Dissident Veteran For Peace

It will be seen that, as used, the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless ... 

All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword.

Source: George Orwell, "What is Fascism?", Tribune, 1944.

The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.

~*~*~

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, 'I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so'. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

While freely conceding that the Soviet régime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigours which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.

The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics'. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.

~*~*~

But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

    i. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

    ii. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

    iii. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

    iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

    v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

    vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable.

~*~*~

Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase – some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse – into the dustbin where it belongs.

Source: George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language", Horizon, April 1946.

Labels: Orwell, politics, quotations

# posted by VFPDissident @ 9/23/2021 09:10:00 PM 0 comments

Here are few excerpts from Katie Halper's and Matt Taibbi's recent interview with Adolph Reed, Jr.:

Reed: Combating racism becomes a convenient alternative to attacking inequality ... even those inequalities that appear or ... manifest themselves as racial disparities. Because the struggle against racism is exactly parallel to the struggle against terrorism … It can go on forever, because the enemy is an abstraction that you can define however you want to define it, at the moment that you wanted to find it.

Matt Taibbi: There's a line in her [i.e. Robin DiAngelo's] book that I missed originally: "I believe that white progressives caused the most daily damage to people of color." ...

Reed: ... the other thing I thought was just in listening to her was that an image that came to my mind was Viola Liuzzo, right? The wife of a postal worker, from Detroit, who went down to Selma in 1965 to participate in the voting rights March and to participate in organizing the voting rights March. And she got herself killed by the Klan. In the context of that, with DiAngelo, I thought, "Oh, so that's what she was doing, she was just trying to out-woke the black people." I don't even know what to say to shit like that, I really don't. It's pretty repugnant.

... I've been puzzling with addressing the question of why so much anti-racist discourse now depends on analogy with slavery and Jim Crow. And that's ultimately because ... Well, to be honest, because the political as well as the intellectual concern of the people making these arguments is exactly the same as the political and intellectual concerns of the defeated Confederates who established and propagated lost-cause ideology, the myth of the Solid South, and put all those Confederate monuments up because they were committed to a racialist understanding of the world for the purpose of undermining any possibility of a political-economic challenge coming from the lower class, basically.

That's the same reason that people making the race-reductionist arguments today can't really move without drawing links between this moment and slavery and Jim Crow. Just as the 19th century former Confederates were committed to a white supremacist narrative, these people are also committed to a white supremacist/anti-white-supremacist narrative for the same reasons: to keep political economy off the table, and to advance their particular class program, just as the planter class was in the 19th century.

... so my tank is basically full now from white people in particular telling me that I don't understand the depth and intensity of racism, and its effects and this and the other, not because they're violating a normative or an epistemic principle of mine, but because they're violating theirs, by the shit that they argue. They technically don't have the right to say shit to me. So why is it I'm the only POC that you can tell that he's got it wrong?

Labels: Adolph Reed Jr., class, history, politics, quotations, race

# posted by VFPDissident @ 7/25/2021 11:08:00 PM 0 comments

American society has never upheld or realized truth and justice in a manner fully consistent with American rhetoric. Yet, for most of my life I thought our society was at least headed in the right direction. No more.

In the flurry of non-stop anti-Trump (someone I never supported) lies I finally realized that somewhere, in my lifetime or before, the country took a wrong turn. It's tempting to say it happened in the last ten years but it may be more accurate that it was during the 1991 Rodney King police brutality/racism hoax and subsequent rioting when politicians and the media openly abandoned truth, justice, and integrity. The American public, in general, then showed itself to be too gullible and lazy to know or care that vital principles were being gutted.

Don't get me wrong, politicians and the media were not paragons of virtue before then but it does seem like we as a society turned the corner down into dangerous alley back then and things have gotten steadily worse ever since. Academia and the clergy have followed suit or, perhaps, helped lead the way.

In any case, I followed the prosecution of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin very closely. Before the verdict I had estimated the outcome in order of probability (most to least) was as follows:

1. Hung jury
2. Full acquittal
3. Partial acquittal
4. Guilty on all charges

It's obvious I couldn't have been more mistaken. My estimation was based on the clearly erroneous assumption that the jury included at least one intelligent, rational, and principled juror. I don't have a lot of hope that Chauvin will get justice in the appellate courts.

I wish I knew what to tell people to do to turn this country away from the abyss but I don't. I can say there's no hope in Biden or Trump or most of the other denizens of the two wings of the political uniparty. What I do know is that defeatism is a faster path to destruction.

Here are a few more perspectives on the Chauvin trial and verdict:

• "It's a lie: 'Systematic police racism' and the Derek Chauvin Trial" on LawOfficer.com
• "The Derek Chauvin Trial: Reasonable doubt exists" on LawOfficer.com
• "Chauvin Guilty Verdict Completes the Total Collapse of Law, Order, and Due Process in Biden’s America" on Revolver.news
• "Candace Owens: 'This was not a fair trial. No person can say this was a fair trial.' " on Tucker Carlson Tonight via Twitter
  
• "After the Derek Chauvin Verdict: Initial Thoughts and What Comes Next" on RedState.com
• "The Chauvin verdict" on AmericanThinker.com
• "The American Crisis" by Ben Domenech via Twitter

If there were any Left-wing writers who care about truth and justice in the matter of George Floyd and Derek Chauvin then I would link to them but I am unaware of any.

