Category Archives: Culture Wars

August 31, 2017 · 1:37 pm

How To Defeat Scorched Earth Information Warfare

Every American has the power to help defeat scorched earth information warfare.  It doesn’t take military might, new laws to restrict the media or trying to shut down free speech.

Stop being a participant in the scorched earth information warfare.

Don’t be a participant in engaging in scorched earth information warfare and learn to recognize it and not fall for it.

Here’s my battle plan to defeat scorched earth information warfare:

The best thing leaders can do is pull our politics back from the extremes, condemn violence by fringe kooks on the extreme ends and work to find ways to build a few bridges between the virulent partisan factions, that are our two major political parties.

The drumbeat that we are approaching a civil war or that our political system is on the verge of collapse may feed the scorched earth partisans, but it does nothing to fix anything that is wrong in America.

I think what everyone should be doing is work to bolster The Constitution and that means respecting the results at the ballot box. I think people should be working to try to get Trump to rein in the scorched earth, quit the crazy reality TV presidency show, and buckle down and do the job.

Trump’s “war against the media” isn’t happening in a vacuum. Much of the media, the Clinton political machine and many factions on the Left are working tirelessly waging a scorched earth information warfare campaign to #Resist, which is a euphemism for overturn the results of a legal election, by any means necessary.

The best thing the news media could do is take a long, hard look at their news reporting operations & strive to get back to “who, what, when, where, why and how” reporting rather than rushing to retweet the latest “hot take” or editorializing in hard news reporting.  Trust is earned and every time reporters leap into retweeting or running news stories that aren’t true, they erode the trust Americans have in their reporting.

Those entrusted with safeguarding our nation’s most sensitive information should quit with the endless leaking of intel, to try and destroy Trump.

This endless scorched earth information warfare is a serious national security threat, in my opinion.  Many of America’s foreign adversaries are working to foment chaos in this ongoing scorched earth information war, because a divided, chaotic, dysfunctional American political system and the constant visuals of America in chaos feed their political objective of taking down America.

Our elected officials in Washington should spend more time buckling down and finding bi-partisan solutions, to fix many of our nation’s problems, rather than regurgitating partisan talking points and rushing for photo-ops to get attention.

It would be very bad for our republic, if President Trump was impeached over frivolous charges and I am very dubious about that “unfit” gambit under the 25th. Trying to contain the damage he does as a loose cannon, while trying to teach him some restraint (tall order there) would be better for our constitutional order than to have a president ousted, basically by a massive media campaign and unpopular polls numbers.  Poll numbers should never substitute for the ballot box in America, especially in light of the massive information warfare used to generate manufactured public opinion (creating opinion cascades).

If Mueller finds things that warrant impeachment; he should send that information to Congress.

If there aren’t any grounds to impeach him, America will survive a bad president. We’ve survived others.

And most of all, more Americans need to read more and think more, before falling for media-generated outrage and hysteria or leaping onto the bandwagon of these media-driven hot button issues. Quit falling for these media-generated contentious topics that the media punditry and social media spread under the guise of “national conversations”.

What America really needs is more citizens talking to their neighbors and within their own communities, to find solutions for most of the problems within their own communities.  They also need to work to get to know each other.   The putrid punditry fueling anger, distrust and hate, from the partisan fringes poisons our politics.

Everyone should work to promote respect and civility in the public square.

To quote Maya Angelou, a poet, whose poetry I don’t care for at all, but who sure had some memorable quotes that speak the truth:

“Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but it has not solved one yet.”

1 Comment

Filed under American Character, Civility, Corrupt Media Collusion, Culture Wars, General Interest, Politics, The Constitution, The Media

August 24, 2017 · 2:10 pm

All leadership boils down to trust.

Last week, President Trump retweeted a meme about General Pershing, which according to military historians is not true:

  
More

Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!

11:45 AM – 17 Aug 2017
Alex Horton, a reporter at the Washington Post, writes:

“Brian M. Linn, a history professor at Texas A&M University, did just that nearly two decades ago when he published “Guardians of Empire,” a book on the U.S. military presence in Asia from 1902 to 1940.

His verdict on Trump’s claim?

“There is absolutely no evidence this occurred,” he told The Washington Post.

“It’s a made-up story. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times people say this isn’t true. No one can say where or when this occurred.”

But Trump’s claims, and the wider belief in a routinely debunked story, have far-reaching effects. Not only is the story untrue, but the convenient twist — of an insurgency defeated only with the use of brutal war tactics — points to precisely the opposite lessons Pershing and his troops learned in the Philippines campaign from 1899 to 1913, Linn said.

“The U.S. military learned escalating counterterrorism was not effective, and they took great steps, including Pershing, to de-escalate,” Linn said.”

Trump said to study General Pershing. Here’s what the president got wrong.

President Trump loves to sound “tough”, so it’s no surprise he’d latch onto this “committing war crimes to defeat terrorists” myth.   This myth is the distillation of his conviction that the US military should murder ISIS family members to scare ISIS terrorists into submission, his “become terrorists to defeat terrorists strategy”.

Atrocities do happen in most wars, I believe, and often when one side employs a brutal tactic or a newer weapon, the other side often decides to do the same.   In World War I, weapons of mass destruction entered the battlefield, first with tear gas, but escalated, as all major belligerents worked to develop more lethal and effective gases, despite being signatories to the agreements that use of these weapons was a war crime:

“The use of poison gas performed by all major belligerents throughout World War I constituted war crimes as its use violated the 1899 Hague Declaration Concerning Asphyxiating Gases and the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare, which prohibited the use of “poison or poisoned weapons” in warfare.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_weapons_in_World_War_I

General Pershing deserves to be remembered as one of America’s finest generals, not as a war criminal.  He revolutionized the American military during WWI, when he commanded the American Expeditionary Forces.   He went to war without an army, because the American peacetime army had been reduced to a few scattered regiments.  His innovations and relentless pursuit of solutions to complex logistical and tactical problems should be required reading for American military officers.  He defied bureaucracy at every turn, always striving to tackle every obstacle. He dedicated his life to not only leading soldiers, but taking care of his soldiers.  And above all else, General Pershing believed in a stringent code of conduct for all soldiers to follow.  He was not a ruthless killer; he was an American soldier dedicated to serving and protecting America.

General John J. “Blackjack” Pershing is an American hero worth remembering.

I intend to write more about General Pershing in future posts, because we could all learn a great deal about what selfless service means, by studying his leadership example.

President Trump is not the only American to fall for internet myths, fake news, garbled history, fabrications, hoaxes and scams.  Almost everyone who consumes news and information online has fallen for information, that was not true.  For instance, I read news at the Conservative Treehouse, seeing it mentioned in a list of conservative blogs.  The site uses Breitbart wallpaper, imagery of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and Biblical quotes to lure people into believing it’s just a conservative site. I now believe it’s a Russian front operation.  I read some information there a few years ago and was fascinated trying to understand their crowdsourcing method for acquiring information.   Their two big topics were exposing the lies about black violence and Islamist terrorism.  I was banned from their site for trying to post a comment about the Islamic Golden Age, and countering some woman, who claimed I was aiding the enemy and touting Islamists. The historical fact is there really was an Islamic Golden Age and Islamic culture was far more advanced in the sciences than Europe, during that time.  My comment was blocked and I was banned, but they allowed and encouraged racist comments.  That site became Trump Polling Central during the 2016 campaign.

