politics

Benevolent Oppressor: The Emperor of Rome

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One of my pet peeves are histories that make sweeping judgments of a nation or group of people. Hagiography is not history and yet it so easily masquerades as such these days with a generation raised by Zinn’s ilk. There are bad guys and there are good guys and this is a narrative about how the oppressed overcome the oppressors.

Not only is such an approach a recipe for terrible history, it’s boring. Wouldn’t you much rather hear a story about colonials and natives fighting it out, the future unknown and both sides fearful of defeat as they grasp and claw and bash and shoot each other? That’s some Grade A Drama there. Plus it’s true.

But we live in an era of identity-politics, that great crusher of nuance, irony, and fun.

Needless to say, it’s always a treat to read real history and come across lines like the one below: Continue reading →

Corporations: Just Like You And Me, Except When They’re Not

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Image result for occupy wall street

I’m no expert on international business.

But there seems to be an inherent illogical in the left’s approach to taxation and corporations.

“Big business does not paying its fair share!” “Income inequality!” “The wealth gap has grown massively!” “Occupy Wall Street!”

Crony capitalism is certainly a problem and oddly enough Donald Trump of all people rode the populist wave of discontent into the White House (his opponent, meanwhile, couldn’t seem to convince people that she wasn’t still in bed with America’s kleptocracy). As the WSJ pointed out the other day, Trump’s enemy is not globalism, but mercantilism in which corporations lobby government acquire subsidies, trigger bailouts, and increase regulations that only their army of lawyers can comply with and subsequently hamstring competitors (the little and middle guy), thereby increasing their coffers, and only then doling out the incidental sops to the rest of us.

Continue reading →

“Wait, You Voted For Trump?!”: The Left Begins To Listen

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Enemies share a smoke

The Left really did a number on themselves. This was not supposed to happen.

The thing is, as I’ve written elsewhere, while conservatives at their best tend to view their liberal foes sympathetically (healthcare for all isn’t a bad idea, but you can’t implement it that way), the Left at its best views the right as either stupid or sinister. The Left’s contempt was there before the election. Their terror is here now that Stupid has won.

As the dust settles, Trumpians begin to raise their hands to be counted and conversations have begun. The Left is still mad, but they’re beginning to listen, a bit, I think. Still, as one liberal coworker put it to me after I gave a rousing defense Trump: “How are we friends?” Amazing what being stuck in a carpool with someone ten hours a week will do to a person.

But that’s not a flippant aside. It’s the point: as a conservative, I’m friends with numerous liberal colleagues and on social media I interact with even more folks from the Left. These friendships and acquaintances have a way of breaking down stereotypes and making people listen to the other side. My coworkers and I laugh in the car and over beers about work, students, school administration, and culture. I’m conversant in their lingo and know their concerns and political passions. We talk about politics, but I’m also diplomatic. Part of this is self-preservation (no need to rock the boat too much). Part of it is my desire give them a window into the other side. Part of it is that I can’t help myself (you know, before going off on Trump’s deportation schemes, Obama has deported more people than any other president?). And they listen, sort of. Either way, at the end of the day, we know how to put those differences aside and laugh about that obnoxious kid from Brazil that plagues us all. Continue reading →

Build That Wall: America v. Castro

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Freedom

 

Ding, dong, the witch is dead!

Keeping Things in Perspective

I’ve read a number of editorials reflecting on the life and times of Fidel Castro. They’ve fallen into two camps: moral euphoria at the death of a dictator and a recitation of his crimes; or, the mealy-mouthed moral equivalency game played by those on the left (see Obama, Trudeau, Junker, Corbyn et al.).

To be clear, Castro was a bad guy and any attempt to cover over his crimes by appealing to his good intentions is the sort of deplorable, high-minded elitism that average Joe sees for what it is: baloney.

Then again, we ought to keep Castro’s crimes in perspective: he was a two-bit thug who caused a great deal of trouble for his people and sparked fires in South America and Africa for decades. Given the chance, he may have been a monster on the scale of Mao and Stalin, but even in his own country his tyranny never reached such diabolical heights. He only brushed with global significance on the occasion of the Cuban Missile Crisis—a scheme driven by his boss in Moscow and not even of his own making.

Further, it should be added that Castro’s death is not “the end of an era.” Castro had long been out of circulation, a ghost of a man, and Cuba still labors and suffers under an entrenched, kleptocratic dictatorship created by the late Fidel. We will have more of business as usual.  Continue reading →

Breathing Easy: The Morning After the Election

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Image result for norman rockwell

They’re dancing now.

 

The fever pitch of this election has only started to abate. As people realize that Trump isn’t the second coming of Hitler, tempers and passions will cool. The pessimist in me thinks it will be, in the end, a return to business as usual. The optimist in me expects the economy to roar and the conservatives to lock down the Supreme Court for a generation. If we can avoid stupid wars, that would be nice too.

I’m not that old. This is the first presidential campaign I’ve really paid any attention to (the last one I was happily removed overseas). But that’s where reading books and talking to older people provides perspective.

Older people.

There’s this couple I’m close to. They’re educated conservatives. They’re good people, and as long as I’ve known them, they’ve been peaceable folk. The last eight years of Obama, though, knocked the stuffing out of them. They didn’t like his policies or his condescending, arrogant tone. Hillary was as bad or worse. The last eight years plus the prospect of another four put them on edge like I’ve never seen.

