Moderates United

http://madworldnews.com/black-man-advice-black-people/

Please watch this link before reading further.  It takes five minutes, and is worth the time for most people, particularly the black folks this is addressed to.

I want to underscore something: I have met a lot of really smart, switched on, motivated black people in my time.  I have also met the opposite.

The issue with black people in this country, today, is CULTURE.  I have ZERO DOUBT that most people born black in this country are very much capable of much more than they are usually asked for.

Do you help people assuming the worst of them, or the best?  This guy, here, is assuming the best.  He is an optimist.

And he has reasons for optimism.  Blacks are not inherently stupid.  I don’t believe this.  They are TAUGHT to be stupid, by people who benefit from taking advantage of the bad decisions that result.

I seen no reason, no reason, no reason, that blacks in this country cannot be well off, live in nearly crime free neighborhoods, go to excellent schools, and be considered the cultural equal of whites not because somebody penalized whites for speaking the truth that they see, but because that IS the truth that they see.

If you look at people like Frederick Douglas, they were clever, inventive, eloquent, and decent.  We can and should see much, much more of this.

I hate racists.  Racists are the people who say: “It’s OK that you are inferior.”, or “Of course you commit more crimes: that’s just what blacks do.  We forgive you.”

Can we not start accepting blacks into our generalized cultural dialogue in ways other than pretending that we aren’t racist?

Can we stop versions of “isn’t that cute?”

Here is my truth: I’m having trouble letting go of this Ferguson thing.  The whole thing makes me angry.  It never should have come to the mass destruction of (largely) minority owned businesses.  Black people were crying tears of rage and frustration as a result of the actions of OTHER black people, who claimed they opposed racism.  Bullshit.  So much stupidity.

Hell: I’ve had a few.  I will leave it at that for now.  I’ll leave with a question: do YOU think you are helping black people?  How?  If you were doing the opposite, would you have the courage to admit it?

True compassion results in purposive work. It may begin in a sentiment–actually it SHOULD begin in a sentiment, that of feeling the pain of others, of life–but if it ends there it is nothing but a drug, and one at that with clearly destructive potential.

Let me ask: what people of color are helped by white guilt, actually? What is the specific value of moral posturing, superficiality, vanity, and false promises?

What people of color are being helped by making a kid into a martyr who was plainly on his way to jail or an early grave anyway?

And can we not safely assume a kid that size with severe anger issues bullied other black kids? There were probably kids he grew up with who were secretly glad he was killed.

This is of course speculation, but what is NOT speculation is that substantially ALL violent deaths of black people are a matter of complete indifference to the poseurs, the part time righteous people.

I think about this stuff daily, and have for years. What happens in our ghettoes is obscene, and I said this often .

But none of what The Usual Clowns suggest is going to help. It hasn’t thus far, after a half century of trying.

Many things make me angry, but destructive self righteous hypocrisy is near the top of the list.

It’s time for black America to grow up.  To stop whining about past injustices, and using them to explain current failures that were and are very much within their control.  To stop believing some rescuer is on the way to make everything better with no effort on their part.  To stop excusing their children from studying hard and getting ahead.  To stop lounging around on porches complaining about the world (if you think this is a stereotype, drive around the projects in your town on an average day in any season but winter).

To take heart, to summon courage, to acknowledge its own role in its own failure.  They have access to free schools, to preferential treatment and scholarships at most colleges, to hiring.  They have access to free libraries, the internet, and to all the learning they could ever need.

All the tools any sovereign people, any sovereign individual, could ever need, have been laid out.  Not only that, but they have been implored to use them.  We white people have begged them to use them.  Many many white self identified “liberals” have made it their life’s work getting black people to do things THEY DON’T WANT TO DO.

This is childish.  And it is not racist to say so.

We have reached a point where we have to choose between abdicating moral values entirely, or calling bullshit on this massive failure.  If we are to continue tolerance, continue hope that just ONE MORE program will make all the difference, then we must perforce cull from our minds any notion that it just could be their fault.

And if we grant that it IS, in the end, their fault NOW, then we must grant that one more program won’t do a damn thing, at least in the old mold.

Charter Schools: these work.  Democrats oppose them.

Vouchers: these work.  Democrats oppose them.

I am tempted to say that absent the cynical Democrat abuse of black voters we would have an integrated black nation now, one with self respect, low crime rates, high levels of literacy, and high levels of economic achievement.

Only awful people would oppose that.  But if you like awful people, Hillary will be on the ballot soon enough.