I mentioned my concerns about Drudge in previous posts.   Like millions of other political junkies, I started following Drudge during the Clinton impeachment scandal.  In recent years, Drudge started mainstreaming loon, Alex Jones, by featuring Jones’ stories.  Drudge also sensationalized conspiracy stories, like linking Ted Cruz’ father to JFK’s assassination, to destroy Ted Cruz.   Numerous times he headlined unflattering photos of Trump’s opponents.  On one occasion he headlined photos of Hillary, casting her as decrepit or another occasion, he ran photos of her casting her as a drunk.  The oddest thing I noticed on Drudge during the 2016 election was he removed his link to RedState, which went NeverTrump, from his list of links, and replaced it with Zero Hedge.  I’ve seen numerous articles alleging Zero Hedge is a Russian front operation, that recycles Russia Today propaganda.

The scope of Russian front operations online, their troll armies in comment sections to attack and silence anyone not on the Trump train, melded with Trump’s American sleaze operators, like Roger Stone, Peck at the National Enquirer, Richard Mercer’s Trump data operation, and Trump’s largest agitation propaganda front, Rupert Murdoch’s FOX News.

I know I have fallen for things online that turned out to be untrue, believed sites were reliable news and weren’t, but I am not making critical national security decisions, like President Trump.  I’m a homemaker, who writes a blog.

To improve the quality of the information that the president sees, General Kelly is working to institute policies that assure the president sees only vetted information:

“Confronted with a West Wing that treated policymaking as a free-for-all, President Donald Trump’s chief of staff John Kelly is instituting a system used by previous administrations to limit internal competition —and to make himself the last word on the material that crosses the president’s desk.

It’s a quiet effort to make Trump conform to White House decision-making norms he’s flouted without making him feel shackled or out of the loop. In a conference call last week, Kelly initiated a new policymaking process in which just he and one other aide — White House staff secretary Rob Porter, a little-known but highly regarded Rhodes Scholar who overlapped with Jared Kushner as an undergraduate at Harvard — will review all documents that cross the Resolute Desk.”
Kelly moves to control the information Trump sees

President Trump has shown a preference for relying on word-of-mouth information from his friends and sycophants. General Kelly is trying to provide President Trump with fully vetted information, to aid in the president’s decision-making.  Whether he succeeds at weaning Trump off his penchant for trusting in unvetted internet stories remains to be seen. President Trump believes the American intelligence community, who vets that intelligence information, can’t be trusted, .  It’s worth remembering that several months ago President Trump cited Russian reports as factual to back up his assertions about Russian collusion.  He relied on Russian reports, but believes the American intelligence community is the nefarious “Deep State” out to get him.

Valerie Plame, the former CIA agent, whose identity was leaked several years ago, has initiated a crowdsourcing effort to raise money to buy Twitter and kick President Trump off of Twitter.  This is a ridiculous and pointless effort.  He has the bully pulpit  of the presidency and has endless ways to get his message across.  Beyond that, although I believe it would be better for the country if President Trump got off of Twitter, he is free to make that decision himself.  He obviously believes that his tweet war against the media is helping him “win”.  He deliberately tweets to incite the media and his political enemies, who without fail, rush into a spinning frenzy of moral outrage and retweeting rushed stories, many which fall apart quickly.  This aids him in convincing his followers that he is a victim of a vast conspiracy.

Every time he gets the media and his political enemies to overreact, he feels that is a win. Contrary to President Trump’s assertion that he likes to get the facts, he goes on instinct rather than a careful study of facts and he is very sloppy at presenting detailed information.  None of that matters, because Roger Stone and the other sleazy political strategists behind President Trump came up with his strategy to win in 2016 and they are behind this MAGA 2.0 strategy.  Trump doesn’t understand the details, but he is masterful at the stagecraft and acting the part of a populist flamethrower.

There will be plenty more scorched earth attacks on Trump’s enemies – the media, Republicans, Democrats, or anyone who gets in the way of the Trump train agitation propaganda blitzkrieg.  Roger Stone is back to issuing veiled threats of violence and blood in the streets, to intimidate Republicans into submission again:

“But if the president is impeached, Stone says, there could be disastrous repercussions.

“You will have a spasm of violence in this country, an insurrection like you’ve never seen!” Stone warned. “Both sides are heavily armed.”

“This is not 1974,” Stone explained. “The people will not stand for impeachment.” This, of course, refers to Richard Nixon‘s resignation after the Watergate scandal. Stone worked in the Nixon administration in the Office of Economic Opportunity.

Stone didn’t just predict violence among the public. He said that those in Washington who would support impeachment would be placing themselves at risk.

“A politician who votes for it would be endangering their own life,” he said.

“I’m not advocating violence,” he clarified, “but I’m predicting it.””

https://lawnewz.com/video/roger-stone-anyone-who-votes-for-impeachment-would-be-endangering-their-own-life/

These Trump train thugs, like Stone, want more violence, they especially want the crazies on the left  and right to get more violent.  Most of all they want to intimidate, by using fear.  President Trump will be out there stirring up his base, along with his FOX News army of propagandists, telling Americans that Trump will not put up with violence and he will be tough on crime.

The best defense against Trump train intimidation and fear mongering is to not be afraid.  Don’t back down from threats of violence.  Unite in encouraging civil debate, calm, respect for all Americans and most of all respect for the rule of law.

We should all work tirelessly to pull all Americans away from the partisan extremes.

In the end America’s future does not rest on General Kelly’s ability to rein in Trump, or the media reporting, or getting Trump off of Twitter; it will rest on who the American people choose to trust and follow.

All leadership boils down to trust.

10 Comments

Filed under American Character, American History, Culture Wars, General Interest, Military, Politics, The Media

August 23, 2017 · 2:34 pm

Trump launches MAGA 2.0 campaign

President Trump began his reinvigorated Make America Great Again 2.o propaganda campaign this week.  It’s sure to be more vicious than the 2016 campaign.

President Trump does have a strategy to defeat his political enemies, using mass media manipulation, but it is one that will further divide the country and lead to more violence in the streets.  He wants that violence in the street by Leftists, so he can rally for crackdowns and solidify his support for “tough” law enforcement.  Last night’s Phoenix rally, where he shamelessly lied about his Charlottesville statements, glaringly omitting his “many sides” equivocation, juxtaposed to his using the backdrop of Fort Myers and an audience of soldiers for his “acting presidential” speech, the night before, was just a prelude to his new and invigorated campaign to destroy his enemies.

He wants to bolster his support among soldiers.  He wants to rally support among the military using the generals around him, so expect to see him use more military backdrops for appearances, where he can cheer on the troops and tell them he is with them.  The US military is a captive audience to any president.  They can’t disrespect the commander-in-chief.

He wants the media and his political enemies to attack him.

Igniting racial strife over divisive racial issues, is part of his plan.  Expect to see more black pundits popping up on FOX and other Trump media fronts.  His media operation is using black pundits and black people in memes to convince people he’s not racist and to try and counter the fall-out from his Charlottesville comments. Memes with black people supporting Trump over his Charlottesville comments are already circulating on facebook – using the same equivocation Trump used.   I expect his online troll armies to return in force too.

I hope the generals in his administration stay, to work to persuade the president from his loose cannon tendencies and the last thing America needs is more Bannon/Gorka types nearby egging on this president in his “slash and burn insurgency politics”.  Sadly, many Americans don’t read much and think even less.  He will still have a large base of supporters.

President Trump loves to mention the generals around him and he borrows their honor as his own.  I believe he is a coward at heart.  If the president was not a wealthy, pampered, spoiled egotist, he would likely be one of those “stolen valor” scumbags, whom I detest.  His followers look at those generals and believe that if they are supporting him, he must be great.

My son came up with the best historical figure to compare President Trump to –  Peter III, minus the Prussian uniforms. I think there are many similarities in their personalities, except ours is not an idiot and even more concerning is ours has many wealthy backers, understands mass media propaganda and has millions of American citizens, who do not read history, do not think, and who are mindless followers, led by pop culture icons, celebrities and mass media propaganda.

