Author: White Whale

someone who gets rich and then gets into politics; or someone who gets into politics and THEN gets rich? As Harry Truman said, you can only get rich in politics by being crooked.

Most rich people, like Soros, Buffet, Schmidt, and Bezos, are content to buy influence. Her blatant and shameless hypocrisy notwithstanding, Hillary would have much less money without Citizens United. It will never be overturned because it is good law. She just fulminates against it because it sounds good. Money in politics has been very, very good to her.

Trump is in this for two reasons only; he sees a screwed up country and believed he can fix it; and he has always sought out challenges.

I was tempted to say he likes attention, but getting dragged through the mud by every network on the planet is not exactly a good time.

Most cultures, for most of history on most of the planet, have depended on relatively static notions of proper behavior which were enforced by shaming and the threat of banishment. You are born into a family of a certain status and you are expected to behave in certain ways. Men act like men and eomen like women. There is no “finding yourself”, except perhaps on rites of passage and religious rituals. You have sn assigned place and are both expected to act in appropriate ways, and able to count on others doing the same. You are enmeshed in a network of reciprocality.

What true Liberalism attempts is a greater freedom to explore, a greater diversity of opinion, a wider range of tolerance. Shame is greatly reduced as exploration is rewarded.

But in recent years shaming has returned in the form of speech codes. Comply or die may as well be the slogan.

What should be our most culturally advanced institutions, our universities, find themselves re attempting something very old, and very primitive.

it occurs to me that we could refer to pricing diversity or price complexity, where a Command Economy would consist in pricing homogeneity.

It seems to me there are only two ways to build genuine self esteem in kids: 1) knowing them and loving them sincerely as they are; and 2) giving them regular opportunities to fail without censure. A chance to fail is also of course a chance to succeed, and self evidently guaranteed successes are not successes at all. Everyone knows this.

You build a sense of safety, then send them “out there” in very small circles when they are young, and  as they feel more and more confident the circles get bigger and bigger, until one day they have happy lives of their own, and they love you but don’t need you, even if they know you are always there if something extraordinary should happen.

This is the mindset of freedom, of growth, of personal and moral autonomy. It is the opposite of the grotesqueries seemingly infesting so much of our society. No wonder horror movies are so popular: there is something horrible I how we parent.

Go buy a lottery ticket or ask that girl or boy out, because magic is happening: I am agreeing with Michael Moore.  Watch this video: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/10/michael-moore-voting-for-trump.php

Here is the thing: ordinary Americans know the system is broken, but they are given a choice of two poisons as remedy: the Republican poison or the Democrat poison.  This is the way the people operating the system designed it, what they wanted: they get both the illusion of choice, and the possibility of the rhetoric of change–such as that falsely used by Obama–but no matter which lever you pull, they are in charge.  They win.  And they don’t give a fuck for anybody that can’t afford a $100,000/year plus country club membership.

Donald Trump is Choice C: neither of the above.  He is not really a Democrat, nor is he really a Republican.  His policies would have been obvious to both parties in the 1960’s.  They would not have been objectionable, and he would not have been called a racist, because common sense had not had nails driven into it for a generation at that time.

No, as Moore says, and as I have said in the past, he is the middle finger to EVERYBODY WHO GOT US IN THIS FUCKING MESS.  It’s not a partisan issue: both parties EVEN NOW are guilty.  Democrats perhaps more than Republicans, but look at the Republican Congress.  Look at Paul Ryan.  Look at Romney and McCain refusing to endorce their OWN candidate.  What person who understands loyalty does that?  What person who wants to keep two career criminals out of the White House does that?

Trump has managed to turn the fact that everybody hates him into an asset.  It is beautiful to see.

Vote Trump Train November 8, and we WILL see change.  This guy has a heart, he has brains, he has vision, and he has balls.  You can count on it.

These are the machines being used in about 16 States.  George Soros has a strong financial interest–and thus presumably some control–in this company.

I found this: http://www.philstar.com/opinion/2015/06/17/1466775/smartmatic-discredited-eu-us-even-venezuela

“Therefore, the only time Smartmatic has participated in an electoral process in the USA, it was deemed a disaster, and in the ensuing probe, it refused to collaborate with US authorities. 

I found this too: http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/18/soros-connected-company-provides-voting-machines-in-16-states/ 

For the life of me, I do not understand how anyone could be insane enough to completely eliminate paper ballots.  The way we do it around here is we fill in ovals, like the tests you took when you were a kid, and it is scanned into a machine, which I think tabulates it then and there.  It is electronic, and efficient, but if you want to later verify the votes, you have primary documents.  And we show voter ID also.  They have a list of registered voters, you tell them your  name, show them your ID, then you put your signature on the line.  This has multiple safeguards in it.  