21 April 2021 Addendum: In "George Floyd's Death: Test Your Knowledge" I mentioned that "the written report of the unofficial autopsy of George Floyd requested by Floyd's family and performed Michael Baden, MD, and Allecia Wilson, MD" had never been publicly released. They and their findings were much in the news last summer but unless I'm mistaken neither of them testified in the trial of Derek Chauvin nor was their report offered in evidence by the prosecution. If true, then this suggests that the "family autopsy" was primarily a media prop to advance the financial interests of George Floyd's family and lawyers in extracting a sweet financial payout.

Labels: Biden, crime, critical thinking, George Floyd, Justice, media, police, politics, race, Trump

# posted by VFPDissident @ 4/20/2021 08:19:00 PM 0 comments

Political power in America is media power. It’s the power to shape consciousness ... The protest Wednesday [January 6, 2021] was an example of "hyperreality." There was no attempted coup by President Trump, nor by people wandering around the Capitol. The media created a story about an "armed insurrection," a putsch, and they seem to believe it.

Ashli Babbitt was also caught in a fantasy. The "QAnon" story told her President Trump was fighting a cosmic struggle against evil. She joined in that struggle. Unfortunately, as in The Matrix, if you die in the simulation, you die in real life. In his concession speech last night, President Trump didn't mention her. He wouldn't say her name.

If anything, QAnon is an opiate because it tells Americans the system still somehow works. It tells well-meaning, naïve people that their country still exists, the old values endure, the Founders' vision lives on, and everything will turn out fine. That illusion died with Ashli Babbitt.

Our rulers apparently believe what they are saying. They think they're fighting a dictator, that Ashli Babbitt and people like her deserve to die, and that there must be a cleansing before the egalitarian paradise arrives. We know what happens when fanatics stop at nothing in the name of equality.

People can try to live in a dream, but reality finally breaks in. For decades, President Donald Trump crafted his media image as a businessman, patriot, and strategist. He may believe himself to be a Great Man. Tens of millions of Americans who saw their country being stolen from them put their trust in him. He let them down — not because he is an aspiring dictator, but because he is erratic, self-absorbed, and doesn't truly understand what is happening to the country.

Ashli's surname is the same as Sinclair Lewis's title character in Babbitt, about a middle-class guy who seeks meaning in a conformist world. Babbitt rebels against middle-class values. Today, those values seem idyllic. Today, it is rebellion to uphold natural values of morality, family, and patriotism.

Perhaps Ashli Babbitt died for a false idol, a leader who didn't deserve her loyalty. Perhaps I'm too hard on President Trump, who has been continuously betrayed and sabotaged. Either way, Ashli Babbitt's sacrifice was not pointless. Whatever her mistakes, she was right to believe her country is ruled by a hostile elite. The form her rebellion took was wrong, but she died for her beliefs. Especially in a time when our rulers make saints out of thugs, we should remember Ashli Babbitt, who served a country that killed her.

Source: "Her Name Was Ashli Babbitt" by Gregory Hood on American Renaissance, January 8, 2020. 

Labels: media, politics, quotations, resistance, Trump, voting

# posted by VFPDissident @ 1/25/2021 11:32:00 PM 0 comments

On December 8, 2020, I wrote about the State of Texas' motion in the Supreme Court to allow it to file a complaint over alleged problems in the 2020 election in several states. Back then I made two observations relevant to the present post.

First, I said: "I think the State of Texas should have standing but that is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition and it's motion comes awfully late." Second, I said: "If, as seems likely, the Supreme Court refuses to hear this complaint then it's probably game over for all the election challenges."

The Supreme Court did indeed reject Texas' motion. Here's the full text of the Court's unsigned order:

The State of Texas's motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.

Supporters of Biden like to mention that many of the federal judges denying 2020 presidential election challenges have been Trump appointees. The implication is that the legal challenges have been so hollow that even Trump loyalists had to reject them.

There may truth to this but it doesn't follow that because Trump nominated these judges that they would necessarily do him any favors. That is the whole point of lifetime appointments for federal judges—to try to insulate them from political influence.

Also, Trump "relied on outside conservative legal organizations and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell" to select and manage the confirmation of his judicial nominees. Moreover, these are people who were on the judiciary career path long before anyone took a Trump presidency seriously and who always knew they would likely be on the bench long after Trump was gone. They might even despise Trump but were willing to accept a nomination (or, possibly, reject an election lawsuit) to advance their own careers and political commitments.

Thus, there are scant grounds to think Trump necessarily got special or even fair consideration of his post-election legal complaints. I'm not saying he was treated unfairly but that you cannot infer much from the fact that some Trump judicial appointees rejected his election claims.

###

The January 6, 2021, Capitol rioters are criminals who should be prosecuted. They are also fools and idiots who played right into the hands of the "progressive" authoritarians and their program of racism and repression.

Trump has now been impeached a second time on purely political grounds—they're afraid he'll beat them in another election. Barring a miraculous transformation I hope Trump quietly retires to another, far away country.

In any event, I read the new article of impeachment and it presents no sound legal basis to claim that Trump criminally incited the rioters. If prosecutors believe there is probable cause that Trump committed a crime then they should seek an indictment.

Instead, the Democrats and their media allies are simply hyping and milking the riot for every political advantage they can extract no matter how dishonest the effort. Referring to the upcoming impeachment trial, Jonathan Turley writes: "A private citizen is being called to the Senate to be tried for removal from an office that he does not hold." 

The Democrats had some conceivable legitimate grounds to impeach Trump while he was president though not on events connected to Russia or Ukraine. For instance, the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was, arguably, illegal under US and international law. It was also dangerous and counter to American strategic interests. Yet, because that attack was perceived to be in Israel's interests impeachment was never on the agenda for it.