Considering how much Trump can’t stand women making him look small, Peter III is a good comparison, because Peter III was outclassed and outmaneuvered in his power struggle by a woman, his wife, Catherine The Great.  Unlike Trump, she really was a “great” historical figure (one of my favorite female historical figures too).  And unlike Trump, she studied government policy, she read history and she had real leadership skills.  She paid attention to the details.   I doubt America will resurrect any statues to President Trump or call him a “great” leader, once his presidency is over.

President Trump knows exactly what he is doing, he planned that rally and he planned exactly what he was going to say. My son, who came up with the Peter III comparison, and I have had many discussions over the years about The Constitution and one of the things I have often mentioned was that sometimes I think America would be much better with the office of the President being separate from the duties of the commander-in-chief.   The very argument made for a President to be able to act swiftly in a time of crisis was my argument for why, in a nuclear age, we should have the duties of commander-in-chief vested in a person, who has the credentials, military background, resumé and calm temperament to carry out those duties. I would prefer the nuclear codes in the hands of military leaders who have demonstrated their trustworthiness, by decades of dedicated service to our country.  I would prefer an additional office, whereby Congress and the President must confer before using military force, especially a nuclear strike, and then a separate commander-in-chief has responsibility for carrying out those decisions.   Of course, I understand the opposing arguments to my position.

The Founding Fathers trusted that Americans would choose wise, moral leaders.  That trust was misplaced.

After Trump’s 70+ minute rally last night, where he fixated on relitigating his Charlottesville statements, attacked his enemies and went full scorched earth, the media reacted as usual – overreaction.  James Clapper went Pelosi about Trump’s mental stability, but that will help Trump.  Trump and all his spinners will spin Clapper as a Democrat hack, which to a large extent – he is.

Not engaging with Trump or Trump Derangement hysteria and avoiding escalation in rhetoric is probably the best course of action – ignore his efforts to incitement.  Speak to unity and calming people down. Ignoring him, dismissing him or treating him like a child throwing a tantrum is probably the best course.  I doubt the media or the Left will do that.

During the Obama administration, due to his political ideology, I did not trust President Obama’s judgment on military matters.   I don’t trust President Trump’s temperament when making decisions.  However, I do agree with President Trump’s new strategy on Afghanistan and I am glad he listened to the generals around him.  The risks to national security with pulling out and handing Afghanistan to the jihadists are far greater than staying.  Like many complex geopolitical issues, there are no easy solutions for the larger civilizational challenge of the rise of Islamic imperialism, Islamic radicalism, or whatever term you choose to use for this phenomenon, by a segment of Islamic world,  rejecting modernity and embracing terrorism and religious extremism.  We can’t decide the Islamic world’s future, but we must do what we can to protect American national security interests, at home and abroad, no matter how long it takes.

Americans, at the ballot box, decided our future was better getting behind President Trump rather than Hillary Clinton.  I left the top of my ballot blank in 2016.  I still believe both were choices I could never support.

The most important thing all Americans can do is support The Constitution.

The #Resist movement set out to overturn a legitimate election before President Trump’s inauguration.   That movement will gain many more supporters, as Trump ramps up his scorched earth campaign against the media, the Left, Republicans in Congress and anyone who crosses him.  The calls for impeachment or using the 25th Amendment mechanism to remove him from office will grow.

I don’t support impeaching him or removing him from office, unless there are solid grounds to do so.  Watching his reprehensible attacks on people, the vicious name-calling, the bold-faced lying and shameless manipulation, I wonder when he will cross the line for many of his followers?  Many religious leaders still sit idly by his side, as he engages in his petty name-calling and lying.   They still support him and praise him as a “great” leader.  Sadly, I believe that many of his followers are so trapped in binary thinking and rabid partisanship, that they would follow him, even if he did shoot someone on 5th Avenue.   I suspect many of them would rationalize that the person deserved it.

America is in for a very rocky 3.5 years.

I expect a lot more violence.

Once the smouldering ashes from President Trump’s campaign to “Make America Great Again 2.0” die out,  I hope Americans can find a way back to being the United States of America.

 

 

1 Comment

Filed under Civility, Culture Wars, General Interest, Politics, The Constitution, The Media

August 17, 2017 · 1:02 pm

America desperately needs moral guidance

One of the worst aspects about “civil wars” is that the political divides often get down to tearing people’s most personal relationships apart too.  Lifelong friendships and even families can be sundered when people feel compelled to choose sides in civil wars.  Few people can maintain neutrality or as my one son says, in most family disputes, “I’m Switzerland on this!”

During the 2016 campaign, many articles reported about the election causing friction and angry disputes within many American families, as the extremely contentious choice between Trump or Hillary began to be hyped as an existential election for America’s future.

Throughout history there have been many of these stories and the American Civil War is rife with stories of the painful “brother against brother” personal tragedy.  During the American Revolution, one of the most famous American founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, and his son, William, who remained loyal to the British crown, severed their relationship over their political divides during the American Revolution:

“On his way back to Philadelphia, Franklin stopped in Rhode Island to meet his sister, Jane Mecom, and take her home with him. The carriage ride through Connecticut and New Jersey was a delight for both Jane and Franklin. The good feelings were so strong that they were able to overcome any political tensions when they made a brief stop at the governor’s mansion in Perth Amboy to call on William. It would turn out to be the last time Franklin would see his son other than a final, tense encounter in England ten years later.”

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/benjamin-franklin-joins-the-revolution-87199988/#fUU7xOxf8f3vUMLQ.99
Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter

The 2016 election divided the country between left and right, but Donald Trump divided the Republican Party and conservatives with his scorched earth “GOP Insurgency”, in ways that the ashes are still smoldering.

Trump’s divisive “GOP insurgency” tactic melded with his strong-arm rhetoric and vicious online mobs (some alleged to be Russian trolls) leading gang-up attacks on conservative sites’ comment forums left the Republican Party fractured and bleeding. Among the conservative punditry circle, many of these divides have led to the destruction of longtime friendships and have been played out in public.  Bill Kristol and Tucker Carlson are engaged in one now.

I’ve written about experiencing the troll gang-up tactics when commenting on some conservative sites, being called a slut and much worse, and I wrote about a night where I was reading the Disqus comments at National Review Online, for a Jonah Goldberg article, when the Disqus comment forum was taken over by people spewing neo-nazi and reprehensible anti-Semitic comments.  That night, the mob of neo-nazis, who were also Trump supporters, had figured out a way to hijack forum moderators’ names, so they were posting their hateful garbage using moderators’ names.  You could check the user profile and see these were new profiles with hardly any comments.  This attack went on for hours, as National Review moderators worked to delete those comments and ban that mob.

David French, a conservative pundit at National Review, and many Jewish reporters and writers experienced receiving threats, but so did some of their families.  I never considered supporting Donald Trump, because his personal behavior is antisocial, where his “he’s a fighter” ethos amounts to juvenile, vicious name-calling and insults,  but even worse he rallies, figuratively and literally, to encourage mob violence.  That is a fact.

Megyn Kelly asked him a question at a debate in August 2015.  What followed was a concerted campaign led by Donald Trump, to destroy her career and encourage his friends in the media to trash her personally.  He personally asked Roger Ailes to remove her as a debate moderator and he waged an 8 month campaign, publicly urging his followers not to watch her show.   Megyn Kelly’s family was threatened.  Donald Trump waged his 8 month campaign to destroy her, because she dared to ask him a question he thought was “unfair”.

David French, a conservative writer at National Review, wrote about what happened to his family from gung-ho Trump supporters:

“I distinctly remember the first time I saw a picture of my then-seven-year-old daughter’s face in a gas chamber. It was the evening of September 17, 2015. I had just posted a short item to the Corner calling out notorious Trump ally Ann Coulter for aping the white-nationalist language and rhetoric of the so-called alt-right. Within minutes, the tweets came flooding in. My youngest daughter is African American, adopted from Ethiopia, and in alt-right circles that’s an unforgivable sin. It’s called “race-cucking” or “raising the enemy.”

