Moderates United

Trump renegotiated NAFTA, as he said he would.  We have new, and although I have not studied the details, presumably better deals with both Canada and Mexico.

China reduced or eliminated a variety of tariffs, which is what victory in a trade war–or threatened trade war–looks like.  China needs us to pay her bills, and keep her people from accomplishing a successful revolution against her tyrants and ruling oligarchy.  Trump rightly judged their position, and took steps to do what no American leader has done, ever, which is open up their market to American exports.  The goal, remember, is INCREASING free trade.  I keep seeing imbeciles fail to grasp this.  It is not complicated to understand that if one side enacts a host of barriers to trade, that trade is not free. And if they pay no consequences for those barriers, there is no reason to change them.  Trump got this calculus, did some math of his own, and implemented policy which is even now acting to bring those walls down.

North and South Korea are removing landmines on the border, which amounts to demilitarizing the Demilitarized Zone.  This is plainly a wonderful sign of an incipient peace.  South Korea’s leader also visited North Korea, and if I am not mistaken, I think Kim Jung Un came to Seoul.  Both of them deserve Nobel Peace Prizes, but Trump certainly has earned the right to share it with them, as I believe Jimmy Carter shared the prize with Begin and Sadat.

And I will continue to note that Barack Hussein Obama, leading light and Prophet of the Democrats, said it would take a “magic wand” to create the economic growth which Trump HAS in fact enabled, through tax cuts, regulatory reduction, and an overall positive view of business in general, all of which are the opposite of Obama’s approaches, which yielded the worst recovery since the Great Depression, and for the same reasons.

From all of this, we are to take away that Trump is Hitler, that he is horrible, that he is fascist. 

America: can you wake from your fucking sleep already?  Do you not GET that you are being lied to by horrible human beings who want your vote but don’t give a flying fuck otherwise if you live or die?

Quick to believe, slow to doubt.

As far as Ford, though, she plainly lied when she said she was unfamiliar with the polygraph test, and when she told that story about needing a second door.  Her boyfriend in the 1990’s detected no signs of traumatized behavior.  Certainly, it can be delayed but, again, she is not even alleging she was raped.  She was, on her account, held down against her will, in a sort of involuntary wrestling match with a stronger opponent.  This is not rape.  It is not being molested as a child.  It is not being beaten regularly.  It is not being shamed regularly.

It seems likely that this whole thing will soon end, as it should, with Kavanaugh finally being released from the Democrat Inquisition, and their sundry Torquemada’s.

Prefer to believe, hesitate to doubt.

I get why psychologically normal women would be unable to comprehend why anyone would willingly submit themselves to the emotional work and difficulty of making a false rape or abuse claim.

But not all women are psychologically normal.  There is no reason to think there are fewer female sociopaths than male (although this claim is made, it is impossible in my view to back empirically), and given a strong enough moral justification–as they see it–many non-sociopaths could make and presumably have made, false claims.

Believe at first, but ask questions.  If the answers do not add up, ask more questions.  To ask people to do otherwise is to invite a culture of abuse.  It is to invite a ready means of blackmail and extortion, against which we will have removed all remedies.

If conservatives were not the adults in the room, there would have been blood shed in the streets already.

Antifa CLEARLY has an unconscious identification, not with the Communists, but with the SA, the Sturmabteilung, the Brown Shirts.  Their shirts are black, like those of the actual Mussolini Fascists, but I think their hatred of Hitler is really an unconscious desire to be released from the constraints of civilization and finally, finally, finally be able to vent this pent up rage within them that they cannot dispel with marijuana, video games, LARP’ing, or endless internet rants.

They want to be MEN, but they cannot say that.  That is sexist.  They want to be RIGHT, in a world where they dispute the notion of right and wrong.  They want to fight the good fight, while rejecting any standards which would in the abstract, absent tribal feelings, justify such a thing.  They want to belong, in a world their own ideology has denuded of all markers of belonging.

In their dreams, they want what the Communists and Nazis “had” in early 1930’s Berlin.  They want passion.  They want romance.

But they ARE the Nazis, and they have no Communists.  The real Liberals are the Republicans, who continue to value civility and negotiation as ideals, even if the lunacy of the Democrats and Left generally make these generally unreachable goals.  We continue to hope we can return to rational argumentation, to civil discourse, to congenial disagreement.  We continue to hope our experiment, our UTOPIAN experiment, of generalizing political freedom, will not end in suicide.

They are out in force tonight.  I look at this, though, as a blessing.  I am given the opportunity to confront fear directly.  It is a beautiful thing.

I do feel, though, that there are huddled rooms all around the country where they are yelling and plotting, and feeling ALIVE even though their work is pure evil.

What can you do but remain steadfast?  What can God ask of any of us but that we do our best to remain faithful?

In order to see the beautiful, you must see the ugly. In order to see truth, you have to understand falsehood like the back of your hand.

This is all good.  I feel like we passed a Rubicon of sorts last week.  The energy changed.  A spell broke, for many.

I read that some Republicans are cheering because so many people are #walkingaway.  Some Democrats are saying “I have never seen this level of engagement.”

Both narratives can be equally true.  I suspect, though, that the high Democrat engagement is happening in places where there were already a lot of Democrats.  Added energy adds little, if they were going to win anyway.