Trump might also have been impeached for his attempt to suborn Mike Pence to violate the Constitution and federal law by unlawfully interfering with the certification of Electoral College votes on January 6, 2021. But, no, to impeach Trump for that would draw more unwanted attention to Pence who refused Trump's entreaties and followed the law while also undermining the Dems specious and profoundly hypocritical claims that for members of Congress to lawfully object to certification "borders on sedition or treason" and such.

###

The election of Donald Trump was always a symptom of the larger problems of, in no special order, economic inequality, toxic consumerism, empire, corporate globalization, Democratic race grifting for power, and the corruption of the media and political elites. Trump ran on a campaign that showed awareness of some of these problems but he was seemingly always a con man exploiting the justified grievances of millions of Americans. He betrayed them and never rose to the call of his office or of history.

Unfortunately, Trump's disastrous term has only worsened matters and emboldened "progressive" authoritarians to step up the repression of their political enemies, including the White working class, in general (which is not to say the GOP were ever their allies). This is Trump's fault, the fault of his many enemies, and, to no small extent, the fault of voters duped by him.

Biden claims he wants to unify the country but—and I hope I'm wrong when I say this—that's a lie to judge from so many of his other utterances and policy plans. When I saw recent photos of the unprecedentedly large military presence in the Capitol for the inauguration I was reminded of all the unpopular, repressive governments the US has propped in foreign countries over the years. Are chickens coming home to roost?

Virginia National Guard members in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 13, 2021 (U.S. Air National Guard photo by SSgt Bryan Myhr).

New Jersey National Guard members in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 12, 2021 (U.S. Air National Guard photo by MSgt Matt Hecht).

See also: Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations IV

Labels: Biden, class, Democrats, Empire, Iran, Israel, law, media, military, politics, race, repression, Supreme Court, Trump, voting

# posted by VFPDissident @ 1/19/2021 10:40:00 PM 0 comments

Labels: critical thinking, politics

# posted by VFPDissident @ 1/17/2021 02:35:00 AM 0 comments

It wasn't until my 30s that I began to understand free speech, that the real antagonist of speech is power. The only important question about a speech restriction is not who is being restricted but who gets to decide who is being restricted ...

Source: Former ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser as quoted in an interview, "Would the ACLU Still Defend Nazis' Right To March in Skokie?", by Nick Gillespie, January, 2021.

Labels: civil liberties, freedom, politics, quotations

# posted by VFPDissident @ 1/11/2021 07:24:00 PM 0 comments

We can always easily spot the propaganda that we don't agree with. You ask any liberal, what's propaganda? They'll say, "Oh, Fox. Fox News." You ask any conservative what's propaganda? They'll say, "MSNBC." They're both right. Both are propagandistic, but what they can't see is the propaganda that they agree with because they think it's just information. They think it's just the truth.

Source: Mark Crispin Miller, as quoted in the partial transcript of an interview by Katie Halper and Matt Taibbi in "Meet the Censored: Mark Crispin Miller", Jan. 4, 2021.

Labels: critical thinking, media, politics, quotations

# posted by VFPDissident @ 1/07/2021 06:40:00 PM 0 comments

Yesterday, the Texas Attorney General filed a motion to have the US Supreme Court consider the State of Texas' complaint on 2020 presidential election irregularities and improprieties in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The four defendant states have already submitted their certificates of ascertainment regarding their presidential electors to the National Archives.

In the complaint, which, again, the Court has not yet agreed to hear, Texas is thus asking the Court to order:

E. If any of Defendant States have already appointed presidential electors to the Electoral College using the 2020 election results, direct such States' legislatures, pursuant to 3 U.S.C. § 2 and U.S. CONST. art. II, § 1, cl. 2, to appoint a new set of presidential electors in a manner that does not violate the Electors Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment, or to appoint no presidential electors at all.

Here are my thoughts:

1. The Texas action is the best pled and most concise case I've seen so far alleging problems in the 2020 presidential election. It's far better than the dumpster fire pleadings offered by Sidney Powell that I've read.

2. I think the State of Texas should have standing but that is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition and it's motion comes awfully late.

3. I have not followed the lower state and federal court election cases closely enough to say how persuasive the evidence is of substantial issues with the election so I will not presume to know how the Supreme Court should or will rule (I mention this because the Texas complaint appears to rely heavily on lower court filings and opinions). If the allegations are substantially true as pled then I would hope the Court would agree to hear the complaint; however, I am skeptical that Texas is on solid legal and evidentiary ground.

4. I think the statistical evidence offered by Charles J. Cicchetti, PhD is flawed, unpersuasive, and harmful to the case. Cicchetti tested the hypothesis "that other things being the same" Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden "would have an equal number of votes" (see Cicchetti Declaration at ¶¶ 11-13). But we know "other things" beyond alleged election irregularities were far from the same in 2016 and 2020. For example, among other things, Trump was running as an incumbent heading an administration beset by personnel instability, incompetence, and a lack of discipline.

5. If, as seems likely, the Supreme Court refuses to hear this complaint then it's probably game over for all the election challenges.

6. If the Supreme Court agrees to hear this complaint then it's a game changer and, although I never want to underestimate their capacity for dishonesty, the mainstream media will probably be compelled to drop their mantra that claims of election irregularities are "baseless", etc. We'll probably also see violent protests by Trump haters.

7. If the Supreme Court agrees to hear this complaint then to open up the possibility that Trump stays in the White House for another term the Supreme Court would have to invalidate the election results in at least three of the four defendant states. If they do agree to hear the complaint then I predict they will overturn the election results in fewer than three states and send Biden to the White House with an unchanged or, more likely, smaller Electoral College margin.