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441319/donald-trump-alt-right-internet-abuse-never-trump-movement

Donald Trump and his mouthpieces always lie and say he never encouraged violence, but he did – many times.  During several rallies he urged his followers to punch protesters.  There is plenty of video footage of him doing it.

Why I think it’s important not to lose sight of the real issue about Donald Trump’s moral character is because his performance Tuesday and the smokescreen, about preserving history and “aren’t monuments beautiful”, isn’t the issue.

The issue is the President of the United States gave cover to vile neo-nazis and deliberately mixed a few facts to bolster that lie.

In light of Trump’s some “fine people on both sides” comment on Tuesday and his insistence that the neo-nazis were in Charlottesville to peacefully protest about monuments, it’s important to not lose sight of those “fine people” Donald Trump was talking about.  Here is John Podhoretz’s tweet with their “Unite the Right” poster for the march of “fine people”:

The speakers are a Who’s Who of white supremacists.  Here’s how Robert Tracinski, at The Federalist,  explains:

“Aside from the blatant Nazi style of the imagery, it includes a roster of headliners chosen from various white nationalist groups. So this was a Nazi march from the beginning, planned by Nazis, for Nazis. As to whether any hapless moderates strolled in there thinking this was just about the statue—well, I live in this area and used to be active in the local Tea Party group. I know people who are not white nationalists who oppose the removal of the statues based on high-minded ideas about preserving history. None of them were there, and if they had been, they would have bolted the moment they saw a bunch of guys with torches chanting “Blood and soil.”

What’s truly shocking is that Trump refers twice to “the night before,” that is, to the rally Friday night, before the deadly clash on Saturday, as evidence that some of the protesters weren’t white nationalists. But Friday night was the notorious Citronellanacht, the march with all those tiki-torch-wielding marchers yelling “Blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us.””

http://thefederalist.com/2017/08/16/donald-trump-needs-to-not-be-president-yesterday/

Yes, there were violent anti-fascists at Charlottesville and yes, I am concerned about preserving our history, although for me, I believe in federalism, so with most of these monuments, the decisions should be left up to the cities and states. With those on federal property, a peaceful, thoughtful debate should take place and a decision rendered.  For anyone to believe these tiki-torch wielding neo-nazis parading through Charlottesville represent preserving American history and values, we hold dear, is reprehensible. President Trump gave them legitimacy and cover.

America would be better off if everyone cared more about our moral foundation and principles as a nation than about jumping on the bandwagon of hot button causes.  The idiocy and moral vacuum are stunning.  In Berkeley, Yvette Felarca, a middle school teacher no less, is facing three charges:

“The charges stem from a June 2016 fight at the state capitol.

Felarca’s group, By Any Means Necessary, was protesting against a white nationalist group.

A video shows Felarca repeatedly punching a man.

The man had both hands up, walking to a line of police officers for help.

Felarca and others dragged the man down and kicked him.”

Here’s Felarca’s defense from the same article:

“Felarca said, “Standing up against fascism and the rise of Nazism and fascism in this country is not a crime. We have the right to defend ourselves.””

 http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/08/10/berkeley-teacher-filmed-punching-neo-nazi-arraigned-sacramento/

There have been protests against white supremacists, breaking out around the country, with people wearing, “Punch a Nazi” shirts.  That you don’t have a right to punch other people, because you disagree with what they believe  is a simple, fundamental moral construct for civil society.   The scarier thought is this woman is a teacher and she’s got supporters protesting on her behalf.

President Trump fails the moral leadership test, but so many on the Left do too.  President Obama always couched the BLM and attacks on police officers with comments about, “we need to understand their pain”, giving the same kind of cover and legitimacy to people who engage in violent, criminal conduct.

Civil society depends on leaders, who will stand up and speak clearly to who we are as an American people.

President Obama was an expert at framing everything as “this is not who we are”, fueling racial animus by giving cover to violence committed in the name of  civil rights. President Trump is fighting out of petty spite and vanity.  He believes:

“When somebody hurts you, just go after them as viciously and as violently as you can.  Like it says in the Bible, an eye for an eye.”

Be paranoid.  I know this observation doesn’t make any of us sound very good, but let’s face the fact that it’s possible that even your best friend wants to steal your spouse and your money.”

p. 138, Trump: How To Get Rich, by Donald J. Trump

I prefer the affirmative form of leadership, leading by clear moral example and setting the standard.  Treat everyone with respect and work to develop some core values.  I was raised with Christian values.  If you don’t want religious values, here are some excellent secular ones to set you on the path to being a good citizen:

In short, the Seven Core Army Values listed below are what being a Soldier is all about.
  • Loyalty. Bear true faith and allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, the Army, your unit and other Soldiers. …
  • Duty. Fulfill your obligations. …
  • Respect. …
  • Selfless Service. …
  • Honor. …
  • Integrity. …
  • Personal Courage.

https://www.army.mil/values/

 

Leave a comment

Filed under American Character, American History, Civility, Culture Wars, General Interest, Making a Difference, Politics, The Constitution

August 15, 2017 · 11:16 am

We can all be duped by demagogues

Soul-searching is something we all should do sometimes.

Long ago, I used to be an inveterate channel-flipper watching cable news and when there was some breaking news event, I would flip between the cable news networks and also ABC, NBC, and CBS.  It was a habit I developed in October of 1983.  I was almost 7 months pregnant with my second child and my husband had deployed to Grenada.  Then there was the news void during the first couple days.  I was anxiously hoping for some news.

From that channel-flipping news habit, I started watching all the TV pundits on TV, even the ones I disagreed with on almost every issue.  Back then I would listen to those with views diametrically opposed to my own and I was open to finding small points with which I agreed.

Over the years and with the advent of the internet, my news consumption changed, as I began to get more and more news online and much less from TV.  I think I did what most Americans do – when it comes to political commentary and opinion, I began to go to mostly websites where the views fit my own political viewpoints.  When I did read opinions from liberal writers, I read it looking for ways to counter their arguments, rather than seriously consider them.

President George W. Bush became akin to Hitler in the liberal punditry echo chamber. The election of President Bush followed not only a contentious election, but also the Clinton impeachment, which left American partisans deeply angry and divided.  Just as the mainstream media worked to feed the Bush Derangement Syndrome, FOX News played an outsized role in the constant stream of anti-Obama reporting.  That is the truth.

I disagreed with President Obama on most political issues and he turned me off early with his condescending comment about rural Pennsylvanians “clinging to their guns and religion” comment.  My childhood roots are in rural PA soil.  I also started watching mostly FOX News, when I turned on TV news, because the CNN and MSNBC Obama lovefest had turned me off quickly.

It didn’t take much for me to believe the worst of President Obama, because the Obama administration started talking about their “narratives”, which were concocted stories of events, often “evolving narratives” they hadn’t completely fabricated yet,  and it reminded me of the Clinton “spin”, which was talking points (lies), they colluded with their friends in the media to spread.  Often, the Obama narratives were quickly exposed as being untruthful, just like the Clinton spin.  These untruths fed the right-wing news and punditry information bubble and provided the base for a constant stream of whataboutism and paranoid distrust of President Obama.  The liberal media and punditry do the same thing and in their bubble of whataboutism and paranoia, conservatives are all haters and might be closet Timothy McVeigh wannabes.

I remember when FOX News brought on Glenn Beck and he was busily pointing out all the dangerous Obama administration connections to other dastardly doings and devious leftist demons, with his ever-widening conspiracy circles on his chalkboard.   Beck was entertaining with his presentation, but as I would try to actually connect the dots from many of his shows, I began to suspect he was a con man and something, besides his extremely bizarre emotional outbursts,  seemed very off to me.  Those circles never really connected.

