In my last post I mentioned going with my female intuition. I believe and trust in it, so recently I was reading some short stories, while actually thinking about writing a blog post on something besides politics or foreign policy for a change, when I came across this very cleverly written short story that garnered being labeled “early feminist literature” or perhaps it’s chick lit. The story, “A Jury of Her Peers”, written in 1917, by Susan Glaspell, was loosely based on a murder case she covered in her career as a journalist, with the plot centering on a man strangled in his Iowa farmhouse, where the only suspect is his wife. Glaspell originally wrote the story as a play, Trifles, with the unfolding plot brilliantly showcasing how the men in this story do not take women seriously, especially homemakers and dismiss the things women deal with as “trifles”. I sure don’t want to delve into some feminist debate or as this story unfolds the morality of the choices the two women make, but instead, the way in which the male and female characters interact while observing the same crime scene rings very true to real life. Without giving too much of the story away here’s a short passage:
“The county attorney looked at the two women they were leaving alone there among the kitchen things.
“Yes–Mrs. Peters,” he said, his glance resting on the woman who was not Mrs. Peters, the big farmer woman who stood behind the sheriff’s wife. “Of course Mrs. Peters is one of us,” he said, in a manner of entrusting responsibility. “And keep your eye out, Mrs. Peters, for anything that might be of use. No telling; you women might come upon a clue to the motive–and that’s the thing we need.”
Mr. Hale rubbed his face after the fashion of a showman getting ready for a pleasantry.
“But would the women know a clue if they did come upon it?” he said; and, having delivered himself of this, he followed the others through the stair door.”
Now for a look at the secret lives of real chicks, check out G. Murphy Donovan’s exposé, “Attila the Hen”, in his entertaining tale from the coop:
“In all hen parties, there’s usually a bird that ruffles too many feathers for whatever reason. So it was with our Hillary, the runt of her litter. Our petite one is so named because she is more than a bit shifty, ambiguously unpopular, and annoying in ways that only other hens appreciate; in short, a victim by default midst cool gals with attitudes.
Alas, unlike lady lips, chicken lips are lethal weapons. The big hens started with Hillary’s comb and then pecked her bald. “Pecking order,” in the bird world, is no metaphor. Nor is hair pulling. When we saw blood, we had to separate the runt from the rest.”
Ok, let’s waddle on back to the female intuition topic. Here’s a bit from a 2013 Scientific American article that explains some new research:
“Men aren’t from Mars and women aren’t from Venus, but their brains really are wired differently, a new study suggests.
The research, which involved imaging the brains of nearly 1,000 adolescents, found that male brains had more connections within hemispheres, whereas female brains were more connected between hemispheres. The results, which apply to the population as a whole and not individuals, suggest that male brains may be optimized for motor skills, and female brains may be optimized for combining analytical and intuitive thinking.”
“The side I’m on is that of America. And for very, very positive reasons.” – Minta Marie Morze
A couple weeks ago my 10 year old granddaughter, a very bright student enrolled in the gifted program at her public school, mentioned something she learned at school, which I told her is not correct and what she learned really plays into the problems plaguing America and it also speaks to our future. My granddaughter said, “America is a democracy.” Reflexively, I corrected her and said, “No, America is a republic!” Thus began a stream of back and forth, because as of yesterday she told me that her teacher still says, “America is a democracy.” I told her again that her teacher is mistaken, because assuredly, America is a republic, set up as a constitutional federal republic. However, watching the demise of federalism and the reliance on pop culture and public opinion polls to silence dissenting opinion, I’m wondering if America has descended into that hellish, brutish state where on the whims of ginning up anger and use of slick mass media manipulation (propaganda) to sway the mob, the only thing that matters is the “majority rules”.
On polar ends of the American electorate, this fraying of trust or even understanding of this basic fact crops up in ever disturbing ways. On the political left, they’ve got angry mobs taking to the streets to compel justice by force and college bullies silencing opposing views with rules imposed by fiat, “I disagree, so you can’t speak!”. In the Presidential run they’re wading in a shallow geriatric pool with a dyed-in-the-wool socialist resonating with disenfranchised Democrats and a pathological liar, riding on her gender and spewing paranoid vitriol about some imaginary dangerous right-wing conspiracy out to do her in, and by extension do in the American people too. She sees a vast right-wing conspiracy around every corner. Her answer to every problem in America is another federal program, to encroach evermore deeply into the lives of American citizens.