See also:

• Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations III
• Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations V
  

Labels: Biden, law, media, politics, Supreme Court, Trump, voting

# posted by VFPDissident @ 12/08/2020 11:09:00 PM 2 comments

Who said it?: "Even assuming there's nothing nefarious about the national election why has the cascade of irregularities around this country occurred virtually in a news blackout?" 

If you guessed Tucker Carlson or some other right-wing crank then you are mistaken. It was MSNBC's Keith Olbermann talking with Newsweek senior editor and columnist Jonathan Alter days after the 2004 presidential election. Back then, Media Matters for America was complaining:

Media conservatives have labeled MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann a "voice of paranoia" and accused him of perpetuating "idiotic conspiracy theories" for his sustained spotlight on the numerous local news reports of voting irregularities during the November 2 presidential election. Olbermann's emphasis during Countdown with Keith Olbermann on voting irregularities has been part of a critique of what he has called the "Rube Goldberg voting process of ours" -- as well as a criticism of the major media outlets' failure to report on the irregularities.

So, in 2020, is Media Matters still complaining now that the shoe is on the other foot and the mainstream, pro-Democrat corporate media is engaged in a full court press to ignore, deny, and dismiss alleged irregularities in the 2020 presidential election and to denigrate anyone who makes or reports the allegations?

Why, yes, they are complaining ... about "Donald Trump's attempts to steal and thwart the election" and they are cataloging "right-wing media figures who have supported Trump's efforts to spread false claims and conspiracy theories about the election". In short, they have hypocritically done a complete about-face.

You see, it was not so long ago that some Democrats and other left-of-center folks took allegations of electoral irregularities and concern about voting machines very seriously or at least put on a good show of it. Election integrity activists produced an Emmy-nominated 2006 documentary, Hacking Democracy, and started groups such as VoteTrustUSA, VotersUnite, and Black Box Voting (all now moribund). Now that Biden has presumptively won the 2020 election such talk, from Democrats and their media lackeys, at least, is verboten.

Back in the day it was Diebold that lefties were mainly concerned about. Diebold, renamed as Premier Election Solutions, was sold to Dominion Voting Systems in 2010. That same year Dominion also bought assets of Sequoia Voting Systems.

In 2010, Project Censored published "Election 2008: Vanishing Votes, Disappearing Democracy And Media Misdirection" by Brad Friedman. Friedman, who is anti-Trump and now sees no evidence of voting irregularities wrote:

There was, of course, reason for everyone to be concerned, particularly about voting machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc. The company had been on the verge of bankruptcy and hostile takeover all year, and—though they had told federal investigators that they had divested from Smartmatic, their Venezuelan-owned, Hugo Chavez-tied parent company, in late 2006, after a hue and cry from Republicans—all of their systems’ Intellectual Property rights had secretly remained under the ownership of the Venezuelan firm.

Also, in 2010, Project Censored published a revision of a 2006 piece by Dennis Loo titled: "No Paper Trail Left Behind: the Theft of the 2004 Presidential Election". Loo writes:

Welcome to a world where statistical probability and normal arithmetic no longer apply! The Democrats, rather than vigorously pursuing these patently obvious signs of election fraud in 2004, have nearly all decided that being gracious losers is better than being winners, probably because – and this may be the most important reason for the Democrats' relative silence – a full-scale uncovering of the fraud runs the risk of mobilizing and unleashing popular forces that the Democrats find just as threatening as the GOP does.

On November 8, I wrote: "I doubt that Trump's campaign will be able to muster evidence of election irregularities substantial enough to overturn the presumptive Biden victory. I am inclined to believe that he actually lost the election due to his unpopularity, not error or fraud." I still believe that but more strongly than ever I also believe there probably were significant election irregularities.

It seems the reason we are told over and over again that Biden is the "president-elect" and allegations of election problems are "baseless" is precisely because the mainstream strongly suspects or knows the allegations are not baseless at all. I also believe that the undisciplined and incompetent Team Trump is likely not up to the task of getting to the truth and, in any case, they have Democrats, the media, establishment Republicans, and the Deep State working against them.

See also:

• Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations II
• Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations IV
  

Labels: Biden, Democrats, media, politics, Republicans, Trump, Tucker Carlson, voting

# posted by VFPDissident @ 12/06/2020 11:30:00 PM 0 comments

The first election I remember with any clarity is the 1976 race between Ford and Carter. Since then I've participated in every presidential election, including two where I served as a precinct officer.

Over and over, every four years, I've heard people say: "This is the most consequential election of our life time" or words to that effect. I was never convinced that was true until this year. The American corporate media have never been known for rigid devotion to the full truth and political neutrality but they seldom engaged in such sustained blatantly and overtly dishonest reporting as followed the 2016 election of Donald Trump. 

The media's usual modus operandi was to manipulate people through omission, de-emphasis, and spin. For example, in 2011, Barack Obama became the first known US president to order the assassination of an American citizen "without due process of law". In actuality, the Obama administration fought successfully in court to ensure there would be no due process for US citizens on its "kill list".

These facts should have been blared relentlessly in headlines along with critical op-eds until Obama was successfully impeached. To be sure, there was media coverage of these outrages but nothing commensurate with the gravity of the offenses or even approaching the outrage ginned up by the media's blatantly false characterization of Trump's 2017 remarks regarding violent protests in Charlottesville. To this day, most Americans I speak with about it have little or no idea about Obama's assassination of American citizens not to mention his unapologetic killings of thousands of non-citizens, including hundreds of children.