Beck became too controversial and left FOX news and began his online show.  I subscribed and kept watching, trying to figure out what his real game was.  It was like watching a magician who does really amazing card tricks and trying to find out how.  He had on many guests whom I liked and he spouted enough right-wing views to keep me watching.  I still wasn’t 100% convinced he was a total con man and I still listened to him.

One day, I watched his show, where it finally clicked in my mind that his act is all fake. Long before I came to that conclusion I kept wondering about the commercials he ran on his show – the seed bank/build the bunker stuff, the guns, guns, guns, and the people in these ads seemed like total grifters.

The day it all clicked in my mind that he really is a con artist he had some man promoting a haven of American patriot bliss in Idaho on as his guest.  It was a ponzi scheme and Glenn Beck gave this man a platform to dupe people.  That Beck guest, an obvious con man, was selling an imaginary gated community, The Citadel, using American patriotism as a lure, just like Beck.  His gated community existed only as some online scam, where people could send monthly payments for the “collective” to buy land for the community.   He sold this as a place for American patriots to find like-minded people, united by their belief in patriotism, liberty, pride in American exceptionalism and preparedness.

Beck gave this con artist a platform, an audience and credibility to scam people.

I unsubscribed from his online show, but I still ask myself, why I listened to him for so long, despite the uneasiness I had with so much about him.  The answer, I think, is because he was feeding my fears and distrust of President Obama, but he was also carefully couching everything in Tea Party patriotic rhetoric.  I have always loved reading about the American Revolution, the founding fathers, and long before Beck came along with his Being George Washington, in fact since my early teens, I have been captivated by George Washington.

Many people on the right, myself included, lamented how so many on the Left fell for President Obama’s soaring oratory and we mocked Chris Matthews’ rapturous fawning that he felt a tingle up his leg, when Obama spoke.  We asked ourselves, “Why don’t these people see through his demagoguery?”  Then along came Donald Trump with his rousing rallies, flag-waving, get tough on law enforcement – “Make America Great Again”.

During the 2016 campaign, Glenn Beck was against President Trump and supporting Ted Cruz, but his bizarre, on his knees praying antics, actually hurt Ted Cruz.

I don’t have the answers to the scope of the media efforts to deceive Americans, but American news, across the board, has become a partisan wasteland, where tweeting poorly vetted news stories leads to viral stories spreading, long before anyone has even fact-checked the information.

The aftermath of both political parties choosing completely corrupt candidates, who lie constantly and engage in ruthless, scorched earth information war has left America an easy target for hostile disinformation efforts.  The 2016 campaign wasn’t just about the dangers of Russian influence.  It sure seems to me that the American cable news media and most of the other news media turned into total disinformation operations too.

We have a president who is really jazzed about waging information war against the mainstream media, FOX News spreading Trump disinformation 24/7 and most of America’s other journalists and political pundits hanging out on Twitter retweeting each other’s “hot takes”.  Most of them are liberal, most of them supported Hillary, most of them loathe Trump and most of them are click happy about retweeting any negative Trump story, without thorough fact-checking.   In February, even the Washington Post  fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, retweeted the fake racist Fred Trump campaign ad video, without fact-checking it.

Trying to ascertain facts is harder now than during the news void during Grenada.  In 1983 I trusted the U.S. Army to let me know my husband was okay.  When the news networks started getting news during Grenada – they reported the same things about the events.  Now, there are completely different realities being reported, depending what cable news channel you watch.

With so much disinformation swirling, I know I can’t trust the mainstream media, FOX News, the partisans on both sides and most especially I can’t trust President Trump to tell the truth.

My soul-searching has led me to wonder why I listened to FOX News and many of these “conservative” pundits for so long.  I cringe when I hear these Trump supporters on FOX News selling their “Deep State” conspiracies and character assassinations of honorable men, like Robert Mueller and General McMaster, men who have spent their lives dedicated to serving America.

Demagogues feed our fears and prejudices.  President Obama played to the fears of people who distrust conservatives and believe they are all closet racists.  Beck played to conservatives’ religious and patriotic beliefs, while drawing nefarious Obama conspiracy circles on a chalkboard.  I distrusted President Obama after his “clinging to their guns and religion” remark, so it was easy to feed my fears.  There were also lots of signs of corruption in the Obama administration, lots of mishandled classified information (way beyond just Hillary), lots of information requested by Congressional Oversight Committees that never was turned over.  I suspect there’s a lot of criminal leaking of classified information from former Obama officials going on now.

CNN and MSNBC have been spinning for the Left for decades and their anti-Trump slant is obvious.  I recognized the liberal spin long ago, but I did not recognize the extent of right-wing spin.  What frightens me is how many people watching FOX News completely believe the Trump spin.  They were conditioned since 2015 to alter their belief system and accept that “Trump being Trump” is good, because he’s fighting to “make America great again”.  They were sold that “Trump doesn’t play by the rules” is great too, because  Trump’s fighting to “make America great again”.   Whenever FOX News and Trump supporters have to acknowledge something negative about Trump, it’s always wrapped up in more whataboutism than even Russian propaganda.

Trump mocks the media as “Fake News”, while many in the mainstream media, along with pointing out all the Trump lies, keep churning out highly dubious or grossly misleading information, that Clinton and Obama operatives have leaked to them.

It’s becoming very hard to get to facts, as the pile on continues, because of the speed and amount of disinformation being dumped.  It’s exhausting even trying to keep up with the Trump and media information battles. My fear isn’t just about hostile foreign disinformation efforts, my fear is that this information war between Trump and the media has created a vast, domestic disinformation wasteland.  Discerning facts is harder as the mountain of disinformation (spin) grows and it’s harder to even find the facts buried in the pile of lies.

In Charlottesville, VA on Saturday, a young neo-nazi ran his car into a crowd of people. One young woman died and many others were injured.  Immediately, President Trump tried a whataboutism approach, with his “many sides” comment.  Alt-right and neo-nazis brag that President Trump supports them.  During his campaign,President Trump refused to denounce David Duke, by pretending he didn’t know who David Duke is and what Duke stands for.  His “many sides” comment was a repeat of his David Duke performance.

Whataboutism thrives on binary thinking, where people start believing in the lesser of two evils .  It’s like dealing with children and one child is caught doing something wrong, but he starts pointing out what all the other kids did wrong.  If you start buying into those excuses, you start losing focus about right and wrong.  Whataboutism destroys moral clarity by muddying the water with misdirection and misleading facts.

The 24/7 FOX News and Trump pundits have ramped up Trump damage control, another whataboutism disinformation campaign (the “many sides” evil alt-left and Leftist hate groups), will throw enough misdirection to prop up Trump.  And as a last resort, there will be Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich to remind the right, “at least Trump isn’t Hillary” or “but Gorsuch!”.

The truth is President Trump is a lying demagogue just like Hillary; he even borrowed Hillary’s spin – “it’s all a witch hunt” and the Trump version of the “vast, right-wing conspiracy”  is the omnipresent “Deep State”.

Update in light of President Trump’s press conference this afternoon, where he was using morally relativistic dodges to avoid condemning neo-nazis.   Hillary Clinton used the same lying and demagoguery techniques,  BUT he is the President of the United States and must be held accountable for what he says and does.  He is totally unfit to lead our great nation and a national disgrace.

3 Comments

Filed under American Character, Corrupt Media Collusion, Culture Wars, General Interest, Politics, Public Corruption, The Media

July 23, 2017 · 12:23 pm

Talking to ordinary people

“My country is the world and my religion is to do good.”  – Thomas Paine

Here’s another quote I had typed on a piece of my “cute” stationery in the 70s, which was in my beat-up quote notebook.  The type is fading on these saved quote loose pages, but then again that old typewriter I used in the 70s was a second-hand, manual one my Pop found somewhere.

