Category Archives: General Interest

September 17, 2017 · 9:52 am

Bad title, but great story

Dr. Mary-Claire King, American Cancer Society Professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, relates, in very personal terms, her awful week she secured a research grant from the National Institutes of Health in 1981:

The Week My Husband Left And My House Was Burgled I Secured A Grant To Begin The Project That Became BRCA1

The title doesn’t do this amazing story justice. The story isn’t filled with feminist angst or rage. It’s filled with honesty about a young doctor and mother, faced with a week of terrible personal crises, who almost made a choice not to show up in Washington to pursue her NIH grant for her BRCA1 research, which has greatly advanced the understanding of breast cancer. And like all good stories, there are some surprises to make you glad you read it.

A world without people?

Newsweek has a major scare cover, Who’s Killing America’s Sperm? The story, Male Infertility Crisis in U.S. Has Experts Baffled, delves into a decline in male fertility, not only in America, but throughout most of the world, particularly in the industrialized western world. The article begins:

“Hagai Levine doesn’t scare easily. The Hebrew University public health researcher is the former chief epidemiologist for the Israel Defense Forces, which means he’s acquainted with danger and risk in a way most of his academic counterparts aren’t. So when he raises doubts about the future of the human race, it’s worth listening. Together with Shanna Swan, a professor of environmental medicine and public health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Levine authored a major new analysis that tracked male sperm levels over the past few decades, and what he found frightened him. “Reproduction may be the most important function of any species,” says Levine. “Something is very wrong with men.””

The Newsweek article portends great danger to human existence, a world without people. Back in February, in a blog post, An extreme feminist Utopia, I wrote a book report, of sorts, on Charles Eric Maine’s 1958 dystopian novel, World Without Men:

“I reject feminism, because it’s not just some benign battle for “fairness” in the workplace or expanding opportunities for women, it’s about tearing down the entire framework of western civilization. Maine’s novel, set 5,000 years into the future, describes a world literally without men. Although sounding totally implausible at first glance, Maine offers snapshot-like short chapters into the past, that lay out frightening events along the way to how this “world without men” came to be. While novels like this aren’t to be taken literally or as prescience for what is to come, like 1984, Maine touched on some issues that are worth thinking about.”

Maine’s novel delves into what a world social order, where only females exist, would be like. His novel centers on a world where humans, over time, began overproducing females, until males became extinct, except for male genetic material saved in labs around the world. In Maine’s futuristic world, government-controlled scientists work tirelessly to try to reproduce a living male child, while the female world is indoctrinated into a media fed lie about parthenogenesis, that men became obsolete and unnecessary, with all their endless wars and exploration. A world without men allowed for an evolution to an orderly, stable world of only women:

The official P.A.S. history teaches:

“There never could have been a Utopia while man survived and controlled human affairs, for his innate aggressiveness and insatiable curiosity forced him restlessly to pursue the ever-widening boundary of knowledge without giving a thought to the application of his newly found powers in the service of humanity. In abolishing man, nature had opened the way to the permanent establishment of peace and plenty. Several women scientists had pointed out that man had been necessary to nature’s purpose; he had tackled, with considerable energy and ingenuity, the problem of adapting his environment to himself, and had succeeded in wresting from the blind forces of the cosmos all the power he needed to secure the supremacy and ultimate survival of the human race as an entity. And at that point man became redundant. Worse he became an obstacle to the wise and peaceful exploitation of natural power for the benefit of his species. So man ceased to exist, and woman became mistress of her planet, and nature provided parthenogenesis to replace the outmoded reproduction mechanism that had vanished with the male sex.”

p. 35, World Without Men, Maine, Charles Eric

In his fictional novel, the catalyst for Maine’s fake parthenogenesis is the advent of female oral contraceptives, which, over several thousand years, led to human reproduction going haywire, overproducing females and the eventual extinction of males. Oddly enough, the Newsweek article chronicles a lengthy list of concerns for the decrease in male fertility from obesity to chemicals, but it does not include any mention of female oral contraceptives, as something to look into, even though they dramatically alter female hormones levels and the female reproductive system. The Newsweek article states:

“Most sperm will never come close to an egg—while a fertile man ejaculates 20 million to 300 million sperm per milliliter of semen, only a few dozen might reach their destination, and only one can drill through the egg’s membrane and achieve conception. The chemical makeup of the vagina is actively hostile to sperm, which can only survive because semen contains alkaline substances that offset the acidic environment. That’s the paradox of sperm counts—although one healthy sperm is enough to make a baby, it takes tens of millions of sperm to beat the odds, which means that significant declines in sperm counts will eventually degrade overall male fertility. Notes Swan: “Even a relatively small change in the mean sperm count has a big impact on the percentage of men who will be classified as infertile or subfertile”—meaning a reduced level of fertility that makes it harder to conceive.”

