"As Americans are hitting the road," the White House explains, "they are paying less for gasoline than they have on average for the last 15 years -- [and] about the same as May 2018 and May 2019."
Meanwhile, as James Carville explains, Democrats are the law-and-order party.
So really, the problem is you. If you'd quit believing your lying eyes and listen to what you're told by the experts, everything would be fine.
Michael Anton has a new essay that I think is very important because it lines up with a project of my own: the new state of Appalachia, which I someday hope to form out of elements of North Georgia, East Tennessee, Western North Carolina, West Virginia and parts of Western Virginia. No big cities -- even Knoxville and Asheville will be omitted. Just good Highlander country, ideally a near-anarchy governed on voluntary lines such as I've been describing lately.
Anton is a very smart and well-educated guy whom I've met several times and have mentioned more than once before. I don't think he and I have much in common except the occasional idea; and sometimes not even that. But he's definitely worth reading once he sits down and maps something out, whether you end up agreeing with him or not.
This time, I do.
Researchers have analysed the make-up of basketball and football teams, for example, to find out how the addition of highly rated players improves overall team performance. When analysing the World Cup, for instance, they examined how many of each nation’s players came from the most prestigious clubs, such as Manchester United or FC Barcelona. Surprisingly, they found that the benefits of that exceptional individual talent were often underwhelming. Thanks, perhaps, to the star players’ rutting egos, the teams with the highest number of stars often failed to collaborate effectively.
Amazon has purchased MGM Studios and the famous Bond franchise for $8.45 billion, according to reports. Current Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos expressed his excitement over the purchase."We are looking forward to bringing the story of British superspy James Bond into new and exciting directions!" said Bezos. "I can't give away too much, but I can say that the next Bond film will be a story about how a powerful organization taking over the world is actually a good thing!"
DB: AWOL numbers skyrocket after Air Force transitions to camouflage that actually works
HT: Optimus Prime Forced to Walk Everywhere After Truck Form Fails Highway Safety Inspection
Since we're watching JP, he has some very good advice for the people running Biden.
Yesterday [a Washington Post reporter] published a follow up that makes clear the Biden administration is abolishing many of ICE’s duties even if the agency itself still exists. Last month the agencies 6,000 officers carried out just 3,000 deportations. This is all thanks to the new rules put in place by the administration.
I look forward to using the same treatment on the ATF, FBI, IRS and so many others. They may still exist as ceremonial units similar to the Military Knights of Windsor or the Royal Company of Archers. Eventually a sensible Congress can dispose of them, but in the meantime, they can all be rendered harmless along just the way that our current President is paving for us now.
On Sunday, CBS News’ 60 Minutes aired an important news segment on the phenomenon of detransitioning — when a person who identified as transgender and undertook various interventions to confirm a cross-sex identity later rejects a transgender identity and embraces his or her biological sex. Many transgender activists have objected to news outlets covering these important stories....Garrett told 60 Minutes that he went from taking hormones to getting his testicles removed in just three months, far short of the WPATH guidelines, which suggest a year’s worth of continuous use before such drastic “bottom surgery.” He later got a breast augmentation.“But, instead of feeling more himself, he says he felt worse,” 60 Minutes reported.“So, more depressed after you transitioned than before?” Stahl asked.“I had never really been suicidal before until I had my breast augmentation,” Garrett replied. “And about a week afterwards I wanted to, like, actually kill myself. Like, I had a plan and I was gonna do it but I just kept thinking about, like, my family, to stop myself.”“It kind of felt like, how am I ever going to feel normal again, like other guys now?” he remarked.
An aside: surprising that it wasn't after his castration that he had this experience, but after the cosmetic surgery to add fake breasts. I would have thought that the castration would be the traumatic event after which you could 'never feel normal' -- at least, not like a normal guy. The change in hormone balances already being effected by drugs would have become greater with the removal of one's natural source of testosterone. Yet apparently it was the visual difference of appearing to have breasts that was the real psychological shock.
