Category: ideological culture

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folly ideological culture moral hazard

Mass Murderers Are Cool?

Walmart, hammer and sickle, USSR, mass murder, socialism, communism, cool

If you have a lick of sense, you wouldn’t emblazon images of Ché Guevara on your chest or your wall — and yet Ché t-shirts and posters have been a pop culture hit for decades now.

He is cool, we are told, because he was ¡Viva la Revolución! and all that.

But it could get worse. You could be emblazoning a hammer and sickle.

Walmart’s website is there to help. Under “men’s sleeveless,” for example, we see an artistic rendering of the old Communist symbol, frankly identified as a “Soviet Hammer and Sickle,” white on black for $14.97.* Walmart files it under “Pop culture.”

Aren’t men’s sleeveless shirts called “wife beaters”? Should we now call them Kulak Killers?

It’s hip to murder millions!

No wonder Lithuania and several other Baltic countries — who suffered greatly under Soviet rule — object. Indeed, many of these countries go too far in actually banning the symbols. Now, they have contacted Walmart requesting a cessation in hawking the offensive merchandise. “You wouldn’t buy Nazi-themed clothing, would you?” Lithuania’s foreign minister Linas Linkevicius tweeted. Or sell such items.

But a few people might. Certainly, a lot of people do buy stuff that others regard as “Nazi.” Sometimes to be “cool”; other times to make a controversial political point.

At the Uhuru Store, Gavin McInnes’s “ProudBoys Official” sells a “Pinochet Did Nothing Wrong” t-shirt for twice the price of Walmart’s Hammer and Sickle shirt — and that surely has annoyed leftists who have seen it.

I’m waiting for the death of cool.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The shirts also come in Navy, Royal and Gray. I guess to get a red commie shirt you have to go for the sleeves.

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Categories
Accountability ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies term limits

The Self-Neutered Congress

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee again demonstrated why Congress’s approval ratings bob about in our toilet bowls. Amid the spectacle of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, one senator spoke not about judicial philosophy, but political reality.

“What’s the hysteria coming from?” asked Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), noting the circus-like atmosphere. His answer? The Supreme Court “is increasingly a substitute political battleground,” because “the Congress has decided to self-neuter.”

Blunt assessment.

“In our system, the legislative branch is supposed to be the center of our politics,” Sasse argued, adding dejectedly, “It’s not.”

Why not? 

“What we mostly do around this body is not pass laws,” he offered. “What we mostly do is decide to give permission to the secretary or administrator of bureaucracy X, Y, or Z to make law-like regulations.” 

“More and more legislative authority is delegated to the executive branch every year. Both parties do it,” explained the senator. “The legislature is impotent, the legislature is weak, and most people here want their jobs more than they really want to do legislative work . . .”

Sasse continued, “The real reason, at the end of the day, that this institution punts most of its power to executive branch agencies is because it’s a convenient way for legislators to be able to avoid taking responsibility for controversial and often unpopular decisions.”

Better to blame the bureaucracy.

“If your biggest long-term thought around here is about your own incumbency,” he said dismissively, “then actually giving your power away is a pretty good strategy.”

But “when Congress neuters itself,” warns the Cornhusker State solon, “it means the people are cut out of the process.”

A powerful case for term limits.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
folly ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Sometimes a Great Moment

Spartacus, Senator Cory Booker, Brett Kavanaugh, hearings, grandstanding, populism

“This is about the closest I’ll probably ever have in my life to an ‘I am Spartacus’ moment,” Corey Anthony Booker said, referring, during last week’s Senate hearings, to his “leakage” of confidential emails from Supreme Court nominee Brett Michael Kavanaugh.

How the mighty have fallen. Senator Booker, when mayor of Newark, seemed an up-and-comer.

Now? A down-and-goer?

“I come from a long line, as all of us do as Americans, of understanding what that kind of civil disobedience is, and I understand the consequences.” It was almost a Br’er Rabbit Briar Patch Moment, performatively suggesting, “whatever you do, don’t censure me.”*

The moment Senator Booker was referring to was from Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, where a group of slaves all claim to be Spartacus, the leader of the rebelling slaves. Booker mostly missed the point of a great movie scene. 

That wasn’t all he missed. The emails he leaked (a.) had in fact been previously released to the public; (b.) he knew this; and (c.) they somehow failed to provide that killer proof of Kavanaugh’s racist love of racial profiling.

Funny, in a cringe-inducing sort of way, as when someone tries to tell a mildly risqué joke at a church social . . . and flubs it.

Booker was not the only one to make a fool of himself at the Senate’s Supreme Court nomination hearings. Though Kavanaugh doesn’t seem so scary, Democrats have gone off the beam, even so far as to engage in ululations of protest.

Why?

I have several theories. But maybe it’s just that they are out of power.