Posted this on Facebook:


Michael Brown got shot–apparently on all accounts from people who were there, a number of whom were black themselves–because he was a thug. He did a strong arm robbery of some Indians, was walking, high, in the middle of the street with his buddy, gave the cop attitude who asked him to get out of the middle of the street, got arrested then went for a cops gun, got out and started to run away, then changed his mind and charged the cop, and then got killed. He was a thug, a fool, and someone who was going to either end up killing someone, or dying under someone elses gun. 


The lesson to learn here is that personal responsibility matters. The mother and father? They are to BLAME. At 18, a kid is just acting out what he was taught. If he was taught nothing by his parents, he is acting out what he learned from other kids whose parents ALSO did not teach them anything. The riots? They are crapping in their own neighborhood. They will be having trouble buying groceries and cigarettes in a few weeks. They are not showing anyone anything, other than that they are losers who are unwilling and unable to work within their own communities in a sustained and mature way to elevate the level of culture, to learn to value self restraint and educational achievement, to take responsibility for their children and themselves. 


At issue is a simple question: are black people INTRINSICALLY inferior? If so, then perhaps the efforts of the left wing to paint them as helpless, childish, victims is accurate. I choose not to believe this. I believe that they are the equals of whites, but have been fed a pack of lies by awful people for 50 years, telling them the world owes them something, and that it is being racist whenever it doesn’t put out the red carpet. 


This is bullshit. It turns them into helpless children, who have no choice but to throw temper tantrums, as here, when they don’t get their way. These riots will accomplish NOTHING. The agitators and journalists who did so much to create and enable them, will leave. And the fools who listened to them will have to live with the consequences of what they did last night for many, many years. No one will invest in Ferguson. Jobs will be even more scarce. The police will stop policing, making it more violent. 


All of these are obvious truths nobody seemingly any more has the courage to state openly and clearly. Political correctness does not elevate or protect anyone: it is a cloak for evil, for the rejection of true Liberalism, for the rejection of true morality.

I’m trying to watch more TV.  Shocking, I know.

Well, I can’t go and spring for cable, but I do have Netflix, so I watched the first two episodes of The Walking Dead.

My first thought: this is a deconstruction of the American Dream.  When we see monsters in cinema, they represent realities we are unable or unwilling to acknowledge.

The essence of all apocalyptic visions is failure: a failure of the dream.

Historically, Americans believed in our ideals.  They were taught genuine Liberalism, which depends on mutual trust, hard work, common decency, and in no small measure dreams about how the world should be.

We want peace.  We want prosperity.  We want true, deep, social harmony, connection, and love.

All of these things are achievable, but NOT ON THE PATH WE ARE ON.  We know this.  It is in every gut, even when the brains overrule them.

We have lost the faith, lost the ability to believe in notions like Good and Evil, right and wrong.

And I want to be clear that I don’t want to be the one to say what is right and wrong; nor do I want to relinquish that role to anyone else.  What I want to say is that we all judge OF NECESSITY, and that failing to judge means to fail to form as a person, as a character; extended, it means failure to form communities, tribes, thriving social webs which nurture and support and instruct.

As I have said often enough, proper moral judgments are local, imperfect, and necessary.

It seems so easy to embrace visions in which all confusions of our present sort fall away in the exigencies of survival.  It seems simpler, at least watching it from a comfortable couch in a comfortable home in a safe neighborhood.

That’s all for now.  I’m rambling.

As I think about it, the best strategy for Republicans is to keep pounding on the many scandals, and to the extent possible to refuse Leftists the opportunities they need to create their talking point propagandas.  The electorate is plainly pissed off.  And even SNL is skewering Obama.  He has lost nearly everyone.

And what I think needs to be said again, is that all Obama did was issue work visas to people who were here.  He did not grant them citizenship, and even though the move may be popular among Hispanic voters, it did NOT create a new voting block of 5 million new Americans, and given that the Republicans told him point blank that taking this action would make a negotiated agreement impossible, it is unlikely they will have ANY shot at citizenship en masse until 2017 and a new President.  We can and should make the case that he never negotiated in good faith, and for that reason set their cause BACK. He did not move it forward.

And this is/was a hugely unpopular move, because it doesn’t take professional economists to see Mexicans who don’t even speak English doing jobs that used to be done by middle class Americans, and realize that they are coming here illegally, and depressing wages.  I have personally heard this story from 3-4 people.  Remember, I’m on construction sites constantly, and talk with both the white guys and the Mexicans.  I’m always gathering data.  It’s what I do.  I am curious.  And this is first hand data.  I don’t blame the Mexicans.  I would do the same thing in their shoes.