Good to see some breakthrough discussion of this, though. These really are permanent, life-altering changes. No one should go through with this without a complete understanding of what it is going to entail, including the understanding that some people who do go through with it really regret it afterwards. Instead, it sounds like even the limited protections in the guidelines are being ignored by everyone involved.
This week, pro-Palestinian demonstrators auditioned for the chance to join already established Democratic Party militias antifa and Black Lives Matter by attacking Jews in New York and Los Angeles.... Since the late spring, many have noted that these blue militias have typically avoided laying waste to red regions. And it is strange, if you think the Democrats have mobilized criminals and psychopaths and other semitragic misfits to target those they claim are the true enemies of democracy, tolerance, and brotherly love—the more than 74 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump. Presumably, blue militias know that if they campaigned in rural or even suburban America they would be met by a well-armed citizenry.
Still, why burn down their own neighborhoods? Again, here the Middle East is the key to understanding. And if you know anything about that region, you know that the answer is because that’s their job—not to confront their alleged red state enemies, but to remind their neighbors and fellow Joe Biden voters that their security, indeed even their lives, depend on them keeping the faith, no matter how much the party’s pet projects might hurt or offend them personally.If Smith is right, something very different from ordinary politics is happening in our country now. Republicans seem to think they’ll just win it at the next election; but these kind of mobilizations in nations like Venezuela have generally heralded the end of legitimate elections.
A contrast with the recruiting ad for the Army we recently saw.
Chilling out on a Friday with an hour and a half of Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats
Soros kicked in $2M to elect Maricopa County sheriff now stonewalling election audit
More than four years before Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone used his law enforcement credibility to resist subpoenas in the Arizona Senate audit of the county's general election, he was running for the office he now holds.
Crucial to the Democrat's victory over incumbent Republican Joe Arpaio: $2 million from progressive megadonor George Soros.
It was the largest single donation Soros made in a local race in the 2016 election cycle, according to a Politico report at the time. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, kicked in another $250,000 to the pro-Penzone effort.
...
At least according to Rasmussen Reports:
Fewer than 50 unarmed black suspects were killed by police last year and more people were killed with knives than with so-called “assault weapons,” but viewers of MSNBC and CNN are far more likely than Fox News viewers to get those facts wrong.
According to Wikipedia, Violet Jessop (1887-1971) survived not only the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912, but also the sinking of its sister ship the HMHS Britanic in 1916. She was a stewardess on both ships, and she continued working on ships afterwards.
In competition with her record, "Wenman Humfrey 'Kit' Wykeham-Musgrave (1899–1989) was a Royal Navy officer who has the possibly unique distinction of having survived being torpedoed on three different ships on the same day," 22 September 1914. Torpedoed and sunk on three different ships, I should point out. He was saved by a Dutch trawler.
An extremism steering committee led by Bishop Garrison, a senior adviser to the secretary of defense, is currently designing the social media screening pilot program, which will “continuously” monitor military personnel for “concerning behaviors,” according to a Pentagon briefing in late March. Although in the past the military has balked at surveilling service members for extremist political views due to First Amendment protections, the pilot program will rely on a private surveillance firm in order to circumvent First Amendment restrictions on government monitoring, according to a senior Pentagon official....[A possible candidate firm] has drawn criticism for its practice of buying bulk cellular location data and selling it to federal national security agencies like the Secret Service, who rely on the private company to bypass warrant requirements normally imposed on government bodies seeking to collect data.
A reasonable introduction to Stoic philosophy on happiness. Readers of the Hall can probably compare and contrast this view with the earlier Aristotelian view from which it drew much.
President Joe Biden announced April 14 that all US forces would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021, with more recent reports suggesting a US exit by July 2021. However, Richard Fowler, a Marine infantry sergeant, is skeptical.“I believe nothing of what they [the DOD] tell me. We’re pulling out of Afghanistan like we pulled out of Cuba, like we pulled out of Germany, like we pulled out of Japan, like we pulled out of Korea, like we pulled out of Somalia, and on and on and on,” Fowler, who fought in Helmand province in 2008, told Coffee or Die.
