Braver New World

- Social justice trumps justice

- End discrimination by discriminating

- Judge people by the color of their skin, not by the content of their character

- Social distance except when rioting or having sex with strangers

- It is healthy to pay healthy people not to work

- Lying is an integral and expected part of politics

- Equality of outcome is more important than equality of opportunity

- All organizations’ diversity profiles must match overall national demographics exactly

- Tribalism is primary ... above religion, nationalism and family

- Virtue signaling is much better than actual virtue

- Bending of young minds is far more important than primary education

- Owning a gun means you want to shoot up a school

Today’s Poser

If Trump is such an unrepentant prevaricator, is he also lying to America when he says that we are at war with this invisible enemy, COVID-19 ... and that our worst two weeks are just ahead? Or, does he lie only when he is upbeat and saying we will overcome this scourge, the China virus ... and that we need to restart our economy?

In other words, does he lie just when he is optimistic? Yes? Curious!

Actors

Robert De Niro

I have noted this before: Acting is a socially-acceptable form of lying. On the stage, actors are not the persons they are pretending to be. The roles that actors play are the creation of someone else and yet they can slip into these new personalities with realistic and convincing aplomb. Any brilliance that they may exhibit is generally someone else’s making. Therefore, excellent actors and actresses are excellent liars by definition. That is why thespians need not ever be paid attention to when they are expounding on political or moral issues ... except when they are on the stage speaking the lines of (hopefully) real thinkers.

Afterthought: Because so many actors have become politically active, I find it more difficult to suspend disbelief when I see them acting (as best I can) ... therefore movies have become less entertaining ... and I have less need to see them. I wonder if others are so affected?

Obvious Truth #43

Acting is socially condoned lying. The better the thespian, the more convincing the liar.

Newest Newspeak

Hate is love ... peace through violence ... suppressing free speech is Constitutional ... being attacked is incitement ... denouncing the KKK is racist ... rioting is peace-loving ... castigating neo-Nazi is anti-Semitic ... killing cops is justified payback ... enforcing immigration law is xenophobic ... embracing Afro-American leaders is racism ... refuting fake media news is anti-American ... black-masked fascism is patriotic ... fighting terrorism is Islamophobic ... telling it like it is, is lying -- some of the newest Newspeak

Distinctions

Much of our world's problems arise due to our inability or unwillingness to make distinctions ... often due to lazy thinking combined with purposeful misdirection. For instance note the following items that are often conflated ... quite often on purpose:

Illegal vs. legal immigration

What people say vs. do

Religious fervor vs. zealotry

Hyperbole vs. lying

Rap vs. music

Free speech vs. sedition

Satire vs. mockery

Economic self interest vs. greed

Refinement vs. preciousness

Mental illness vs. mental retardation

Compassion vs. grandstanding

Just war vs. aggression

Pro choice vs. pro abortion

Colonialism vs. outreach

News reporting vs. advocacy


Can you see where we go wrong with just these few?

Naughty Not Nice

Texas State Senator Wendy Davis is the new left-wing candidate for the Texas Governorship.  Her claim to fame was her long filibuster in the Texas Senate … railing against its proposed new abortion laws.  This has made her a super-heroine to feminists across the U.S. ... resulting in large campaign donations and much favorable media hype.  I have written before about the basic inanity of her objections to these new Texas abortion laws … see: The Coat Hanger.

However, her pumped-up curriculum vitae is beginning to deflate as a result of some revealing reporting on the part of Wayne Slater of the Dallas Morning News.  To understand the blatant degree of her smarminess (lying, child abandonment, gold-digging, infidelity, grandstanding, etc.) please read this: Breitbart Article.  How can a politician show such contempt for human decency? (I guess I just answered my own question.)

But at least we can be thankful that she has not claimed to be part Cherokee Indian.

Beating a Drum

“If you shout a lie long enough and loud enough, it will eventually become a truth” – Thomas Jefferson

Some of my readers accuse me of beating a drum over our President’s multitudinous failures.  Guilty as charged.  But I am but one squeaky little voice trying to contradict stentorian streams of bilious bullsh.t coming out of our government and media.  I realize that this is a fruitless Promethean endeavor, but I cannot let go of this feeling that I must do something, however insignificant, to help our children live in a country that closely resembles that great (yes, exceptional) one in which I was nurtured.