But at the same time, anyone who has the first inkling of a sense of loyalty has to grant that our job is to protect Americans FIRST, particularly when our economy was already in the crapper.  Democrats, with this move, have signaled more or less overtly that their primary sympathies are with the world, and not ordinary–or even exceptional–Americans.  Hillary seems to think it would be great if America became a massive refugee camp.  After all: she won’t have to live with the consequences.  She lives on the mountaintop, and always will.

So Obama doesn’t get a massive voting block, angers many people even more, is driving a wedge between Democrat moderates and the radical wing that he answers to, and overall is sinking with no way back up.

Let time take its toll.  Nobody is expecting miracles out of a Republican Congress, but they certainly do not want more of the same.

Keep pounding daily on Obamacare (and I do think pushing a repeal through the House and Senate is worth doing, so Obama has to veto the bill to protect what has become a very unpopular policy), IRS targeting (someone should go to jail), the targeting we just found out about of Sharyl Attkisson (someone else should go to jail), Fast and Furious (jail), NSA snooping (massive retasking, which they are quite capable of), the undeclared war with ISIS, and the near certain role Obama’s policies played in placing Stinger anti-aircraft missiles in the hands of the Taliban.  And whatever else I’m forgetting.  The list is too long to keep track of without notes.

A sea change appears to be happening gradually, in which more and more people are waking up to the dangers of unaccountable, unregulated, law-breaking government.  This shift is happening across the spectrum, and cross-aisle alliances will be shaky for some time, but I think Obama has made clear that putting unrepentant radicals in charge has consequences.  Prior to Obama, I don’t think most people believed the Democrats could possibly have veered that far to the Left.  Democrats owned messaging.  Republicans were constantly on the defensive.

But now, we can speak our truths, and increasingly reach audiences willing to listen.  That has not been true for 50 years or more.  It took Carter to create Reagan, and even then Democrats controlled Congress from roughly 1960 to 1994. And we are getting better at messaging, better at pounding home the moral superiority of allowing people the freedom and the economic wherewithal to create their own lives and own destinies.

Just popped in my head.  I like it.

As I think I have argued, thought systems can be boiled down to their basics.  They can be understood practically with the same precision with which mathematical formulas can be understood.

However, thought systems are deployed by human individuals, and of course this means that thought systems in REALITY never look exactly like they ought to in theory.  Chaos enters.  And this is fun.  It makes things entertaining, and life. . . lively.

I have, for example, argued that the only good Muslims are bad Muslims.  By this, I mean Muslims who ignore the many verses inciting them to kill and terrorize (terrorism is already in the Koran: how many people openly admit this?), and who instead rely upon what I would regard as GOD given instincts about what is decent and what is profane.  And if someone wants to argue this is the overwhelming bulk of Muslims, I have no argument with this.  Most people want peace, want harmony, want prosperity, and detest violence and hate.

Scandinavia: I spent a number of formative years in the frozen North, surrounded by many blonde kids with names ending in -son, or -sen.  I know what it is like to stand at a bus stop when it is 20 degrees below zero and the bus is late, and you wore tennis shoes because the misery of feeling like your toes will freeze is less than the misery of the mockery of wearing snow boots like a grade school kid.

As it happens, being the macho man that I am, I am listening to Abba at the moment.  And in point of fact, I just watched Bergman’s Island a few days ago, where he talks candidly about his many “neuroses” (I am conflicted about that word.  I will likely post on this at some point; I have been contemplating how I would describe my own emotional dysfunctions, and “neurotic” seems as good as anything, even though I felt like kicking Woody Allen even before I knew he married the adopted (and much, much younger) daughter of his ex-wife.)

Shit: I’m channeling Arlo Guthrie: “But that’s not what I came to tell you about. . .”, or something like that.  I played Alice’s Restaurant at a bar once, but you couldn’t understand a damn thing.

Suffice it to say that “sunshine in a bottle” may be in play, but I always get to the point eventually.

Read this article: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/27/scandinavian-miracle-brutal-truth-denmark-norway-sweden

Lots of interesting content.  I want to focus on Sweden.

“Swedes seem not to ‘feel as strongly’ as certain other people”, Daun writes in his excellent book, Swedish Mentality. “Swedish women try to moan as little as possible during childbirth and they often ask, when it is all over, whether they screamed very much. They are very pleased to be told they did not.” Apparently, crying at funerals is frowned upon and “remembered long afterwards”. The Swedes are, he says, “highly adept at insulating themselves from each other”. They will do anything to avoid sharing a lift with a stranger, as I found out during a day-long experiment behaving as un-Swedishly as possible in Stockholm.