However, this year's election was the culmination of four years of an unprecedented, near-complete decoupling from truth except when it supported the narrative. In some ways this started with Black Lives Matter and was fanned by Obama but it increased by orders of magnitude when Trump was elected. Since then we've been subjected to an emotionally and ideologically driven outpouring of hate and, often, blatant lies.

In all my life, I've never seen the mainstream media, academia, and the entertainment industry join in such sustained lockstep to villify and remove an American president and to demonize the people who put him in office. There's no conclusive evidence this will end when Trump is gone.

The naked, unrestrained quest for power and domination by any means of the Democrats and their allies is frightening. Few useful lies are too incredible to report and few inconvenient truths are so important that they can't be denied, misrepresented, or ignored. Unfortunately, many Americans uncritically rely on the mainstream media and are too busy, too lazy, or too indoctrinated to thoughtfully question what they are told, let alone what they are not told or allowed to view, hear, and judge for themselves.

A case in point is today's press conference with RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, Trump campaign adviser Kayleigh McEnany, and campaign General Counsel Matt Morgan. These three spoke for over 20 minutes on concerns about the election practices in some states and the lawsuits filed to deal with them.

McDaniel said, from Michigan alone, the campaign had 131 affidavits and over 2,800 incident reports concerning election irregularities. McEnany alleged that 682,479 ballots were counted in Allegheny County—where Philadelphia Pittsburgh is located—where no Republican poll watchers were permitted to observe the canvassing.

I'm not going to go through all the claims put forth, you can watch the press conference and make up your own mind. However, McDaniel was correct when she stated: "If the shoe were on the other foot. If it were this close the other way. If president Trump was in the lead in all these states ... the media would be screaming, 'This isn't over, the race isn't over, we need more time to count and make sure it's right.' But because it's Biden and a very slight lead the media demands the race is over and there's nothing to see here."

And, in fact, there has been a virtual corporate media blackout of the press conference today. Fox News started to show it and then quickly decided to censor it. The Washington Post covered the Fox News censorship but not the substance of the press conference. On their flagship afternoon news program National Public Radio has a nearly two-minute long segment the Bidens' dogs' new Twitter account but nothing about the allegations raised in the press conference. In fact, NPR apparently hasn't covered anything White House Press Secretary McEnany has said since Oct. 28.

If you truly care about technically free and fair elections in an admittedly flawed political system the time is now to step up against the Democrats and the media's potential, if unlikely, coup-in-the-making. Do it for your country and yourself, do it out of respect for the ideals of freedom of information and representative democracy. Tell your friends and family what is happening. Tell your political representatives that you want all credible allegations of electoral error and impropriety fully and transparently investigated.

See also:

• Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations I
• Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations III

Labels: critical thinking, Democrats, media, National Public Radio, Obama, politics, Trump, voting

# posted by VFPDissident @ 11/09/2020 09:09:00 PM 1 comments

Around noon yesterday, the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets anointed Joe Biden as the "president-elect". Consistent with a plan Axios described on Nov. 3, Biden publicly assumed the mantle of leadership that same day.

Yesterday, I also searched the New York Times archive. As it turns out, they didn't refer to George W. Bush as the "president-elect" until December 13, 2000, the day of Al Gore's concession speech.

Yet, in 2020, despite the fact that the incumbent president has not conceded defeat and has made allegations of voting irregularities that he says he will litigate the mainstream media has already declared the election decided and settled. This comes less than four days after Election Day, following a highly unusual and hotly contested election, and before a single state has certified their election results.

I doubt that Trump's campaign will be able to muster evidence of election irregularities substantial enough to overturn the presumptive Biden victory. I am inclined to believe that he actually lost the election due to his unpopularity, not error or fraud. However, there appears to be enough anecdotal evidence of election errors and fraud (see e.g. here and here and here) to warrant targeted, thorough, and transparent investigations.

Nevertheless, true to form and in stark contrast to their reporting on canvassing problems in 2000, the mainstream media has repeatedly asserted there are no problems with the elections results. They may be right but this is a continuation of their unprincipled sabotage of the Trump presidency since before his inauguration. There were plenty of legitimate reasons to oppose Trump—I did and still do—but the media was not content stick with those and with honest reporting.

If the allegations of election problems are demonstrably false then why not demonstrate their falsehood with evidence instead of bare assertions repeated incessantly? If the claims are false then a proper investigation would, to most people, strengthen confidence in the integrity of the process and results. Of course, that presumes people value such integrity above their preferred outcome.

And sure, there are some people who will never believe that Trump lost in a technically free and fair election but why the rush to anoint Biden? Why not wait until the states certify enough results to give the winner 270 electoral college votes?

And why take the wholly unprecedented step of censoring the POTUS on radio and television when he spoke on Thursday? TV and radio are the primary or only sources of news for many. Here's the speech that your corporate media guardians did not want you to see or hear in order to make up your own mind.

See also:

• Lessons of the 2020 Election
• Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations II

Labels: Biden, media, politics, Ralph Nader, Trump, voting

# posted by VFPDissident @ 11/08/2020 08:22:00 PM 0 comments

Donald J. Trump has endured more than four years of constant public drubbing by most of the mainstream media, academia, and the entertainment industry. Trump survived the bogus Russiagate conspiracy and a failed impeachment related to Biden family dealings in Ukraine. A significant number of establishment Republicans betrayed their party to publicly campaign for Biden. Biden has collected far more campaign money ($1,380.1 million vs. $863.6 million) than Trump.