It’s especially hard being out of power when power is what you are all about.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Being seen as the underdog is so persuasive that some will put themselves under a dog.

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Categories
general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard

Until the Fat Lady Offends

Richard Wagner, Israel, censorship, radio, law, offence, offensive, outrage

We live in a new Age of Offense. A whole lot of people make a whole lot of fuss about what other people say and listen to, view and experience.

Then again, some things are enormously offensive.

One of the latest offense-takings takes place in Israel, where a classical music station played music by Richard Wagner. And so of course had to apologize.

The music played was from the final opera in Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Not my cup of tea. Or coffee. Or latte. As those who follow me on Facebook know, I have varied musical tastes, but more classic rock than classical.

Israelis who listen to classical tend to be none too fond of Wagner not because he was an especially bad composer (I’m told he is a “Great”) but because he was very much an anti-Semite, and Hitler’s favorite composer.

“While there is no law in Israel banning the German composer’s works from being played,” The Telegraph informs us, “orchestras and venues refrain from doing so because of the public outcry and disturbances accompanying past attempts.”

Understandable.

Still, some Israelis do like Wagner’s music. But since the radio station is State-owned and -controlled, the Israel Wagner Society’s president’s admonishment that “Whoever doesn’t want to hear the music can always turn the radio off,” doesn’t quite work.

That would apply only were the station owned by the Israel Wagner Society — willing to bear the loss of customers one might expect in Israel.

In America, of course, Wagner is often on the air. 

And those who object . . . turn the dial. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
Accountability general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies Popular too much government

Pulling It Off

Cornel West, socialism, socialist, Venezuela, starvation

Give democratic socialism a chance? 

So says Dr. Cornel West, the “provocative democratic intellectual” who serves as one of eight honorary co-chairs of the Democratic Socialists of America. 

This accomplished Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University, and Professor Emeritus at Princeton, explained to Fox News host Tucker Carlson that socialism’s “fundamental commitment is to the dignity of ordinary people and to make sure they can lead lives of decency.”

“What happened in Venezuela?” Carlson asked West. “They called that democratic socialism. But they don’t have toilet paper and it’s less equal than ever.”

“But part of the problem is though, brother,” the professor responded, “that any time there [have] been attempts by ordinary people to engage in self-determination, they can get crushed by external nations. Look at U.S. policies toward Venezuela [which have] been very, very ugly — Nicaragua in the same way.”

West offered nary a specific to his charge, but was handy stating his conclusion. “So, we have never had a chance to really pull it off,” the “it” being socialism. 

“So it’s only been a movement so far.”*

How convenient.

West implicitly acknowledges that those ruling Venezuela and Nicaragua are practicing socialism. But he won’t hold them or the -ism responsible for the economic collapse, the hunger, the exodus of millions of very desperate “ordinary” citizens, the arbitrary arrests, use of torture and murder of innocent citizens. 

Dr. West, a follow-up question: Just what specific U.S. policy triggered these socialists to murder and torture their own people?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Dr. West also announced that socialism “is not an ‘ism,’ brother.” I think the professor needs to take a course in ism-ology.

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Photo by Gage Skidmore

Categories
ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Ooga Booga Time

moon, earth, flag, Aldrin, Buz,z, tribe, tribalism, patriotism, globalism

Two tribes —

On the left, we see both iconoclasm (razing of Confederate memorial statuary) and a fixation on surface meaning (defending the actions of antifa by fixating on its name: “it just means ‘anti-fascism’!). 

On the right, rallying around the flag and MAGA hats has reached fever heat.

— Welcome to Ooga Booga Time.

In other words: tribalism.

Consider the upcoming movie about Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon. The makers of this movie have made a point of not depicting the raising of the Stars and Stripes above the dust of Mare Tranquillitatis.

Why? Because, says the Canadian actor who plays the part of astronaut Armstrong, the filmmakers wished to present “Armstrong’s success as a ‘human achievement’ rather than a patriotic American victory.”

But it was, factually, very much a Cold War victory. 

What the filmmakers are doing is rewriting history to conform to their cosmopolitan, internationalist tribal mindset.* 

Nothing new, of course — Hollywood has been a propaganda mill for a very long time. Once it aligned itself with Washington, D.C. Not any more. 

Now, apparently, even depicting a central bit of traditional American symbolism in the history being filmed is so stylistically, ceremonially offensive that actors and directors and cinematographers avert . . . our eyes.

“One thing is needful,” philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote. “To add style to one’s character.” Maybe. But when it comes to politics what we need — in Hollywood and Washington and Anytown, USA — is less attention to symbolism. To style.

And more on substance. And truth.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* And, perhaps, to appease the propaganda-minded censors of Chinese government. That’s Ben Shapiro’s take.

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