Effectively a one-party state – albeit supported by a couple of shadowy industrialist families – for much of the 20th century, “neutral” Sweden (one of the world largest arms exporters) continues to thrive economically thanks to its distinctive brand of totalitarian modernism, which curbs freedoms, suppresses dissent in the name of consensus, and seems hell-bent on severing the bonds between wife and husband, children and parents, and elderly on their children. Think of it as the China of the north.

OK: what the hell is my point?   This: the miracle of the North seems predicated on being as INhuman as possible.  It works to eradicate the Male, and the Female.  It attacks families.  It works to mechanize humanity–where Socialism is merely a rationalization of applying industrial ideals to social engineering–without the least thought about what it means to be human in the first place.

What is the point of life?  Can we not ask this question?  And can we not query the Swedes as to the generalized answer their One Party State has created?  And what is that answer?

In my view: nothing matters.  Nothing matters absolutely.  If you KNOW that Islamic immigrants rape Swedish women at five or more times the rate of indigenous men, why care?  That is unpleasant knowledge.  It could lead to judgmentalism. It could lead to unpleasantness, perhaps even–fucking hell and horrors–spontaneous EMOTION.

Here is the deal.  I watched Bergman’s “Cries and Whispers” perhaps two weeks ago.  It affected me.  As my kids were mocking me for, movies tend to take weeks for me to process.  I cried during Toy Story 3, when all the toys were in the incinerator, making common cause, connecting, facing death together, with bravery.

I make no apology.  I think it is a great thing, and a wonderful privilege, to be fucked up by something you see on screen, and to have the capacity to wander through a myriad of feelings, and walk out a bit wiser and more organized emotionally.  This is what the fuck life is about, god-damn-it.

Cries and Whispers is a powerful movie.  Bergman himself was locked up in a morgue as a youngish child, perhaps 8, and says a dead women on a table watched him with her eyes.  This seemingly left a permanent impression on him, which he perhaps processed in part with this movie.

But the point about the movie is the extreme emotional restraint.  I remember, from my own life, how extreme cold can push you into yourself.  It turns you into an introvert.  As Garrison Keillor–who I don’t like in most respects, but who is UNQUESTIONABLY a great story teller puts it: extroverted SWEDES (I inserted that) are the one who look at YOUR shoes.

Remember the English are Vikings who studied Latin.  The Angles.  The Saxons?  Boats, hard men.  1066?  Normans/Norsemen.  And that was the second such invasion in quick succession.  I forget the king who lost, but shit he was a Norseman too, and he won the first go-round.

Where am I going?  Beside the freezer for booze and ice?

Oh, hell.

In that movie, I actually felt for the older sister.  She has massive unprocessed trauma, but lived in a world where weakness was not allowed, even for an instant.  Therefore, she lived in hell.

The younger sister: she felt compassion.   She cheated on her husband precisely because she idealized love, and found it in the Doctor, at least for a time.

But she was vain, weak, self centered.  She tried to comfort her sister, in THAT scene, but failed.  She tried to be there for her other sister, briefly, but was unable to forget the abuse that got visited on her, by a sister who desperately needed connection, but who also wanted to hate and attack as a matter of principle everyone she could.

Fast forward: OH, we are all crazy.  In my own small world, in my own small perceptual domain, I watch people.  I watch vanity, error, stupidity.

This of course does not mean I look at myself as exempt, but it does mean I  put myself in a slightly different place.

That place has no walls, but exists in a land with rivers, and no obvious mountains.

Truth: I am having to edit this, since I am not sufficiently drunk.  Truth: I like people when I am drinking, and even when I’m not I value family connections.

In the Bergman movie, the maid has the worst work, but she is also the most real.  She does the hard work that the elites around her are frightened of.

She is nobility, in my own iteration.  She is what we should all strive for, even thought most of us are cowards.

She lost her child, as we discover early on.  She is pious, and still capable of love.

Oi.

I’ll leave it at that.  Too much complexity.

YOU, though: chances are good I feel your confusion and anger, too.

Postscript, the day after: I’m going to leave this mess as is.  Clearly, alcohol does not make anyone smarter, but in my own case it has often allowed me to process emotions that needed processing.  It is an anesthetic I use for emotional surgery, or have used.  I am in the process, again–but this time feels different–of giving up drunkenness.  That was my first bout in two weeks, which is good for me.