In many ways Trump's presidency has been an incoherent mess marked by numerous self-inflicted wounds, including but not limited to, bad policies and inept policy implementation. Yet, despite all this and during the worst pandemic in 100 years and the worst economy in 90 years, Trump once again defied the pollsters and pundits to mount a strong challenge to the presidential nominee of Democratic Party. It looks like Republicans will hold the Senate and cut the Democratic majority in the House to single digits. Meanwhile, in solid blue California voters soundly rejected an attempt by political elites to remove an anti-discrimination clause from the state constitution.

This all begs the question: Will Democratic (or Republican) elites learn the right lessons from the 2016 and 2020 elections and resolve to work "to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty"? Nah.

See also:

• Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations I
• "Tucker Carlson: A Vote for President Trump Is a Vote Against America's Ruling Class" by Joey Pietro for The Western Journal
  
• "Ketman And The Left's Problem" by Rod Dreher for The American Conservative

Labels: Biden, COVID-19, media, politics, race, Russia, Trump, Tucker Carlson, voting

# posted by VFPDissident @ 11/04/2020 07:14:00 PM 0 comments

Labels: communism, economics, humor, politics, Remy, video

# posted by VFPDissident @ 11/03/2020 09:57:00 PM 0 comments

Thanks to a fawning, largely uncritical media and a feckless, gullible public, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York was able to falsely position himself this year as the COVID-19 anti-Trump. In May, The Guardian published an op-ed titled "Andrew Cuomo is no hero. He's to blame for New York's coronavirus catastrophe". The authors noted:

Andrew Cuomo may be the most popular politician in the country. His approval ratings have hit all-time highs thanks to his Covid-19 response. Some Democrats have discussed him as a possible replacement for Joe Biden, due to Biden’s perceived weakness as a nominee. And there have even been some unfortunate tributes to Cuomo’s alleged sex appeal.

All of which is bizarre, because Cuomo should be one of the most loathed officials in America right now. ProPublica recently released a report outlining catastrophic missteps by Cuomo and the New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio, which probably resulted in many thousands of needless coronavirus cases ...

Federal failures played a role, of course, but this tragedy was absolutely due, in part, to decisions by the governor.

Nevertheless image triumphed once again over reality, as The Atlantic put it last August: 

The opening night of the Democrats’ virtual convention was the beginning of a coronation for Joe Biden, but it was also a victory march for Andrew Cuomo, New York’s governor and a supposed hero of the coronavirus pandemic. “For all the pain and all the tears, our way worked,” Cuomo declared in his five-minute speech. “And it was beautiful.”

“Beautiful” is an odd way to describe a virus that has killed more than 25,000 New Yorkers, or about 15 percent of the total number of Americans who have died from COVID-19. But Cuomo has long been a curious leader for Democrats to hold up as an emblem of successful leadership during the pandemic: He has somehow presided over the worst and deadliest coronavirus outbreak in the country while eluding the widespread criticism that has surrounded both President Donald Trump and New York City’s Democratic mayor, Bill de Blasio.

Earlier today I had bizarre conversation about one of Cuomo's many failures. In 2015, the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law (TFLL), its members appointed by Cuomo, released its "2015 Ventilator Allocation Guidelines".

The TFLL estimated that during the "peak week" of a severe "1918-like" pandemic scenario the state would have a ventilator shortfall of 15,783 units (p. 30). Instead of urging the state's leaders to come up with a plan to close the shortfall of ventilators and trained personnel to operate them the TFLL accepted a shortage of life-saving equipment as a fait accompli. The TFLL was focused on rationing ventilators without any analysis of whether the shortage could be ameliorated through advance preparation. Cuomo implicitly, if not explicitly, agreed he could live with the projected shortage and the deaths that would entail.

Their solution, then, was to create a triage plan that, by design, likely consigned hundreds, if not thousands, of patients to a needless death when the pandemic arrived this year. When I pointed out this to my friend she defended Cuomo asserting there was little or nothing he could have done differently. I replied he could have said: This is unacceptable, we need to figure out how to close this gap. She claimed, "That's not how government works." I'll never understand why some people make excuses for corrupt and/or inept politicians.

In 1984, the governor's father, Mario Cuomo, who was then himself governor of New York, gave one of his best known speeches at the Democratic national convention. His vision of government included the idea that people should be "protected in those moments when they would not be able to protect themselves." Andrew Cuomo echoed this notion when, in 2017, he asserted of the subway "crisis": "There is no time for delay and there is no tolerance for a lack of commitment on this issue ... The fundamental responsibility of government is to respond in a timely and effective way when people need help."

If Cuomo's TFLL could identify the problem then they could also have come up with a better solution. Moreover, Cuomo could have demanded one. No, he can't magically conjure ventilators or the money to buy them but experts have been predicting a serious viral pandemic for years. Cuomo (and governors and legislators across the country) had the ability and responsibility to ensure his state was better prepared for it.

Instead in March, Cuomo lied or betrayed a profound ignorance. As Colin Kalmbacher at Law & Crime wrote:

On Wednesday morning, during his quotidian Coronavirus press briefing, the three-term Democratic governor told an easily verifiable falsehood about New York’s state of health.

“No one has these ventilators and no one ever anticipated a situation where you would need this number of ventilators to deal with a public health emergency,” Cuomo said–explaining the Empire State’s recent move toward rationing the highly in-demand medical devices.

“So we have purchased everything that can be purchased,” he added. “We’re now in a situation where we’re trying to accelerate production of these ventilators, and a ventilator is a complicated piece of equipment.”

But Cuomo’s claim that “no one ever anticipated” the “number of ventilators to deal with a public health emergency” is directly undercut by a report from New York State itself–under his own administration–released halfway into Cuomo’s second term in office.