Continue reading →

Decius’ Flight 93: Trump and the Failure of Conservatism

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Image result for flight 93

On first reading, I fist-pumped my way through Decius’ grand smashing of the sleepy, next-election-we-will-win, post-Reagan conservatism. On second reading, I was a bit more circumspect. Here are my two cents.

Rhetorically, the piece begins with shocking metaphors: charge the cabin of the hijacked plane; Russian roulette with a Hillary semi-automatic as opposed to spinning the cylinder with Trump. It’s Trumpian in its bluster, and anyone who takes it overly seriously has no sense of humor or hyperbole. How long before people begin to get it? He’s New Yorker. That’s how they talk.

That said, the article resonated with me. Continue reading →

The Politics of Victimization: Trump Beats The Left At Their Own Game

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Image result for Trump smile

A recent hack from Gucifer 2.0 has revealed that the DNC has intentionally sought to minimize the influence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the Democratic Party. In an effort to contain the virulence of these activists, the DNC has recommended that its operatives and politicians listen politely to the activists but limit their influence. The memo also instructed candidates to advocate policies that “rebuild the relationship between police and community” by exploring ways to reform police training and limit abuse. The position clearly leans towards the “cops are guilty” mentality, but also demonstrates the DNC’s unwillingness to let their radicals get out of line.

This, of course, prompted a reply from BLM: “We are disappointed at the DCCC’s placating response to our demand to value all Black life. Black communities deserve to be heard, not handled. People are dying.”

No surprise there.

And of course, this underscores Trump’s message: the Democrats don’t care about African Americans, they just care about the votes of African Americans. Consider the fact that for decades the Democrats have controlled some of America’s biggest cities and African Americans still languish in the ghetto. Something isn’t working and Trump’s saying as much. While the liberal media has gone ballistic over this, they refuse to countenance the fact that they, not hick Republicans from the midwest, bear responsibility for the state of the inner cities. African Americans, more than anyone else, have suffered in countless ways over the past decades under Democrat rule and now under the Obama administration (the slow “recovery” has hurt them more than most). If a black Democrat in the Oval Office can’t help his own people out, why not take a shot with the billionaire? Oh, and the alternative? Hillary: a woman whose husband oversaw the slashing of welfare benefits and a dramatic increase in black incarceration. And yet the Democrats still maintain a chokehold on the black vote. The irony: before emancipation the Democrats owned the black vote (3/5s per slave) but now they completely own the black vote (one whole vote per person!).

But Trump actually wants to change that and he’s forcing the Republicans, who have for too long disregarded the black vote as not worth the effort, to actually acknowledge the barriers that confront African Americans. Trump is insisting that the GOP stop talking about abstract freedom, and limited government as the panacea for everything, and actually make a case for how they will make things better for Americans, including minorities. Truth is he has always talked about making America as a whole great again, now he’s just playing the left’s game and emphasizing minorities who are part of that thing called America.*

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Cultural Appropriation: You Don’t Want To Go Down That Road

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This got my goat the other day.

Maybe it was because my sister sported dreads for a time. For the record, I was against this style choice (the ex’s opposition was based on opposition to cultural appropriation, mine from a sense of aesthetic and biology as her hair wasn’t wired for it).  But if anyone gave her crap for it, I’d give them what for.

The meme above doesn’t make sense at a number of levels, and frankly, the creator undermines him or herself. Continue reading →

SJW Script Rape: GoT Edition

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By all means, let’s have more of this.

Game of Thrones has created its fair share of controversy, but the strong cast of female characters gives it sufficient cover from the Social Justice Warriors (SJWs). For the record, I found the first season of the show compelling, but with the exception of last season, I’ve found the show pretty boring as characters say and do the same things over and over again.

But really, did you think GoT could escape the SJWs completely? De Tocqueville wrote that one of the main attributes of a democracy is the incessant desire for equality. And the closer and closer you get to equality the more shrill the proclamations against microscopically real and perceived inequalities become.  So the complaint: there isn’t enough rape in GoT—that is, male rape. This is ridiculous and indicative of the SJWs boorish style of criticism.

As reported by the Libertarian Republic:

Continue reading →

NYC-NYPD: Busted Open Container

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January. Cold. Upper West Side. On the stoop of my penal colony, I smoke my cigarette and swig beer from a plastic bag-clad can of beer.

I got my mother on the phone (she doesn’t know yet of my exile) and we are chatting—about what I don’t recall. This is a normal night for me. Normal, that is, until two cops come sauntering down the street towards me. There’s a slight change in their direction and now they’re headed my way.

“Mom,” I say, “I’m going to have to call you back. Two cops are coming my way.” Click. I suppose that’s not the most reassuring way to tell your mother good-bye.

“Hello, sir,” goes the big burly officer with a crew cut. “Hello,” I respond pleasantly. “Is that your beer can, sir?” he asks. I pause, amused, and glance down at the plastic bag. I’m in a good mood (just enough to drink) and a bad liar. So I cop to it with an oh-shucks-you-got-me expression: “Yeah, that’s mine.” The woman with him asks me for my ID and I comply: “Sir, we just need to see if you have any outstanding warrants.” “Ok,” I say with a chuckle, knowing nothing will come up. Continue reading →