Category: national politics & policies

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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
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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Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture meme moral hazard national politics & policies Popular

Re-Segregation

segregation, bias, right, left, conservative, liberal, water fountains

It is hard not to miss the ideological left’s inconsistency regarding “diversity”: demanding diversity of race and gender, they enforce a monoculture that somehow cannot tolerate intellectual and political competition.

We see this in 

  • higher education, dominated by left-of-center professors and administrators; 
  • in the news media, overwhelmingly filled with Democrats; and 
  • even in the corporate world, especially in HR Departments.

That some areas of life are filled with one type of person, and others with a different kind, should shock no one. But the intolerance of this? It has recently become extra extreme on the left: De-platforming, physical attacks on free speech, censuring and firing employees who dare offer facts inconvenient for progressivism. When a senior Facebook engineer attempted to bring in tolerance and diversity, what should have been a non-story received national attention.*

It amounts to a new segregationism. 

People are segregating more and more in their communities based on income and culture (see Bill Bishop’s The Big Sort) — despite many of these same self-segregators support for Martin Luther King’s civil rights agenda of de-segregation. 

Another current trend is shunning. When it was discovered, the other day, that the In-N-Out burger chain had contributed $25,000 to the California Republican Party, the Twitterverse cooked up something special: “#BoycotInNOut — let Trump and his cronies support these creeps” . . . well, that gem is from the chair of the California Democratic Party.

Apparently, this Democratic Party official is demanding separate eating establishments for progressives and conservatives.

But hey, where would I eat?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Arguably, many of the stories we fret about should be non-stories — as in, “none of our business.” But when some people make others’ business theirs, the stories just will not stay local.

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Categories
ballot access national politics & policies

Party Line, Nudge Nudge

I’m all for government transparency. But transparent politicians?

The office of New Mexico’s Secretary of State sent out a press release, yesterday, announcing that Secretary Toulouse Oliver “is formatting the 2018 general election ballot to once again include the option for ‘straight party’ voting.”

“The more options people have,” Oliver is quoted for explanation, “the easier it is for more eligible voters to participate — and participation is the key to our democratic process.”

This sounds all very nice and good. More options!

But hers was not a conscientious and noble adoption of a choice-promoting democratic notion. The whole point is to nudge voters to not consider a non-R/non-D alternative — perhaps especially in the state’s contest for the U.S. Senate.

In which former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson is making a not-longshot run.

As a Libertarian.

Though the Secretary of State’s office pretends to be for democracy, I have trouble buying that Ms. Oliver’s motives are non-partisan. Ditto Gary Johnson.

“Pushing voters toward straight ticket voting is a worn-out staple of major party incumbents,” says the candidate, “and flies in the face of the reality that the great majority of voters are independent-minded and don’t need or appreciate a ballot that provides a short-cut to partisanship.”

It’s a standard way to gain, as one Democratic State Senator put it, “partisan advantage in low-information elections.”*

Matt Welch at Reason quotes ballot access expert Richard Winger to show how old a gimmick it is. It’s been on its way out, actually (only nine states sport the “feature”), probably because . . . it’s just so obvious a ploy. 

Transparent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

 

* The partisanship is also not appreciated by the Republican Party of New Mexico, which is suing the Secretary of State.

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Categories
education and schooling government transparency national politics & policies Popular Second Amendment rights

A Faulty Gun Report

While statistics are generally unreliable, data about gun crimes often qualify as “anti-data.”

“This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015-2016 school year, ‘nearly 240 schools . . . reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting,’” National Public Radio told us yesterday. Like previous stats we’ve seen cited on social media, that seems unbelievably high. 

And yes, it is — “far higher than most other estimates,” reporter Anya Kamenetz noted. “NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened.”

Were they fibbing? Well, never underestimate the power of incompetence. 

Even that’s harsh: remember that reporting requirements are a burden. And filing bureaucratically-designed forms with the Education Department may be no easier than filing tax returns with the IRS. One of the biggest errors in one school district report resulted from a simple data entry error.

That is not a sophisticated statistical problem, but a simple typo.

Not that there aren’t some difficulties of a not-so-easy-to-understand nature in the story. For one, the degree to which the report was off is said to lie within “the margin of error.”

So, how big was the error, exactly? What’s the number? Well, of the 240 supposed “shootings,” NPR claimed to be “able to confirm just 11 reported incidents.”

Yet the Education Department bureaucrats will only affix an erratum note to their ridiculous report. 

Nor will it be withdrawn or replaced, as it should be.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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