Like Cuomo, the New York State Commissioner of Health he appointed, Howard A. Zucker, was also given to uttering falsehoods. In a letter accompanying the TFLL's report he claimed: "Protecting the health and well-being of New Yorkers is a core objective of the Department of Health." So, Zucker knew about the anticipated ventilator shortage and the "death panel" solution to deal with it. 

Yet, in March of this year, Newsday reported: 

"I always felt if you can improve the life of others — whether an individual or many — you should," he [Zucker] said in an interview. "I learned practicing clinical medicine that I have to do everything possible ... it's our role in society."

"But I never expected this kind of situation," he said of the coronavirus threat."

Zucker has mostly flown under the radar compared to his boss but his COVID-19 performance prompted one editorial titled: "New York health chief Howard Zucker: Call him Dr. Death".

By April, Cuomo was throwing tens of millions of dollars around to try to buy ventilators at elevated prices from people who often couldn't deliver. If instead, he had ordered 15,783 ventilators in 2015 when his Task Force released its report then the state would likely have had a stockpile on hand during the COVID-19 crisis for less than 0.14% of the state's 2015-16 disbursements.

For the calculation above, I used a 2020 ventilator retail price via ProPublica of $12,495 per unit. I have no doubt that price is actually significantly higher than a competitive bidding process in 2015 would have obtained. If the state had spread the acquisition out over five years then the cost would have been less than 0.03% of the annual budget.

In any event, it seems both unsurprising and clear that few high-profile politicians of either major party actually concern themselves much with the victims of COVID-19, whom they largely regard as superannuated drags on the economy or otherwise disposable people. They don't say this out loud but their policies speak volumes. Instead of taking effective steps to save lives and safely re-open the economy, Democrats blame Trump, Republicans blame China (or engage in various forms of denial) and, in the meantime, the US has the largest COVID-19 death toll and one of the highest per capita COVID-19 death rates in the world.

Labels: Biden, COVID-19, Democrats, government, health, media, medicine, politics, science, Trump

# posted by VFPDissident @ 11/01/2020 06:55:00 PM 0 comments

Facts don't matter to the academic victimology narrative. Far from destroying the black body, whites are the overwhelming target of interracial violence. Between 2012 and 2015, blacks committed 85.5 percent of all black-white interracial violent victimizations (excluding interracial homicide, which is also disproportionately black-on-white). That works out to 540,360 felonious assaults on whites. Whites committed 14.4 percent of all interracial violent victimization, or 91,470 felonious assaults on blacks. Blacks are less than 13 percent of the national population.

Source: Heather Mac Donald. "Darkness Falls: The collapse of the rule of law across the country, intensified by Antifa radicals, is terrifying". City Journal. May 31, 2020.

Labels: Black America, crime, politics, quotations, race, White folks

# posted by VFPDissident @ 10/11/2020 05:07:00 PM 0 comments

Whoopi Goldberg poses with members of the Proud Boys in Florida in 2019.

After the sh*tshow that was last night's presidential "debate" the mainstream media's major talking point is the allegation that Trump refused to "condemn white supremacists". Never mind that, beginning no later than August 2017, Trump has repeatedly "condemned white supremacists". Never mind, too, that White supremacism is virtually a non-issue in modern America.

In any case, the media frenetically seized on Trump's failure to condemn a group fingered by Biden—the Proud Boys. Earlier today, I ran a search on "proud boys" + "hate group". Every news hit on the first page of results claimed, assumed, or implied that the Proud Boys is a violent "hate", "white nationalist", and/or "white supremacist" group, mostly on the strength of allegations by the disreputable ADL or SPLC. In typical fashion, spineless Republicans and Fox News piled on.

Here's the strange thing, as even some of its detractors acknowledge, the Proud Boys is a multi-racial group. Here's what one critic wrote earlier today:

Indeed the group has a membership that includes those of Black, Hispanic, and Asian backgrounds. This fact would be the core argument against the Proud Boys being termed a "white nationalist" group, which goes along with its also-problematic rebranding to center on the coded language of "Western values."

"Proud Boys is a multi-racial fraternity with thousands of members worldwide," a lawyer for McInnis asserted in 2018. "The only requirements for membership are that a person must be biologically male and believe that the West is the best."

So, how is a Progressive goodthinker supposed to reconcile the Proud Boys' racial/ethnic diversity (good) with White people/hate (bad)? Injunction 1: Who said you were allowed to think? Your betters have told you what to believe, just accept that the Proud Boys are a hate group and leave it at that. Injunction 2: If you disobey Injunction 1, realize that their refusal to accept (White) racial guilt proves their crime. It goes like this:

However, the group's [i.e. the Proud Boys'] website includes a list of core values [see also here] as tenets: "Minimal Government, Maximum Freedom, Anti Political Correctness, Anti-Drug War, Closed Borders, Anti-Racial Guilt, Anti-Racism, Pro-Free Speech (1st Amendment), Pro-Gun Rights (2nd Amendment), Glorifying the Entrepreneur, Venerating the Housewife, Reinstating a Spirit of Western Chauvinism."

The impossible notion of couching "anti-racism" together with "anti-racial guilt" is informative, in the implicit suggestion that Proud Boys do not hate non-whites as long as they (whites) aren't guilted into taking ownership of their privilege or past sins of racialized violence. In other words, per their ideology, "others" can join as long as they fully adhere to white-centered, libertarian ideals of freedom, and inherent superiority.

In fact, all ethical and thinking people reject both racism and racial guilt. Moreover, the Proud Boys nowhere, that I have seen, claim or imply that non-White members are "others" who must "fully adhere to white-centered, libertarian ideals of freedom, and inherent superiority."

