Authoritarianism Has a Bunch of Names

Maoism was responsible for 50 million or more deaths, and Stalinism another 20 or 30 million, but I can’t think of a single important American novel or film depicting those holocausts. Offhand I can recall one American movie that seriously portrayed the inhumanity of collectivism — The Killing Fields, though one hopes there are at least some others I’ve forgotten. That movie is now 36 years old.

Somehow, I have to do better than feeling angry because people with different experiences feel differently than I do, even if they are stupid fuck ups. 

I remember 10 to 20 years ago when, following any discussion of a contentious issue someone had to pronounce how the solution was better education. Now days I realize that "education" as dictated by the government will always be part indoctrination, and for some reason, government school systems are not always loaded down with passionate libertarians who love liberty more than coercion - or can even tell the difference.  

Amazing that we have to be reminded of this.

Murders. Child mortality. Death in automobiles. Work place death. Protection from disease by the medical system. 

All substantively better, yet we collectively are as worried as ever. Education system, where are you? Elected officials, why are you reinforcing this? 

Is it as simple as there's far more incentive to keep us worried than to remind us of how good we have it? Or, do we as a species need to worry - is that a functional state for a tribe of hunter-gatherers and we don't know what to do with our angst in the time of the greatest plenty and safety in the history of the world?

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/02/21/bernies_wrong_we_are_better_off_today_than_we_were_45_years_ago_142456.html

Too Obvious

This is a story of the obvious - authoritarians governments don't care about individuals and even if they did, they are constrained by acting in their behalf.

Not sure why this isn't obvious to all those who incessantly push for more government power and control.

https://outline.com/ynTxL4

Bloomberg, Elitist Antii-Gunner and Racist?

Michael Bloomberg has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars in his bid to become president, swamping television sets and smartphone screens with carefully compiled ads that present the anti-gun billionaire as a pragmatic technocrat who can solve problems without needless partisanship. That narrative was challenged Monday evening as Twitter users shared audio from a 2015 speech to the Aspen Institute where Bloomberg talked about fighting crime by disarming young black men.

https://bearingarms.com/cam-e/2020/02/11/twitter-bloomberg-speech/?fbclid=IwAR0oGMRx3n7G3mkCEe91MIiZFvcdiBvqmDGUPDP4e2PSzC1CQNOfIeuiX-o

Journalism Isn't

When scrutinizing Trump’s economic record, our fact checkers oscillate from the hyper-contextual argument to the raw data, depending on which strategy works best to give Obama credit.

In reality, Obama, hampered by a Republican Congress, did virtually nothing on the economic front from 2010 onward. Why he deserves any special credit for the growth a decade out is a bit of a mystery.

But if we’re going to talk about Obama’s record, let’s mention that post-recession economies typically offer huge and dynamic job-growth potential. Yet Obama’s initiatives brought us the slowest recovery in American history. Trump had far less running room and so has a strong argument to make that tax cuts and rolling back the regulatory regime helped sustain what is now unprecedented growth, historically low unemployment, and a tightening labor market that has led to higher wage gains.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/trump-state-of-the-union-address-factchecking-factcheckers/#slide-1

Journalists pretending to be objective is impossibly silly. None of us is objective.

"In ten years ..."

When I see and article premised on a prediction of the future, I skip it. Why? Because as stupid as I am I have figured out that those who say they know what will happen are substituting the pretense of knowledge to calm their need for certainty.

The future is not known, nor knowable. I will not pretend to indulge the predictors. I also censor my own need to know what will happen and instead decide "if a happens, I will take action plan b, and if c happens, I will ..."

Once this choice is made, it is amazing how many BS article one can ignore. Once this observation of the unknowable nature of the future is accepted, it's amazing how worried we get over literally nothing. Said another way, it is human nature and just plain stupid to worry about predictions.

The boogeyman is mine now ...

Declare, 'We’ve got ten years to save the planet,' and you never have to recant.

It is a founding principle of Boogeyman alarmism that it be couched in vague terms. Only a novice at scaremongering would tell a little brother, “Give me your candy or the Boogeyman will come and sew your eyelids closed Thursday night at 6:07 p.m. Central Time.” Boogeyman leverage relies heavily on uncertainty. All predictions of Boogeyman activity must be non-falsifiable. Just say, “The Boogeyman will get you” and leave it at that.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/beware-the-boogeyman-alarm/

QS, you were trying to kill me. Hasta la vista, baby ...

It wasn't personal, he just wanted some of us, any of us over there in Iraq, to expire. Any dead american would have been a good american to him. He made sure the bombers had very potent IEDs. Well, I'm still here you son of an asshat, and you are fucking pieces and embers.

For all the current furor over the death of Qasem Soleimani, it is Iran, not the U.S. and the Trump administration, that is in a dilemma. Given the death and destruction wrought by Soleimani, and his agendas to come, he will not be missed.

Tehran has misjudged the U.S. administration’s doctrine of strategic realism rather than vice versa. The theocracy apparently calculated that prior U.S. patience and restraint in the face of its aggression was proof of an unwillingness or inability to respond. More likely, the administration was earlier prepping for a possible more dramatic, deadly, and politically justifiable response when and if Iran soon overreached.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/iranian-analytics/