I think the surest sign that alcoholic is not the best word for me is that I retain, sober, an affection for what it has done for me.  It has not cost me any relationships, any jobs, any major loss of self respect.  It has on the contrary helped me manage otherwise unmanageable emotions, acted as a balm when I needed it, and all with no visible affects on my health or overall well being, other than a few extra pounds in my belly.

Republicans are imbeciles when it comes to messaging.  Perhaps they think too much of people; perhaps they think too much of themselves.

Regardless, the situation is simple.  Obama’s talking point–and Democrats evolve these things with care, which is why you always see them talking about talking points, one of which is that Republicans use talking points, but that they implicitly don’t, which itself is a good talking point–is that “If Congress doesn’t act, I have to.”

The response, the obvious response, is that “The President doesn’t get to tell Congress what to do.”  Period.

Expansion: if Congress decides NEVER to forgive people who came here illegally, if it chooses to treat them the way MEXICO treats illegal immigrants, that is their prerogative.  The Presidents JOB, REMAINS, enforcing existing laws, which he is plainly not only not doing, but not doing FLAGRANTLY.  He does not get to decide which laws he likes and which he doesn’t.  Period.  Anything else is incompetence or law breaking.

Added thought: Obama cannot naturalize these people even within his grossly inflated sense of Executive entitlement.  This move, therefore, will NOT create legal voters, and will piss off roughly 90% of the American electorate, which is the percentage I see opposing this action.

As I understand it, what he wants to do is simply make official his de facto policy of not enforcing our immigration laws.  This does not put people on welfare rolls, legally at least.   And it certainly does not make them citizens.

And to the extent Congress takes this as a poke in the eye, it extends, perhaps forever, the amount of time before these people actually get American citizenship.  Hispanic activists, therefore, should not only not take this as a victory–since practically little is changing–but quite possibly as a major strategic defeat.  Republicans are on sound polling ground in opposing this, and that is not likely to change any time soon.

I have in the past overlooked these elements, and am assuming–perhaps mistakenly–that I have understood the situation now.

As I say from time to time, I screw up.  I am not a full time media consumer, and no doubt channel some ideational version of Emily Litella on occasion.

It seems obvious that Obama has reached the conclusion that he can use the power of the office he has won to pander to a new prospective electoral base: Mexicans who have fled the conflicts and economic devastation of Mexico and come here illegally.

But I don’t want to discuss that here.  What I do want to do is submit a couple points/ideas I find relevant and interesting.

First, most Mexicans, by my straw poll talking with them–including people here with  green cards–would rather live in Mexico.  They speak the language, understand the customs, and generally feel more at home because that IS their home.  The United States is not.

An intelligent long term strategy for dealing with illegal immigration would be to strengthen the Mexican economy and return the rule of law such that they don’t WANT to come here, except in small, easily manageable numbers.  Then you don’t need a fence, at least to deal with this issue (national security is another issue).

I read 93% of crimes in Mexico are either not reported or not investigated.  In both cases, the legal system has failed.  This is a statistic consistent with a failed nation state.

The problem seems to be that the sheer volume of drug money coming in makes it easy to buy up all the cops, all the military, and most of the politicians.  The ones who can’t be bought can be killed by someone who is paid to do so.

So step one logically is shrinking this pool of money.  Since 70% of the revenue is from marijuana, we should legalize it nationally.  I personally would like to see the DEA disbanded entirely.

Doing this would instantly shrink revenues by nearly 3/4ths.  I would then like to see us legalize cocaine, if prescribed by a doctor.  I think most people would be able to handle taking some coke on weekends at parties, and behaving during the week.  Peoples use could be tracked, and obvious patterns identified if strongly negative.

Adding this to marijuana legalization would eviscerate the cartels.

Then we institute a program like Kiva, where people make loans directly to Mexicans to start businesses.  The government kicks in 50% of the money (yes, taxpayer money is used, but it is being used now for ICE, jails, welfare, and God knows what else), and mounts a campaign to interest ordinary Americans.

We negotiate with the Mexican government for economic liberalization.  My understanding is that like all Latin American nations they have repeatedly experimented with the idea that there is in fact such a thing as a free lunch for everyone (aka Socialism), and not yet learned from their mistakes.

They need to learn from their mistakes.

We also require them to pass an equivalent of the 2nd Amendment.  Mexico has to legalize individual gun ownership across the board to all law abiding citizens.  This will be the final death knell for the cartels.

Within 10-15 years, Mexico could become a decent place to live, perhaps again, perhaps for the first time ever for the bulk of its populace.

This would work, but of course many entrenched interests could be counted on to work hard against it.