I try not to do this with Lady-Gaga-type hype … nor with flaming prose … but with statistics, studied opinions and references to those who I respect as being good and honorable people.

The thing that upsets me the most about our modern media mouthpieces and political poltroons is that they lie with certain certitude … as though this was the measure of their self worth.  They call it “spinning.”  Thus, they are compelled even to lie about their lying.  If someone like Mitt Romney tells his best and sincere truth about the many dislocations in our current society, he is castigated and made fun of by these same miscreants as though he were the prevaricator.  What did Jack Nicholson once say … “[we] can’t handle the truth?”

That is a very sorry statement about our current out-of-tune national orchestra.

Screw Job #5

This is not so much as a screw job as it is a fake screw job.  President Obama said in a recent news conference that Capitol-hill janitors just got a pay cut and are going to have problems making ends meet.  This result supposedly is because of the recent government spending sequestration  This whopper was endorsed both by White House Economic Council’s Director, Gene Sperling, and Obama’s common streetwalker, Jay Carney … basically, as later explained, because there will be less overtime available to these janitors.  This blatant exaggeration won him and his two acolytes four Pinocchio's from the Washington Post’s Fact Checker (see: WaPo Fact Checker).  Actually, the overtime pay there is very small when compared to their total salaries … generally less than a 1% kick … yet, so far, this overtime pay still totals more than all of last year.

To see more details of this sky-is-falling lying on the White House’s part see: More WaPo Story   (Actually, making around $50K a year as a Capitol “cleaning technician” ain’t such a bad gig.)

Armstrong

There used to be a radio program called Jack Armstong, All-American Boy.  Much later came an American champion bicyclist, Lance Armstong, who won the Tour de France seven times and gave his countrymen a retro-feeling of national pride.  Now this hero is being stripped of these titles and losing most of his advertising sponsors because of doping (see: Fox Sports Story).

"Doping" means that Lance Armstrong remove small amounts of his blood and replaced them before key bicycle races to enhance his red cell count ... as well as a naturally-occurring hormone EPO (see: Wikipedia Entry) and thus his endurance profile.  Now these are both so natural that all the testing that Lance Armstrong went through never found them.  Nor were they apparently found in most all of the other cyclist`who were also doping.  It is generally conceded now that virtually all entrants into the Tour de France were also doping then.

What does this all mean? As suggested in the Fox Sports article, endurance bicycle racing has been so tainted that the Tour de France winners in the Armstrong years should be left blank. This being the case, I suggest that then they should also be left blank up to the present time since this doping has gotten even more sophisticated. Or alternatively, perhaps, Lance Armstrong and his doctors were better at this doping process sooner than the other competitors. Therefore, Armstrong and his team were in the vanguard of advancing the science of endurance performance … obviously an important development outside of the field of sports.

So then what were Lance Armstrong’s sins? Obviously lying is certainly major among them. But then most other cyclists were and are also culpable of this sin … and, as we have painfully learned from a phalanx of recent politicians, lying is now too often considered a virtue. Can we wipe the slate of all this doping and lying surrounding this cycling sport? I sincerely doubt it. And thus, just like we seemed to have swept all the steroid use in baseball (and other sports) under the rug, we might well consider doing the same with doping in endurance bicycle racing. After all, the long-term health effects of doping seem a lot more benign than that of steroid use. Is “doping” that much less fair that utilizing the latest materials technology in building the bicycle itself … or using a diet of specialized carbohydrate loading before the race?

Morality is often an elusive prey.

Another Message to Our Politicians ...

Stop the spending!
Stop the borrowing!
Stop the government waste!
Stop the self-dealing!
Stop the lying!
Stop the finger-pointing!
Stop the posturing!
Stop the short-sightedness!
Stop the printing of money!
Stop the politics!
Stop the lust for power!
Stop the avarice!
Stop the demagoguery!
Stop the arrogance!
Stop the grandstanding!
Stop the propaganda!
Stop the accusations!
Stop the indifference!
Stop the bullsh*t!