Of course, the article does offer feminist-tinged agendas about how poor women bear such a burden, “it is women who bear the medical and psychological burden of trying to get—and stay—pregnant”… Despite, the scare headlines warning that human reproduction is at risk, there’s nary a mention of the increased use of female oral contraceptives in the Newsweek story and that glaring omission bothers me. You’d think that scientists, who are looking for all sorts of causes, even cellphones, BPA and smoking, to explain the drop in fertility, both female and male, perhaps they might add looking into the impact of increased use of oral contraceptives on human reproduction too.

Would looking into the impact of oral contraceptives rock the boat of acceptable scientific inquiry? I suspect, that although we aren’t living in a “world without men”, we, to include our scientific research, are rigidly controlled by politically correct, feminist-driven conformity. Is our scientific research ideologically castrated, to be performed only by PC-indoctrinated eunuchs?

2 Comments

Filed under Culture Wars, Food for Thought, General Interest, Politics

September 8, 2017 · 5:41 am

Trump’s #CharlottesvilleVendetta

After watching how President Trump and his information warrior army operate since 2015, you’d think most political pundits would understand, not only his information warfare strategy, by now, but also realize that he has no political ideological core, no principles, no concern for understanding details or facts, and is completely driven by his own popularity. What makes Donald J. Trump look great matters most.

So, when Trump met with McConnell, Ryan, Schumer and Pelosi Wednesday and stabbed Republicans in the back, by agreeing to Schumer and Pelosi’s deal, the political punditry broke down two ways. The Trump information warriors, his loyal Carvillian spinmeisters, who have spun Trump as “great”, “the magnificent builder”, “doesn’t play by the rules”, and most of all “winning”, naturally began spinning this deal as wonderful, but many other political pundits seemed dazed and confused again. The reaction was sort of “what the heck just happened?”.

Once again, they are making the mistake of thinking of Trump in American democratic political norms. He is not really a Republican or a Democrat; he’s a puffed up, pampered prince, our own Peter III, who is used to getting his own way. If it feeds his image and therefore his ego, all is well. This is why he doesn’t care about policy, only watching TV and talking about his popularity (crowd size). His other consuming concern is shutting down the Russia investigation. He wants to make sure he is not impeached.

The Trump/Schumer/Pelosi deal was Trump’s #CharlottesvilleVendetta in action. Any Republicans who spoke out against him after Charlottesville will be targeted for destruction by Trump and his sleazy political operatives. Ryan and McConnell are at the top of Trump’s hit list, because they could be very influential in killing the Russian investigation. This has nothing to do with moving the so-called Trump political agenda, which really was just a bunch of jingoistic flag-waving, “America First”, xenophobic tirades to galvanize his base.

He will rally, and repeat that performance, as often as necessary, to keep his 5th Avenue Loyalists marching in lockstep. Seriously, he will revert to his large rallies, even if he has to hire a crowd to project a great “crowd size”.

Trump’s spinmeisters are spinning this deal as Ryan’s fault and that will be a recurring theme from now on. Trump’s spinners will target Ryan and McConnell. Since Trump has Fox News as a 24/7 propaganda channel, his spin will likely work with his 5th Avenue Loyalists. They believe not what he says or does (don’t take him literally; but take him seriously). They believe in Trump the “Great”.

Republicans, who are not on the Trump train, would be wise to realize that Trump is not a Republican and the GOP is no longer the Republican party. That party was burned to the ground. When the Trump train kept touting Trump’s “GOP Insurgency”, well, believe it. He did not want to become a Republican; he wanted the party to become Trumpian. And it has. His sleazy information warriors will say anything to prop him up and lie, lie, lie. They make the Clinton spinmeisters look like amateurs. Ryan, McConnell and other Republicans, who aren’t Trump loyalists, should start dealing with Trump like he is the enemy, because he is. Trump will work tirelessly to destroy anyone who hurts his feelings.