To my mind, far more significant are the seemingly large numbers of people who are abandoning the Democrats because they have become nakedly ugly.  I have never seen anything like the Walk Away movement in my lifetime, in either direction.  The Democrats are walking on thin ice, which is already cracking in many places. 

We will see.  We will see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgsqdt5IdLY&index=4&list=PLAEn9Hx01p4pDaDYN3m5I1lqtLlEhZHiz

I wonder how much internet porn uses women who are only in it for the drugs.

The problem of single use plastics, in the United States, is largely one of aesthetics: waste is ugly.  Using something once then throwing it away has to have some kind psychological effect which contributes to our short term thinking.  Like abortion, this issue likely has complex sociological consequences.

And I say it is largely aesthetic, because the plastics are buried in enormous landfills which, by and large, are not hurting anything.  They might in 100 years, but by then we will have evolved or destroyed what we have built, so we will have either created an easy solution–like the plastic eating bacteria which are already being researched–or it won’t matter.

But for now, for today, for 2018, I will suggest a couple ideas.

The first is reusable, standardized cups with straws in them.  We could model them, say, on McDonald’s Small, Medium Large, and Fat Boy.  Whatever size you get, you get an upgrade to the next size at no extra charge.

Such cups will of course also double as water bottles.  They can have carabiners on them to loop on to backpacks for use by students.  They can have pictures of sea otters and orcas, and sea turtles.

They can come with a label saying “this cup saves 20 pounds of garbage a year” or whatever.

And these cups could be sold with reusable silverware, a knife, spoon and fork which fit into a container of some sort.  Maybe an assembly could be designed so the silverware is integral to the container, and light weight.  Imagine a world where most people carry their own cups and silverware around, if they regularly eat fast food.

Actually, even in regular restaurants, if you bring in your own cup, that is less dishwashing for them.

And if people just want to carry metal or reusable plastic straws with them, discounts could be offered.  Perhaps a reusable lid could be designed too, which integrates with different sized cups.  I think something really clever could be done in this realm.

And you develop a network of people who accept these things.  McDonald’s could have a sticker on their door, as could Panda Express, as could regular Mom and Pop stores of all sorts.

Standards could be developed, such that all cups are X ounces, and this is displayed on the outside  (8 ounces, 16 ounces, whatever).

And of course this would apply to coffee cups too.  Perhaps Starbucks could even be talked into making their fancy drinks in the cup you bring in, if they can sanitize it first.

Here is the beauty, the absolute, fantastic, wonderful aspect of free markets: there is money in this for someone, perhaps a lot of money. 

You’re welcome.

Whenever I watch a movie, I dream about it for a couple of days.  It will interact with whatever else I am working on.

And I feel like “Requiem for a dream” really made me feel what it is like to be raped, from a woman’s perspective, more than any movie I have seen.

And there is not even a “rape” per se.  Merely men using a woman as a sexual object, and doing so cruelly and cynically.  Jennifer Connolly does an excellent job as an actress.

And I think I get, to some extent, all the women saying “Christina Blasey Ford is ME”.  Old, long suppressed frustrations are brought to a boil when they see people like the people before, saying “I don’t believe you.”  Or misunderstanding, emotionally, the depth of the hurt.

It is easy for women to be wounded by men.  I have hurt women myself, multiple women.  Not on purpose–I can be an asshole for moments, but sustained or conscious cruelty is something I can’t do–but the hurt was just as real.

Women exist in a much more interactive world than most men.  They feel more, which causes them to see more, but also be wounded more.

And as I’ve said often, you really can’t describe trauma to someone who has not felt it.  My trauma is not precisely the trauma of being raped, but I can relate to feeling things you cannot speak, but which you can show others in your eyes.

And I think this gets to the core cynicism, the core cruelty of what Ford is doing.  It may well be that what she describes did happen.  That has been my feeling all along.  And the two men who came forward should be interviewed, because they have zero reason to accuse THEMSELVES of a crime in such a charged atmosphere, other than that they are telling the truth, and presumably because they feel remorse and guilt.  When you are young, drunk and stupid, you sometimes do things which make your adult self cringe.  This is perhaps a time they have long looked for to redeem themselves, and atone for their real crime, which they rightly surmise terrified their young victim.

But what FORD is doing is creating a manufactured portrait of victimhood.  She has, to my knowledge, shown no interest in these two men.  She is up there, lying, but invoking the picture of Every Women, every “this could happen to you” or “this happened to you too, didn’t it?”  She is consciously pulling strings, and evoking latent emotions.

Put bluntly: she is manipulating worthy sympathies for partisan political purposes.  She is USING the women who feel sorry for her to advance an ideological agenda.

It is like what Obama did.  He said “look at me.  I’m a black man, just like you.  I feel your pain.  I will work for you.  Things will get better for you with me as President.  You can trust me.  Finally we got one of our own in the White House”.

And then he ignored black people for two terms, with brief exceptions of periodic rah-rah sessions where he dropped his “g’s” (sittin’, droppin’) so as to, you know, CONNECT with those people so he could keep them in the tent.

It was abusive and cynical.  Everything these people do is.  There is no goodness, no concern for ameliorating human suffering.  It is a church of moral self congratulation with all the perks graft, fame, quid pro quos, and sweetheart book, speaking, and consulting deals grant.  It is a license to be amoral because of public grandiose moral pretension.

Are we to convict Kavanaugh of the crime of being unable to completely disprove allegations which cannot be investigated?