of surviving our social and political situation today.

If we vote our conscience, and not for somebody solely to keep somebody else out of office, we best let the system work as intended.

Voting freely for alternative candidates at the presidential level—without fear of the electoral consequences—increases the chance that no candidate from a major party receives the number of votes in the Electoral College, thereby sending the election into the House of Representatives. Our national representatives then have an opportunity to vote their conscience.

If we elect those most committed to preserving the Constitution to other offices—our national representatives and senators—they can best sponsor and support articles of impeachment should the elected president commit "high crimes and misdemeanors" or otherwise prove unfit for office.

What's Missing

So much was missing from the October 3, 2010 New York Times (NYT) “Sunday Opinion” section that what was left out outdid even what was unjustifiably there.

Non-Leftist Viewpoints

In the last month of an historic political campaign—the story of which is mainly that of a resurgent, patriotic energy swamping the Left—we find no opinion in the Sunday section to counterbalance Leftist spew. With conservative NYT columnist David Brooks so eloquently smashing the Insurgent-Right-Wingers-Threaten-Republican-Party¹ “narrative”² on the same page recently, perhaps it's understandable. Without such a healthy counterbalance this time it's left to feeble minds like mine to highlight what's missing.

Explanation of Terms

Those of us who don't spend our time developing wildly perverse theories to make life fit acceptably into our own beliefs might need a little help understanding what these guys are talking about. Especially as they use inscrutable terms they seem to make up as they go along. What the heck, for example, I ask Thomas L. Friedman, is the “radical center”? a “tortured compromise”? a “super-consensus”?³

Frank Rich spends his entire “The Very Useful Idiocy of Christine O'Donnell” trying to get us to see what a “useful idiot” is (presuming that Republican operatives knew all along). This at least gives us a chance at understanding the oxymoronic term.⁴ But what about “conservative grandee”? a “phantom front organization”? or “corporate pork”?⁵

In a year of unprecedented anti-Left political energy upsetting the entire electoral and party system—when the Wall Street Journal, for example, actually reports on this remarkable upsurge as an actual historical movement made up of actual concerned Americans—we call this "fair news coverage".

But when The New York Times unabashedly anoints The Great One Who Would Save Us All as representing the Second Coming, along with the rest of the Leftist Media Bloc, all but ignoring responsible coverage of competitive campaigning and viewpoints—unless it could be presented like foam out of the mouth of a rabid dog—we call it "mass propaganda" (which indeed it was).

Logical Support

With a piece titled “Third Party Rising”, especially one starting out in Ancient Rome, we might expect at least cursory reference to a few items that could aid understanding of the phenomenon of multiple parties. Some mention of England's experience, both historical and recent. Perhaps even our own history, together with a discussion of at least the larger one or two of a fairly long list of third parties that have been a part of the U.S. political scene down through the years. What about our own experiments with third parties has soured our own hopes in that direction?

But the most glaring omission, one that even the most casual reader will catch, is the large number of Americans identifying themselves as “sympathetic” to the Tea Party message.⁶ Might not an article entitled "Third Party Rising" name this group as the potential spring bed for this “third party rising”, “one definitely big enough to impact the election's outcome”? Especially considering that's obviously what prompted the writer to take up his pen on this topic to begin with?

What America needs, Mr. Friedman says, is a third party to “look Americans in the eye and say:

'These two parties are lying to you. They can't tell you the truth because they are each trapped in decades of special interests.'"

Isn't that what the Tea Party is doing?

The Tea Party has already proved itself big enough to affect the outcome of this election in a big way. Yet Mr. Friedman apparently sees no future for it, only to introduce “two serious groups”—apparently new-on-the-scene—that are supposedly developing "serious" third parties.

The Tea Party may not seem serious enough to the author, but it must seem serious as a heart attack to those sure-lock candidates of both parties it's brushing aside like so much debris.

Leftist Names

Leftist billionaire, George Soros

Amidst all the names of billionaires, supposedly so hidden behind their “phantom front organizations”, and all the names of the rightly outraged people⁷ and politicians who have the nerve to utilize the American political system to challenge those who seem to be destroying the country's greatness so very quickly, the only Leftist name we find on first reading is Bill Maher's (so appropriate). George Soros, darling billionaire of the Left who set the entire political-giving pattern now being decried by the Left, is missing from the list.