I had mentioned that I wanted a typewriter and Pop came home with a used one shortly thereafter.   My Pop always encouraged my interests.  When I came home with stray pets, he let me keep them, when I told him I really wanted a large desk, he found an old wood schoolteacher’s desk.  The top was badly damaged, so he covered the top with a woodtone formica, which I absolutely loved.  I didn’t have to worry about damaging the top when I set a glass of iced tea or cup of hot tea (my two favorite drinks – always) on it.  In 7th or 8th grade, I needed to do a science project and science is not my strong suit.  I decided I wanted to order some liquid that I saw in a science catalog a boy in my class had.  It could preserve snowflakes on glass slides.  My mother helped me order the liquid and sure enough, my Pop came home with a microscope and slides, he found somewhere, probably a flea market.  It worked and I got an A on that “saving snowflakes” project…

After looking through my old quote notebook, I decided to tape the falling apart cover back together the other day, using some dollar store, red duct tape I had in my sewing/craft room.  It might be good for another 40 years:

The quote at the top of this post is from Thomas Paine, one of America’s foremost political theorists, activists, and revolutionaries.  He fought with words. The American Pamphlet Debate, probably set the stage for how big issues in America are fought in the public square, as intellectuals, politicians, and often, unheard of American citizens rise from the rabble, with a voice or message that will not be silenced.  America has always had a very egalitarian view when it comes to the voices that gain prominence and effect enormous influence and change.

I like The Smithsonian magazine, because in every issue there are so many articles that spark my interest.  From the July edition I mentioned the article on the history of maps a few days ago.  There’s a very interesting article on Earl Shaffer, who was the first person to hike the entire Appalachian Trail in 1948, that’s definitely worth a read.   Another article in that edition, What Happened to America’s Public Intellectuals?, written by Elizabeth Mitchell, got me thinking, again, about America’s long history with our very open, often loud public debates.

Mitchell lays out the current angst with America’s seeming dismissal of experts, in favor of populist fervor:

“This painful conclusion weighs heavily on public intellectuals, who created the country during the 116 steamy days of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, when Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and crew crafted a new nation entirely out of words. Then they bolstered it with 85 newspaper columns under the pen name Publius, now known as the Federalist Papers, to explain and defend their work.”

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-happened-americas-public-intellectuals-180963668/#yVyIdqRP8zD3WrGS.99
Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter

Understanding America’s long tradition of public debate leading to great political and cultural changes leads me to believe that public intellectual battles, to win American hearts and minds, are ingrained in the American psyche and I don’t believe the soul of America is lost.

Millions of Americans may have fallen for a fast-talking, NYC real estate hustler/con man turned reality TV star, but even with the power of the bully pulpit of the Office of the President of the United States and his just “great” tweet storms, brimming with 140-character rants, he still seems to have a public image problem, if his flagging approval poll numbers are to be believed.  While some of the self-professed “experts” on politics and national security fuss and fume daily, via their own tweet storms, about how people aren’t listening to them, perhaps many of them have the same problem as Trump – overblown egos and constant braggadocio repel many people.

America’s Pamphlet Debate began more than a decade before the Revolutionary War.  I mentioned the 2-volume Library of America set, The American Revolution: Writings from the Pamphlet Debate 1764-1776, in a previous blog post.  The set was edited by Gordon S, Wood and it includes many of the most influential pamphlets in the Pamphlet Debate, which really defined both American political beliefs and principles and later, the very framework of The Constitution. Volume 2, which covers 1773-1776, includes this explanation on Thomas Paine’s writing approach:

“Paine was determined to reach a wide readership, especially among the middling sorts in the tavern and artisan centered worlds of the cities, and to do more than explain and persuade; he wanted to express feelings — even revulsions and visions — that the traditional conventions of writing tended to disparage.  He refused to decorate his work with Latin quotations and scholarly references; instead , he relied on his readers knowing only the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer.  He used simple, direct — some critics said coarse, even barnyard– imagery that could be understood by the unlearned.  He wrote for ordinary people and forever changed the rules of rhetoric.”

p.647,  The American Revolution: Writings from the Pamphlet Debate 1773-1776, edited by Gordon S. Wood, published by The Library of America, copyright 2015

President Trump may have lowered the bar with his effort to reach the common man, resorting to ruthless, modern mass media information warfare tactics (GOP insurgency, indeed), but Americans, even “the worst deplorables”, are not beyond having their hearts won over to American principles, defending The Constitution and above all treating other people respectfully.   Even with FOX news serving as a powerful Trump propaganda platform, America is not becoming Trumpistan.

The real crisis for America’s current intellectual class, is not Trump, but that many Americans are sick of puffed up pontificating pundits, parading a pile of degrees from posh pillars of academia, posing and primping before the cameras  — talking down to them.  Trump, while certainly no Thomas Paine (or Mussolini, for that matter), has learned the fine art of the con man, he identifies his mark and speaks directly to him.  That is why Trump relates to ordinary people – he knows he’s got to get them and keep them buying into him.  He talks to them.

The media faces the same problem as many of the pundits, especially given how many times, in recent months, the media spun themselves into a tizzy with a new, devastating revelation about Trump, which within 24-48 hours fell apart, as the facts in these stories turned out not to be facts at all.  The constant media and punditry Trump hysteria is destroying their credibility way more than anything Trump can do.

I agree with Mitchell’s view on America’s present crisis of spirit.  She writes:

“If we look back at our history, public intellectuals always emerged when the country was sharply divided: during the Civil War, the Vietnam War, the fights for civil rights and women’s rights. This moment of deep ideological division will likely see the return, right when we need them, of the thinkers and talkers who can bridge the emotional divide. But this time they will likely be holding online forums and stirring up podcasts.”
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-happened-americas-public-intellectuals-180963668/#yVyIdqRP8zD3WrGS.99

One of the things I love about YouTube videos is that I can find so many crafting and sewing tutorials.   I can watch several videos on how to make something and get different approaches about how to make it.  I don’t have to buy an entire book or magazine for directions for one project.   Often, I end up using bits and pieces of instructions and advice from several videos.  Many of these videos are made by ordinary people and completely amateur.  Yet, some of these amateur videos are carefully edited and produced with the dedication of professional videographers.  Some have tens of thousands of subscribers.

Most of America’s intellectuals and experts on politics and public policy talk to each other, not to ordinary Americans.  And while castigating Trump’s use of Twitter, many of America’s intellectuals lazily lecture and throw temper tantrums about Trump, daily, on Twitter, and of course, boringly brag about all their “expertise”.

Love him or hate him, Trump talks to ordinary people.

Note: Here is a podcast that is a Library of Law and Liberty conversation with Gordon S. Wood, discussing the American .Pamphlet Debate

2 Comments

Filed under American Character, American History, Culture Wars, General Interest, Politics, The Media, Worthwhile Quotations

June 20, 2017 · 6:25 pm

Belated Father’s Day link

I meant to post a link to this Stella Morabito piece, Rather Than Judging Fathers’ Household Labor, Let’s Appreciate It,  on Father’s Day, but better late than never.  Morabito writes:

“Politicized feminists—such as high achievers Sheryl Sandberg and Anne-Marie Slaughter—laid a lot of the groundwork for chore angst by zeroing in almost exclusively on score-keeping over domestic chores. Melinda Gates has also chimed in. But you’ll find little discussion about the value of traditionally masculine household projects. The hype seems to be for a 50-50 split only in the so-called traditionally feminine labor: housework and child care.

As they’ve come to realize that the maternal instinct dies hard, feminists are focusing more on engineering the role of the father. They don’t welcome the news that millennial women are surprisingly inclined to leave the workforce to stay home with kids. Hence, the focus on changing male attitudes, such as Sandberg trying to convince men that doing more housework would pay sexual dividends. She called it “choreplay.” Sigh.”