In one of the rare, more balanced accounts USA Today reported:

Current Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who is Afro-Cuban, says the group has "longstanding regulations prohibiting racist, white supremacist or violent activity," Ronald D. Coleman wrote in an email to USA TODAY. Coleman said he is a spokesman for the Proud Boys.

"We do not care what color you are or what your background is ... if you love America ... we consider you a brother," Tarrio said in a written statement provided by Coleman. The group condemns racism, fascism, communism and socialism, the statement says.

As for the allegations of violence. I have little doubt that some of the Proud Boys and/or its associates have instigated violence and they should be arrested and tried for it. However, I have watched a lot of video of the violent encounters and they, overwhelmingly, seem to be defensive on the part of the Proud Boys.

One recent example occurred this summer in Kalamazoo. The USA Today report quoted above said simply: "When the Proud Boys met with counterprotesters in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in August, the tensions boiled over into fights requiring law enforcement to step in." The reporter did not see fit to tell his readers that Kalamazoo police determined, and provided video showing, that "counterprotesters" initiated the violence (see also here).

In a largely ignored statement issued before Kalamazoo police had their press conference the Michigan chapter of the Proud Boys said, in part:

For those in Kalamazoo city government who claim to reject our values of hate – we merely ask who do we hate? African American Proud Boys, Asian Proud Boys, Jewish Proud Boys, Arab Proud Boys, Hispanic Proud Boys were all represented as photo and video documentation of our protest prove. We hate no one, but we do pity those that must resort to violence when confronted ... by those who vote for a different political party than they do, and support the current President of the United States.

All this is not to say the Proud Boys are angelic beings who can think or do no wrong but all the evidence of which I am aware indicates that the mainstream media has generally shamefully misrepresented them for transparently political purposes.

Labels: Biden, critical thinking, media, politics, race, Trump, Tucker Carlson, video, White folks

# posted by VFPDissident @ 9/30/2020 11:18:00 PM 0 comments

No honest or rational person would ever accuse me of being a supporter of Donald Trump. That said, Trump's response to Bob Woodward's question about "White privilege" is almost perfect and worth listening to.

Woodward: But let me ask you this. I mean, we share one thing in common. We're White, privileged, who- my father was a lawyer and a judge in Illinois, and we know what your dad did.

Do you have any sense that that privilege has isolated and put you in a cave to a certain extent, as it put me, and I think lots of White, privileged people in a cave. And that we have to work our way out of it to understand the anger and the pain, particularly Black people feel in this country. Do you feel–

Trump: No. You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn't you? Just listen to you. Wow. No, I don’t feel that at all.

Labels: media, politics, race, Trump

# posted by VFPDissident @ 9/12/2020 03:53:00 PM 0 comments

My primary source of daily news is National Public Radio, which, in my experience, was never a fountain of unadulterated truth. In the Trump era, although they profess otherwise, NPR has pretty much abandoned any vestige of a commitment to non-partisan truth-telling. Trump Derangement Syndrome has done that to a lot of people.

That said, I have always been keenly aware that NPR and other Left-liberal-Democratic outlets hold no monopoly on biased, dishonest journalism. The story and image below from Breitbart is a case in point.

I think the issue of transgender athletes, especially primary school and college amateurs, competing against cisgender athletes of the gender to which the transgender athletes have transitioned is not amenable to an obvious, straightforward solution. However, publishers, editors, and journalists with integrity will strive not to mislead their audience or play to their emotions. They will present them with all relevant facts about an issue. Sadly, such integrity is largely missing from outlets such as NPR and Breitbart.

Notice that the photo Breitbart used for their article (really a rehashed press release) is credited but un-captioned. I can only assume this is because Breitbart does not wish to trouble their readers with some facts that don't fit their agenda.

First, the short-haired wrestler dominating the other wrestler with a neck hold is Mack Beggs of Texas. Second, in that 2018 photo Beggs is a transgender boy competing against girls because he was prohibited from competing against boys. Beggs is not a "biological male" identifying as a girl/woman.

There are other facts the average reader would be unlikely to discern from the article alone. The press release Penny Starr all but plagiarized is from WOLF, a radical feminist organization. Here are a few things they believe:

•     That female humans, the class of people called women, are oppressed by men under a male-supremacist system called patriarchy.
•     That patriarchy is organized around the extraction of resources from female bodies and minds in the service of men, including reproductive, sexual, emotional, and labor resources.
•     That gender is a hierarchical caste system that organizes male supremacy. Gender cannot be reformed – it must be abolished.
•     That we are enmeshed in overlapping systems of sadistic power built on misogyny, white privilege, stolen wealth, and human supremacism, and all of those must be dismantled.

Breitbart and its readers are not known for their opposition to "patriarchy" and the other issues WOLF decries. But, tellingly, they'll climb into bed with WOLF to unite against transgender athletes.

Another undisclosed and ironic fact is that the Idaho law touted in the Breitbart article—even if it survives judicial scrutiny—would not prevent another transgender boy such as Mack Beggs from wrestling girls. You see the "Fairness in Women's Sports Act" only requires that "Athletic teams or sports designated for females, women, or girls shall not be open to students of the male sex." Under the Idaho law a transgender boy is a girl and permitted to compete against cisgender girls. So, all in all, the photo selected for the article could hardly be more misleading.

Labels: gender, law, LGBT, media, National Public Radio, politics, Trump

# posted by VFPDissident @ 9/08/2020 08:55:00 PM 0 comments

Labels: critical thinking, politics, quotations, race

# posted by VFPDissident @ 9/05/2020 12:39:00 AM 0 comments