We do find one reference to The Great One Who Would Save Us All:

“However much these corporate contributors may share the Tea Party minions' antipathy toward President Obama, their economic interests hardly overlap.”

This is the principal Leftist whose policies, attitudes, and words have created this political rebellion throughout the nation. He happens to preside over us all. Surely he merits more than a single reference to how much this patriotic group detests him. What about extolling his great accomplishments in office.

Mr. Rich has no interest in building anyone up, apparently, or saying anything positive about anyone--not even the Leftists who are causing all the problems to begin with.

Biggest Thing Missing

The most important thing missing from these columns is what is missing, it might be said, from any Leftist political or social commentary.

The entire premise of “The Very Useful Idiocy of Christine O'Donnell”, written by The New York Time's flagship columnist, is that American billionaires—so careful to work the system without being seen to—willingly and knowingly promote an idiot politician as a front to their activities. This is why, he claims, the crafty likes of Karl Rove withdraws his criticism of her, and why these super-smart movers and shakers continue to support her. Rather than promoting someone who can actually take power, they use this loss-leader so they can continue to operate in the dark.

Such people only behave in the manner described in a Leftist nightmare—not in the Real World where the rest of us live.

We may be witnessing the genesis of a brilliant new political tactic. Let's call it “billionaire baiting”. An interesting game to be playing, especially with The New York Times on the financial ropes—not able to spew raw political propaganda and get enough people to pay good money for it. One of these attacked tycoons might go Murdoch and buy out the entire operation thereby redressing this miserable misapplication of resources.

What seems to be lacking in The New York Time's finest mind is perhaps the most important thing of all:

A Dose of Reality.

Definition of Idiocy

With so much emphasis on "idiocy" in Mr. Rich's column, he might have included a definition of the term. Here's what Merriam-Webster says it means . .

1. —usually offensive: extreme mental retardation
2. —something notably stupid or foolish

It lists synonyms as: absurdity, asininity, bêtise, fatuity, foolery, foppery, folly, imbecility, inanity, insanity, lunacy, stupidity.⁸ 

With all this in mind, we might add a third definition for "idiocy" . .

3.—Frank Rich's October 3, 2010 column on "useful idiocy" in the once-great New York Times.

It must be a "useful idiocy", that of Mr. Rich, as somebody is able to justify continuing to pay him for it. I'm thinking he plays an important role in the Left, that of Useful Idiot: he provides the salve, by means of his idiotic theories, for Leftists unable to face the facts of human existence and the truth of human behavior.

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1. "The myth of the tea party backlash: There is no evidence that the tea party will drive independent voters to the Democrats" by David Brooks, Sunday, September 19, 2010.
2. The Left's favorite word, followed closely by "notion", and more recently “conflate”.
3. While Mr. Friedman's explaining his terms, perhaps he could tell us what he means by “the worst existential crisis in our economy and environment in a century”. We can dope out “two-party duopoly”, but what self-respecting columnist would use such a clumsily redundant phrase borrowed from economics?
4. The term originally applied to Soviet sympathizers in Western countries—held in contempt by the Soviets, but being used cynically by them.
5. While Mr. Rich is giving us an explanation of his terms, he might also tell us what a "Roger Ailes re-education camp" is and why Karl Rove would ever be sent to one. Could he also please tell us what it means to receive an “outsize cut of the red ink”? [The only politically non-aligned opinion on the page, Arthur S. Brisbane's “The Public Editor” piece, perhaps offers them a solution to their apparent making-it-up-as-we-go-along syndrome. The authors could give us explanations in the unlimited space of the NYT website as Brisbane suggests for scholarly attributions.]
6. Fifty two percent (52%) of Americans "feel sympathy" with the tea party movement. SOURCE: "Big Government is Not the Issue" by Steven Kull; August 19, 2010.
7. Referring to his fellow newspaper columnist as "blogger Michelle Malkin" certainly lacks professional courtesy, while perhaps indicating professional jealousy (she at least has the ability to see things as they really are without developing loopy theories to make the world and its people work according to her own preconceived notions).
8. And "related terms" as: absurdness, craziness, foolishness, inaneness, madness, senselessness, witlessness; buffoonery, monkeyshine(s), shenanigan(s), tomfoolery; drivel, humbug, nonsense, twaddle; blunder, bungle, flub, goof, howler.