Probably most Americans don't realize that we're still in Somalia.
"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [...] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'."
If you put the American counterinsurgency strategy into plain English, it would be this: We stop insurgencies against approved systems of government by raising the costs of being an insurgent, while also raising the benefits of participation in the system high enough that former insurgents have too much of a stake in that system to rebel against it. In other words, it is not just about killing people who are fighting the system. We also do good for people so that they have a positive reason to want to be part of the system. We might build them improved water pumps or treatment facilities, roads, factories, or get them jobs. They need a stake in the system that is better than what they can get by fighting.
I definitely believe that there is an objective moral order, one that is discoverable in nature -- for example, one discovers that the virtues Aristotle praised are in fact the things that make your life better if practiced. That is simply true; and yet the idea that one should draw ethical lessons from nature, even or especially human nature, is very much under attack.
An extraordinary image from the AFP of the contest in Israel.
I listened to some Israelis discussing this, including a general officer and a political advisor. The political advisor thinks this is about a dispute over apartments; the general thinks it is really a power struggle between Hamas and Fatah, in which Hamas is trying to establish leadership by showing itself to be the stronger and more virile party.
I do not think that either of them is right about what is happening here. There are more titanic powers afoot.
Dr. Bastiat posted a summary of some of Dalrymple's major themes over at Ricochet, and I think there are a number of important insights there. Apparently, this is from the Wikipedia entry on Dalrymple.
Here are the first three of 14 or so, to see if the post might be worth your time:
"The modern Labour Party seethes with sociologists named Hugo who wouldn’t know a wrench if it landed on their moccasins."
“When in our democratic republic, forces of conspiracy, division, and despotism arise, it is the patriotic duty of citizens to act collectively in defense of liberty and justice,” reads the preamble to the full statement, which is expected to be released on Thursday....“I’m still a Republican, but I’m hanging on by the skin of my teeth because how quickly the party has divorced itself from truth and reason,” Mr. Taylor said. “I’m one of those in the group that feels very strongly that if we can’t get the G.O.P. back to a rational party that supports free minds, free markets, and free people, I’m out and a lot of people are coming with me.”
John Derbyshire still publishes a monthly memo that I very occasionally read. The most recent one includes quite a bit about poets, first at the beginning and then later on.
[O]ld-style colonialism was constructive as well as destructive, spreading the glories of our civilization world-wide. Today's educators, by contrast, only destroy—a colonial type of activity that they have the gross impertinence to describe as "decolonizing." To replace what they have destroyed they offer only worthless, soul-less dreck like Critical Race Theory.
A school principal in Massachusetts has boasted of removing the Odyssey from the curriculum. That, too, is cast as "decolonization." It is beyond ridiculous. For many decades, we have been tossing classical education into the ditch. Forget about studying Latin or Greek. Very few college students will have read Milton. Almost none will have read Tennyson. Most will not have heard of this Victorian poet; I know this from long experience.
That shocked me perhaps more than the average reader. For one thing, I am a major fan of Tennyson.... For another thing there was a memory from my days teaching English literature at a college in communist China forty years ago. My teaching materials were of course government-approved, the commentaries following the Party line. The classic English poets were well represented: Shakespeare (Marx was a fan), Shelley (major lefty), Burns (a peasant!), even Wordsworth (praised the French Revolution … at first).
Tennyson, however, didn't even get a mention. Why not? I consulted a standard 1979 ChiCom encyclopedia, which I still own. Here is the entire entry for Tennyson:
DingnÃsheng (Alfred Tennyson, 1809-1892). English poet. Born into a clerical family. All his poems beautify capitalist society and bourgeois morality and ethics. In 1850 he was made Poet Laureate. His works one-sidedly promote lyricism and become merely ornate. His most important poems are "The Princess," "Maud," "In Memoriam," "Enoch Arden," "Idylls of the King," etc.