Morabito demolishes the feminist dogma about keeping score on 50-50 “equal distribution of labor” in marriage, with a tribute to two very different men, her father and her husband.

Leave a comment

Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest

June 18, 2017 · 2:31 pm

True heroes, no capes required

The story of this rug, that  my father bought for me when I was a child, is in my 2013 blog post, My Lucky Rabbit

Today is Father’s Day, so the debate going on in my head as to blog post topic is, Should I write a sappy, “my father was the greatest Dad ever” ramble about my Pop or some larger cultural issue? Perhaps, this post will be a little of both.

I loved my parents a great deal, but I respected them as much as I loved them. My mother was a serious type person, but my Pop was the most happy-go-lucky, cheerful, practical joker to the max, kind and unpresuming man imaginable.  My parents were both extremely hard workers, but they also were hard workers with taking care of my 3 sisters, two brothers and me.

My mother was reserved around other people and cautious around new people, while my Pop never met a stranger.  My mother marveled at how Pop had this ability to strike up conversations with strangers and within minutes find common ground.  And, before you knew it, he had acquired more friends.  He was also dedicated to helping people whenever he could, but he did it in a quiet, nonchalant way, with no fanfare, often with no mention of it all.  A few years back, I wrote:

“As a child, I marveled at how many people stopped by our home bearing everything from fresh garden produce to hams and bottles of whiskey at Christmas time as thank-you gifts to my Dad for “favors” he did for them (of course the whiskey sat gathering dust at our home, as my parents weren’t drinkers). My Dad made helping people part of his daily life, with no mention of it and certainly no desire for anything in return.”

And

“When my father passed away a couple attended the services and they expressed their great admiration for my father and told my siblings and my mother about how many times my father helped them with things around their house, This couple were newcomers to our community and I assumed my mother knew them, as I had years before moved away from home. Later as my family sat discussing the services, one of my sisters asked my mother about this couple. My mother said she had no idea who they were and she thought one of us might know who they were. My Dad’s brand of quietly doing “favors” for people could sure put us on the right path to rebuilding the American team and his “small town values” still serve as my personal model on how to treat other people. Often when I queried why he did so much for other people, his usual response was, “Well it didn’t cost me much except a little time and everyone has a little time to spare.””
https://libertybellediaries.com/2013/04/26/time-to-spare/

My Pop was an illegitimate child born to a mother who wanted nothing to do with him.  He was raised by his maternal grandparents.  My husband’s father left when he was 5 years old and he never saw him again.  His mother went through many failed relationships with men moving in and out of my husband and his five siblings’ lives.  I wrote about this in a post about J.D. Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy, because the experiences and problems Vance faced in childhood reminded me of my husband’s family.  My father may not have had a mother or father who wanted him, but he had grandparents who loved him and were good role models.

The interesting thing about my parents and so many parents in previous generations is they never read a single book on parenting, yet they were dedicated, constant in their devotion to their families and unswerving in their belief in their moral and religious principles.

“True heroes are there for the long haul, and you can see their weaknesses along with their strengths.”

p. 12, How To Be a Hero To your Kids, Josh McDowell & Dick Day, 1991

My husband and I had plenty of disagreements on parenting, because my husband’s frame of reference for discipline was the Army and I told him children aren’t soldiers.  The barking out orders and yelling at them rather than talking to them was met with resistance and temper tantrums.  It made their behavior much worse and escalated problems rather than solving any.  Yelling does not solve anything.  And that’s where the above quote comes in.   When our kids were grade school age, my husband came home from work one day with the book, “How To Be A Hero To Your Kids” in hand.  He told me the chaplain brought this book to him, after a talk they had about parenting.  I was stunned that my definitely-not-religious husband turned to an Army chaplain in a casual conversation about his parenting difficulties.

I think almost every parent has yelled at their kids about something, especially dealing with teenagers.  My father was not a yeller, but I recall the one time he yelled at me.   I was in my early teens and started arguing with my father about going to catechism class, which was a weekly ordeal for two years, before confirmation in the UCC/Lutheran church.  I didn’t want to go to catechism class and argued about it the entire two years.  One evening, I was supposed to go next door to my great-aunt, who was going to drive me and her daughter (my second-cousin) to catechism class.

My mother was at work at the hospital, so I started this tirade about how I wasn’t going to catechism class and I stormed out the back door by our kitchen and I slammed that door as hard I could for good measure, to make my point.  The glass in the door shattered.  My Pop, who never raised his voice, came tearing out that door after me, as I scrambled across the ice-covered snow in the yard.  He caught me by the arm, kicked me in the butt and yelled, “That’s enough out of you!”.  He firmly told me I needed to march down to my great-aunt and go to catechism class.  I was so stunned at his yelling and kicking me in the butt, that I went to catechism class without another word.

When I got home, my Pop was his usual calm self, but I knew he wasn’t going to let me get away without mentioning my bad behavior.  He told me he couldn’t get glass to fix the window until the next day, but he had already covered the hole with cardboard.  And he told me I needed to start thinking about other people in our family instead of just what I wanted.  He made me feel selfish, because my actions were totally selfish.  He apologized for kicking me in the butt, but truthfully, I think I deserved it.  It wasn’t just my Pop who had to endure my temper tantrum, it was my entire family and while it may have felt great slamming the door in defiance, that door window was the top half of the door.  The broken window let ice-cold air blow into the house.

I started thinking about self-control after that incident and I started working on my temper.  I’ve never reached the same level of calm as my Pop, but I keep striving to treat other people like he did.  We all make plenty of mistakes at parenting, but the one thing everyone can strive for is to tamp down on anger and work at not yelling.

People flying into rages about everything is an American pastime.   It’s not just our politics where Americans have gone off the deep-end, it’s all around us in our culture and in way too many homes across America.

Although, How To Be A Hero To Your Kids , is a little dated and written from a Christian perspective, the lessons are universal.   You don’t need a cape, superpowers, or celebrity status to be a good role model for your kids, but you need to get your priorities straight and be dedicated for the long haul.

Leave a comment

Filed under Culture Wars, Food for Thought, General Interest

June 14, 2017 · 4:32 pm

Time for a truce in the civil war of words

The political atmosphere in America continues to descend into deeper partisan divides and the media’s frenetic spinning the news keeps perpetuating confusion and keeping America’s politics in a state of constant chaos.

Believing the worst of political opponents and those who hold differing views is the new normal.  Extreme partisans feverishly work to launch vicious smear campaigns to destroy the character of political opponents, without any concern for the veracity of their scurrilous attacks in this endless scorched earth information war.  With American partisans so entrenched in this self-destructive, by-any-means necessary, war of words, the Russians don’t have to do much to “influence” or work to destroy our democratic institutions.  Our own partisans are burning them down rapidly, while Putin sits back and laughs at “America developing political schizophrenia”.

Here are two reading recommendations

David French’s piece: To Defend Trump, The GOP Is Becoming a Party Bill Clinton Would Love

The other is a book, Stopping Words That Hurt, Positive Words In a World Gone Negative, by Dr. Michael Sedler.  I read this book a couple years ago and last night I started reading it again.   I have it in kindle format, but it’s available in paperback at amazon now.  While the book is written from a Christian perspective, the lessons really are universal and just plain old common decency.  He explains why, what biblically is referred to as “evil reporting”, lying, gossiping, spreading negative stories about others, is only half of the issue.  He explains why listening to “evil reporting” is very destructive and he offers many positive personal strategies to “stopping words that hurt”.  I need to work a lot harder on this.

In a country where the media and politicians are consumed by their scorched earth war of words, to win the news cycle, I think all of us need to start demanding a truce in this “cold civil war”.