Just putting it out there.

I have spoken before of a forest as a metaphor for a complex system.  The trees–of all sorts–and lichens, and moss, and squirrels, and grasses, and everything else come over some time to form a harmonious whole.
We speak of an eco-SYSTEM.  They all go together.

This differs tremendously from, say, a cherry orchard, which needs work and care to flourish.  It is not inherently resilient. It was brought into being artificially, and perishes or diminishes if they care goes missing for too long.  That, or it becomes a complex system, as other plants and animals slowly take hold.

Wanting a single ideas to dominate any sort of discourse is the equivalent of killing everything in a forest but one single species.  You have the one thing, pristine, pure, but it cannot live on its own.  It must be continually refreshed, fed, watered, cared for.

People who are fed only one idea because weak and dependent.  They are not resilient.  They require constant care.

One can make philosophical cases here and there, but psychologically and sociologically what is happening at our colleges is profoundly unhealthy.  It is breeding sick people who will suffer all their lives with their lack of agency, lack of independence, and their inbred infantilism.

Bad philosophy makes bad people.

At root, philosophy is simply at attempt to think clearly, to clarity what is complicated and confusing.  It is the intermediate step between one emotion and another, as I have put it in the past.  It is necessary, but soluble.

We cannot not philosophize.  We can merely do it competently and consciously, or incompetently and by assumption and rote habit.

If you say: “I don’t want to think so much that it confuses me”  you have established a criterion for your behavior–whatever confuses me is bad–and a corresponding and logical course of action, not thinking.

If you way “there are no universal truths” you have stipulated a very unlikely universal truth.  Certainly, some things seem to be true most of the time and this is obvious to all.  Banning murder seems to work in most societies, at least intra-tribally.  I can’t guarantee the sun will rise tomorrow, but I’d bet everything I own on it.

And I was thinking about safe spaces.  What philosophy underlies these?  It seems to me to be a combination of magical thinking and corrupted philosophy.  What they are NOT is sound psychology.  A sense of safety can be needed to help heal trauma, but they are not doing therapy in these places.  What they are doing is reducing the resilience and emotional strength of young people in ways likely to breed a demand for social control, and violence against dissidents.

What a safe space IS, is a sacred space for holy Victims.  It is a place to worship them; it is a necessary temple for the Cult of the Victim.  It is a place for them to go and be feted and worshipped, and for votaries to be exposed to their Gods.

But a sound philosophy would ask: what sort of society do we want, and why?  What are appropriate purposes for human existence?  What is the importance of psychological health?  When we say Individualism, what do we mean, and what can we say about this creed?  What is good about it, what bad, and what interesting, and how do we define all these terms?

Self evidently, I have worked hard on my Goodness Movement website to develop a coherent, useful, simple, but adaptable philosophy.  I have defined my terms and purposes, and pondered my means and principles.

Most college students never even attempt such work.  They are handed a prepackaged philosophy concocted by lobotomized and hateful anti-humanitarians, and punished if they question it, or even attempt an alternative of their own.

I seem to be doing better in recent days with human stupidity and insanity.  I did not create it.  Trying to abolish intellectual and emotional dysfunction is about as smart as trying to banish grass or moths.  I might make some progress here and there, but the weight of the whole thing is vastly beyond my meager capacity.  I have realized I need to learn that not every wrong needs to be righted, that most people WILL NOT LISTEN to even the best arguments, framed as positively as I am capable.  No, they are looking in the mirror, thinking about their selfies, and staring at their phones.  This is not my fault, and not my problem.

This world will obviously pass me by at some point.  I will be gone. I have tried to do good, but the obsessive part of it is gradually falling away, which is good.  My own reality testing has not been what it could have been, but I think I can argue with cause that it is getting better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEQvsK5w-jY&feature=player_embedded

The evidence that Hillary broke Federal campaign law is in my view indisputable.  Does anyone expect anyone in our government to do the right thing and launch an investigation?  Do you expect any arrests?

And I suspect that anyone caught violating campaign law is likely rendered ineligible to hold office.  It would be a logical concomitant of the law, a logical next step to prevent repeat violations.

And as Trump rightly noted, the mere fact that Hillary plainly destroyed evidence after receiving a subpoena should ALONE prevent her from holding higher office.  But Comey is a dirty cop, as they say, clearly, and undeniably.  The motherfucker sold out his country, and betrayed his duty as a sworn defender of the American people and our laws.

And what about the hundreds of thousands of dollars funneled to the wife of the lead investigator?  At WHAT POINT DO THE PEOPLE WE ARE TRUSTING TO DO THEIR JOBS START DOING THEIR FUCKING JOBS?

Cops on the take are supposed to be Latin American problems.  Well, I guess that is one more thing Wonder Boy Obama has allowed across the border.