So, a class enemy. Just another reminder, if you needed one, that there isn't much daylight between the ideology that has taken over our schools today and Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought.It occurs to me that an academy that is disposing of the Odyssey would of course not teach Tennyson. If you have gotten as far as disposing of Homer you have certainly disposed of Sir Thomas Malory, without whom Idylls of the King would make little sense. Idylls is too long to try to teach to contemporary undergraduates anyway; more likely, you would teach Ulysses for its heroic and inspiring close:
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'We are not now that strength which in old daysMoved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;One equal temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in willTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
A letter signed by more than a hundred and twenty once-top officers points out that Marxism is winning in America.
Our Nation is in deep peril. We are in a fight for our survival as a Constitutional Republic like no other time since our founding in 1776. The conflict is between supporters of Socialism and Marxism vs. supporters of Constitutional freedom and liberty.
During the 2020 election an “Open Letter from Senior Military Leaders” was signed by 317retired Generals and Admirals and, it said the 2020 election could be the most important election since our country was founded. “With the Democrat Party welcoming Socialists and Marxists, our historic way of life is at stake.” Unfortunately, that statement’s truth was quickly revealed, beginning with the election process itself. Without fair and honest elections that accurately reflect the “will of the people” our Constitutional Republic is lost. Election integrity demands insuring there is one legal vote castand counted per citizen. Legal votes are identified by State Legislature’s approved control susing government IDs, verified signatures, etc. Today, many are calling such commonsense controls “racist” in an attempt to avoid having fair and honest elections....
There's quite a bit more, including rule of law issues, China, attacks on free speech, and so forth. It is good to see people with established reputations for service starting to say something.
1. An objective moral order2. The human person as the center of political and social thought3. A distaste for the use of state power to enforce ideological patterns upon human beings4. A rejection of social engineering, or the "planned" society5. The spirit of the Constitution of the United States as originally conceived, especially the division of powers between state and federal governments and between the three branches of the federal government6. A devotion to Western civilization and an awareness of the need to defend it
The point is so elementary that it should not be necessary to state: a model is not evidence. It is a theory expressed in arithmetic terms. A theory is either validated or disproved by observation. A model that is contradicted by experience is simply wrong, and is useless. History is littered with theories that sounded plausible at the time, but were invalidated by experience.He's right, it shouldn't be necessary to state, but evidently it's necessary to go outside and shout it every day.
DakhaBrakha is the perfect band to make the view ring true that people around the world speak the same musical language. It steeps its songs in traditional Ukrainian folk music but spices them with ingredients from around the world, such as raga drones from India, metrical drumming from Japan, and languid blues from America. DakhaBrakha call its music “ethno-chaos” but what makes it captivating is not the chaos but the way the global sounds amplify the Ukrainian ones. The quartet has released six albums and played concerts across the globe since 2007. Everywhere DakhaBrakha has played, fans have rhapsodized about the joy and pathos in their music.
Pretty little town.
I’m going to try a short 544 mile ride tomorrow to get ahead of some weather. Wish me luck.
May post from the highway; plan to be back by Wednesday.
UPDATE: The sign at the border actually says, “Welcome to SWEET HOME ALABAMA!” It does smell sweet to the motorcycle rider, and like the South, for the plate magnolias are in bloom.
The decisive means for politics is violence.... The ethic of ultimate ends apparently must go to pieces on the problem of the justification of means by ends. As a matter of fact, logically it has only the possibility of rejecting all action that employs morally dangerous means - in theory! ...My colleague, Mr. F. W. Forster, whom personally I highly esteem for his undoubted sincerity, but whom I reject unreservedly as a politician, believes it is possible to get around this difficulty by the simple thesis: 'from good comes only good; but from evil only evil follows.' In that case this whole complex of questions would not exist. But it is rather astonishing that such a thesis could come to light two thousand five hundred years after the Upanishads. Not only the whole course of world history, but every frank examination of everyday experience points to the very opposite. The development of religions all over the world is determined by the fact that the opposite is true....This problem - the experience of the irrationality of the world - has been the driving force of all religious evolution. The Indian doctrine of karma, Persian dualism, the doctrine of original sin, predestination and the deus absconditus, all these have grown out of this experience. Also the early Christians knew full well the world is governed by demons and that he who lets himself in for politics, that is, for power and force as means, contracts with diabolical powers and for his action it is not true that good can follow only from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true. Anyone who fails to see this is, indeed, a political infant.