Leave a comment

Filed under American Character, Civility, Culture Wars, Food for Thought, General Interest, Politics

June 10, 2017 · 12:17 am

Undercutting our American democratic institutions

 

The following is a repost of my December 13, 2016 blog post.  Sadly, I was wrong.  Hillary’s coup may have failed to prevent Donald Trump from being inaugurated, but the Left is determined to see that he is impeached.  Trump’s own behavior may end up helping them succeed.  Besides the Left’s relentless, Resist efforts, there’s a core Trump Flight 93 media attack squad too, who work just like the Left’s spinners.  These Trump mouthpieces attack anyone who isn’t on the Trump Train, working to destroy them.  They also defend Trump and make excuses for the many inexcusable things Trump says and does.  The rest of us are stuck being bombarded by their propaganda barrages every day.  This continuing 2016 Presidential Election scorched earth information war is severely damaging America, because America’s federal government looks completely dysfunctional and that is the biggest win for the Russians from the 2016 Presidential Election:

Queen Hillary’s failing coup…

wp-1481210676697-samanthas-box

Finished another plastic canvas box.

Here’s a rundown of the Clinton/Dem/Colluding Media talking points I’ve seen, being hysterically repeated on Twitter and various news sites in the last few days:

  • “Fake News” is a dire threat and only certain (Clinton colluding) media can be trusted to report “real” news.
  • Various incantations on popular vote should rule over electoral college – from the dramatically escalating popular vote total for Hillary (likely embellished) to contorted legal reasoning, to crap like Nate Silver tweeted some tripe that Hillary only lost in 4 states by 1%, so without the Russian hacking she’d likely have won – so based on a hypothetical situation, he created imaginary polling statistics, that he’s presenting as serious analysis???
  • More Comey attacks – Harry Reid claimed Comey downplayed Russian hacking.
  • Harry Reid claims Trump directly involved with Russian hacking.
  • Electoral college electors need a special CIA briefing on Russian hacking.
  • America needs a do-over election, because of Russian interference in the election.

The liberal media has shed all pretense of being objective journalists, in fact, many are little more than Democratic hacks.  The hysteria over Americans paying attention to Wikileaks over American journalists’ reporting or Democrat mouthpieces speaks not to Americans being idiots, it speaks to people TRUST Wikileaks (a likely Russian front) over American journalists and the liberal media.

Following Twitter, is an exercise in frantic, sore-loser talking points, most bogus or deeply disingenuous, being breathlessly repeated by a cadre of big name “journalists” and news organizations 24/7.  It’s like kids at summer camp, sitting in a circle around a campfire, whispering something in the next person’s ear and saying, “Pass it on!”

President Obama has had numerous rappers at the White House. Hillary had Beyonce and Jay Z campaigning with her, but Kanye West showing up at Trump Tower this morning represents some new low in lack of seriousness about the presidency, according to the likes of Andrea Mitchell.  I thought she was traveling with Hillary’s campaign, but guess she missed seeing Beyonce and Jay Z…

I think Trump will be a disaster as President.  I believe he’s very corrupt.  However, I thought the same things about President Obama and America survived.  I believe the same things about Hillary too, so I take solace in the FACT that America is much more than our President and we are still a very blessed and fortunate people, because we are FREE.  There are millions of wonderful people in America and thankfully most of us encounter them and not these corrupt journalists and shady politicians in our everyday lives.  We still are free to go about our daily lives, to dream, to set off on new adventures and to hope and dream.   For me, needlework is a stress-reliever, so I’m stitching away… another tissue box cover – three sides done since Sunday:

wp-1481647930697.jpgwp-1481648137864.jpgwp-1481648017767.jpg

I have a feeling the Trump years will be very productive stitching years for me, lol.  Oh, the little yarn tails on the top center are just my marking the top, while I stitch, so I know which side is the top when I set my sewing down and then go back to it.

Trump worries me, but the corrupt Clinton/Dem/Media cabal scare the crap out of me.  The Russian hacking/ interference is bad, but so far there’s no evidence they tampered with ballot boxes, so the election is legitimate – end of conversation!  The Dems with this recount fiasco, pushing the propaganda that the popular vote should count and not the electoral college, and now the desperation pitch for a do-over election, ostensibly because of Russian interference are trying to supplant the constitutional process all to prop up a very corrupt woman, who will do anything to be President.  And her enablers are ready to discard The Constitution to assist her.  I would have supported legal efforts to dump Trump as the Republican candidate before the election, but the general election is THE election, according to The Constitution and that’s FINAL!

Donald Trump deserves the opportunity to take office and be the President of the United States.  The Americans who voted for him deserve that too.  And frankly, respect for The Constitution demands we follow the rules.  If he is a disaster, there are constitutional remedies for that too, but it’s ridiculous to talk about impeaching him before he’s even taken office (which some leftist loons are proposing).

Yesterday, John Podesta, who fell for a common phishing scam and gave the hackers his email password, supported a demand for a special CIA briefing on Russian hacking for electors.  One of the chief organizers of this elector effort is Nancy Pelosi’s daughter.  The electors don’t have security clearances, so anything the CIA can tell them, they can tell all of America – so cut the drama queen act and just have the CIA release the information.  My bet is neither the Obama White House nor the CIA will do this, because they’ve exaggerated the facts.

Even President Obama has gotten into the Russian hacking propaganda blitz and it’s revolting.  The Dems are demanding new investigations into Russian hacking, despite the fact there already are ongoing Congressional investigations into Russian hacking.  Prior to this election hysteria, the Obama administration tried to downplay the Russian hacking threat.

So, the administration, where widespread use of private email was common practice, including by President Obama, now wants to champion fighting cyber-threats???  Be for real, the first line of defense against cyber-attacks is good online practices… like using SECURE systems for government business.

President Obama used his private gmail account to email Hillary at her private server email address.  Huma Abedin was sure the Obama/Hillary email the FBI showed her, which was part of a classified CHAIN, had to be classified.  Let’s start by finding out what kind of information President Obama was sending via his private gmail account, before we get too excited about the Russian hacking.

The Democrats are in mass hysteria about investigations into Russian hacking, well, sure let’s find out who they hacked, how they hacked and what was done to prevent their hacking.

It’s hard not to laugh at Democratic mouthpieces hysterically demanding an email investigation as the last ditch effort to beg, borrow or steal the election for Hillary.  The clock is ticking…to December 19th.

If these people weren’t able to wield so much influence in America, I’d be laughing, because was there ever a more ridiculous leader to put forth as tough enough to take on Russian hacking, than Hillary Clinton???  She is the Democrats’ champion on facing America’s cyber-threats???

She couldn’t even keep track of her own blackberries, she had her Filipino maid printing out classified emails in the SCIF in her DC home, she and her State Dept. staff were sending classified information on her home-brew server, and she believed her private email server was secure, because the Secret Service protect her home…  If foreign intelligence agencies around the globe aren’t laughing at the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton and fools like Michael Morell, I would be shocked:

“Former CIA acting director Michael Morell called the intelligence agency’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the U.S. presidential election to help President-elect Donald Trump “the political equivalent of 9/11.”

“A foreign government messing around in our elections is, I think, an existential threat to our way of life. To me, and this is to me not an overstatement, this is the political equivalent of 9/11,” Morell said in an interview posted Sunday on The Cipher Brief. “It is huge and the fact that it hasn’t gotten more attention from the Obama Administration, Congress, and the mainstream media, is just shocking to me.””

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/michael-morell-russia-us-elections-232495

Too bad these fools don’t realize that THEY and THEIR own weak policies and careless handling of information practically handed the information to the Russians.  John Podesta did hand his emails to them…

“Fake news”…. yeah, the people who sold the SPIN cycle to the American people want to lecture Americans on fake news … what a farce!

Leave a comment

Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, Culture Wars, General Interest, Hillary's Email Scandal, Politics, Public Corruption, The Media