Where this Trump train stops is anyone’s guess. The one thing I am certain of is it leads to an abandonment of American principles of decency and fair play. There’s nothing good about using mass media information warfare against the American people, no matter who is doing it.

And one short blog note: My area is under a mandatory evacuation this weekend, so I won’t be blogging for several days. We are packing up.

3 Comments

Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Politics

September 1, 2017 · 3:44 pm

More paper junk

Warning, warning, this is a crafting post, so escape while you can, if you thought you were going to read a political post.

Above are three traveler’s notebook inserts I made with lined paper for my youngest daughter. The middle one has some iron-on fabric appliques that are clearance junk I bought at Walmart years ago. I used tacky glue to attach them.

In my ongoing effort to use scrapbook paper, craft supplies, even old calendars I’ve kept, this “junk journaling” effort is turning into a fun hobby. When my kids were young, I began the habit of keeping old calendars, because calendar pictures are really great to use in a lot of kids craft projects. I still have a Strawberry Shortcake and a Holly Hobbie calendar, and I recently used some pictures from a Minnie Mouse calendar to cover plain, 50 cent composition books for my granddaughters.

Years ago, when my granddaughters were little, I found a project in a book, Trash to Treasure (psst, book was a yard sale purchase), for making children’s sewing cards. I had looked online and in stores for some pretty sewing cards, without much luck. The sewing cards I found were very ugly images, so I bought a puppy and a kitten calendar on clearance, long after the new year, at a local Dollar General store. I made bunches of very cute sewing cards for my granddaughters and also for some friends at work to give to their young children.

Sewing cards have gone out of style, I guess, but truly they were great for little girls and boys to work on manual dexterity. My mother sat my oldest daughter on the floor with a stack of magazines when she was a very young toddler. She handed my daughter a pair of children’s scissors and told her she could cut out pictures. I told my Mom that she was just making a mess and my mother told me I was missing the point, which was my daughter was learning how to handle scissors and improving her manual dexterity. By the time my daughter got to kindergarten she was a professional at cutting out images neatly, even around complicated curves.

My youngest daughter was even better with scissors, because when she was a toddler we were living in Germany and I enrolled her in the German kindergarten in our village. Those teachers handed the little children sharper scissors and taught them Scherenschnitte cutting. At one of their parent/teacher nights they had a class for parents to learn Scherenschnitte to make a Christmas ornament. I had my preschool daughter explaining to me that the trick is to move the paper, not your scissors. Try cutting out images on paper with some sharp curves and notice the difference it makes if you move the paper instead of trying to move your scissors.

These are some small scrap paper note pads and a traveler’s notebook insert for me. The patriotic images are from my 2011 lovely, large wall calendar, Long May She Wave. I used the small images from the back cover of the calendar for this insert. The center image is a WWI rallying poster with an Army Corps nurse at the Liberty Bell, raising the flag. There are soldiers marching off to war, with the Statue of Liberty in the background. Someday I might frame the large print of this image and put it in my “I love America” room.

The other night I was just playing at my craft desk and looking through a stack of old calendars, so I cut up my 2002 Provence calendar, which had lovely photos by Mark Downey. I turned the calendar cover into a soft cover. I used the other calendar pictures, with the addition of some other papers, to make this thin junk journal. I think this calendar was just a dollar store calendar.

This is my latest project, another junk journal made with a cereal box cover. The picture is a Monet print from my 2005 wall calendar, which I glued onto the cereal box cover. I printed out a Monet quote I found online and added it to the cover. Then I coated the cover with 4 coats of matte finish Mod Podge to seal it. I might add a ribbon to tie around it or add more embellishments to the cover.

The spine is covered in scrapbook paper and sewn with the 5-hole pamphlet stitch.

There are 3 signatures, with a good bit of room to grow, so that once I start adding embellishments and paper ephemera, it won’t get too bulky.

The good thing is I haven’t gone out and bought anything new while making these.

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 personally 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.”

All leadership boils down to trust.

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

‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump

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.

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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.

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