Whoever wants to engage in politics at all, and especially in politics as a vocation, has to realize these ethical paradoxes. He must know that he is responsible for what may become of himself under the impact of these paradoxes. I repeat, he lets himself in for the diabolic forces lurking in all violence.... He who seeks the salvation of the soul, of his own and of others, should not seek it along the avenue of politics, for the quite different tasks of politics can only be solved by violence. The genius or demon of politics lives in an inner tension with the god of love, as well as with the Christian God as expressed by the church. This tension can at any time lead to an irreconcilable conflict.
If one says 'the future of socialism' or 'international peace,' instead of native city or 'fatherland' (which at present may be a dubious value to some), then you face the problem as it stands now. Everything that is striven for through political action operating with violent means and following an ethic of responsibility endangers the 'salvation of the soul.' If, however, one chases after the ultimate good in a war of beliefs, following a pure ethic of absolute ends, then the goals may be damaged and discredited for generations, because responsibility for consequences is lacking, and two diabolic forces which enter the play remain unknown to the actor. These are inexorable and produce consequences for his action and even for his inner self, to which he must helplessly submit, unless he perceives them. The sentence: 'The devil is old; grow old to understand him!' does not refer to age in terms of chronological years.... Age is not decisive; what is decisive is the trained relentlessness in viewing the realities of life, and the ability to face such realities and to measure up to them inwardly.
Certainly all historical experience confirms the truththat man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today. Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he shall not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or too base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say 'In spite of all!' has the calling for politics.
First England: there until 1868 the party organization was almost purely an organization of notables. The Tories in the country found support, for instance, from the Anglican parson, and from the schoolmaster, and above all from the large landlords of the respective county. The Whigs found support mostly from such people as the nonconformist preacher (when there was one), the postmaster, the blacksmith, the tailor, the ropemakerthat is, from such artisans who could disseminate political influence because they could chat with people most frequently. In the city the parties differed, partly according to economics, partly according to religion, and partly simply according to the party opinions handed down in the families. But always the notables were the pillars of the political organization.
Woodrow Call: [riding in San Antonio] Things sure have changed since the last time I was here. It's all growed up.Gus McCrae: Of course it's growed up, Woodrow. We killed all the Indians and bandits so the bankers could move in.Woodrow Call: Only a fool would want the Indians back.Gus McCrae: Has it ever occurred to you, Woodrow, that all the work we done was for the bankers?
The ascent of leaders is far more difficult where the notables, along with the officials, control the party, as is usually the case in the bourgeois parties. For ideally the notables make 'their way of life' out of the petty chairmanships or committee memberships they hold. Resentment against the demagogue as a homo novus, the conviction of the superiority of political party 'experience' (which, as a matter of fact, actually is of considerable importance), and the ideological concern for the crumbling of the old party traditions - these factors determine the conduct of the notables. They can count on all the traditionalist elements within the party. Above all, the rural but also the petty bourgeois voter looks for the name of the notable familiar to him. He distrusts the man who is unknown to him. However, once this man has become successful, he clings to him the more unwaveringly.
The pattern center in my brain is ascendant again, firing up like a fireworks display. Since all I want to do is crochet lace, maybe I ought to have been some Queen's lady in waiting. Give me a book on tape and a crochet project and life is good: it can even turn the most endless awful meeting into a productive afternoon.
The current leadership of labor unions has strange ideas about their members’ interests.
So now we have the Pipefitters Union against pipelines and the coal miners union against coal.
Did anyone bother to actually ask the rank-and-file members what they thought?