Freedom for local communities and states to manage their own affairs falls to the ever-expanding beast that crushed the very breath of liberty out of not only local and state governments, but out of individual American citizens. We’ve become a people conditioned to bow to the popular opinion poll on issues, as manipulated by mass media propaganda. When the left wants to sway Americans to a particular view – big bucks go to various activists and groups (many Soros funded) and the propaganda blitz ensues – Hollywood makes movies and TV shows promoting that view and mainstreaming it into the culture, “experts” hit the airwaves extolling it, and then the media reinforces the idea with polling data, much of it dubious, selling this view as popular and reporters will grill the outliers, who dare speak up against that view, lecturing that the majority of Americans believe the now carefully manufactured and manipulated view. It’s a type of insidious brainwashing and peals the death of liberty and The Constitution.
Now, on the political right, the use of mass media manipulation has rarely been understood, let alone used, that is until the Trump campaign, which is using the Carville/Begala playbook, as I’ve stated repeatedly. That’s what I see – Bill Clinton’s perfect triangulation lining up, if Hillary can avoid an indictment. This post is not going to be a regurgitation of my own conspiracy theory, but here’s the link to my thoughts on that. Assuredly, as I’ve stated many times, I will not ever vote for Donald Trump, because his campaign highlights the capitulation on the right to accepting manufactured hype about polls over principles. The heart of conservatism, weak though it beats, will not survive if it succumbs to the reality TV culture and slick mass media manipulation of Donald Trump, who rambles on about his poll numbers endlessly, but does not hold to conservative principles or even basic civility.
On the right then who, well, Ted Cruz promised to be a principled conservative who would take on Washington and he has stood up against the Washington insiders, but in the process his personal style engendered absolute loathing among his fellow senators, on both sides of the aisle (read Charles Krauthammer’s very astute assessment). Do I agree with Cruz on the issues? Absolutely, but here again we get to reports, many which Trump helped spread, that Cruz is so despised that many GOP establishment people would rather support Trump, whom they know is not conservative, to destroy Cruz, who is. In a less polarized era and where pop culture celebrity didn’t carry more credence than ideas and republican principles, most of the other GOP candidates, admittedly with both pluses and minuses in my view, would still be able to gain some traction. Every single GOP candidate running against Trump offers more coherent policy, offers complete sentences and thoughts, and from this Mom and grandmother, displays better manners. Trump may be mega-rich, but he behaves like a boorish jerk!
With Trump monopolizing the media cycle, with the aid of the mainstream media selling people on polls over principles, none of their messages even get noticed as the GOP’s Paris Hilton spews mostly incomprehensible gibberish. In fact, Paris Hilton actually marketed a clearer campaign message in her cute video (see above) with easily understandable policy positions, but disgruntled GOP base voters project their hopes and beliefs onto the blank canvas that is Trump’s “making America great again”, because assuredly if you write out Trump’s rambling speeches and comments, there’s a lot less there than you’d imagine and a whole lot of conflicting ideas, beliefs, proposals, all overshadowed by the relentless repetition that he is winning in the polls (popular). He’s created this aura of “inevitability”, which now is reaping a snowball effect, as more and more GOP kingmakers are weighing their options and opting to throw in with Trump, despite reservations that Trump is even loyal to the Republican party – they are willing to toss the reins of their party to a man who converted less than a year ago and has spouted conflicting gibberish, all based on he’s a winner and great at making deals. Trump is already working out deals with those despised GOP establishment folks his supporters want destroyed. Trump admitted he talked to Mitch McConnell last month – so yes, the backroom cronyism moves full-speed ahead.
That’s the gist of Trump’s campaign, because I dare anyone to actually make lists of Trump’s statements on various topics to include the incomplete sentences too, compare how they line up for consistency, try to discern core principles, then look at what he said with whom he was speaking (he’s a chameleon and can cozy up to Bill Clinton as easily as Rush Limbaugh on the golf course). Finally, when you’ve done that honest assessment, devoid of how you feel, analyze how many times he repeated his poll numbers and stated he is winning and look at how many times he said that to divert attention from an issue or question he did not answer. It’s a deliberate media manipulation tactic and it’s one perfected by the American political left, not GOP political operatives.
Here are a a few other oddities with the Trump campaign, from someone who has followed presidential campaigns since I was 8 years old in 1968. Trump wrote about not liking to shake hands in one of his books – he has a germ thing and doesn’t want dirty people touching him. Has he ever done the usual shaking hands that’s par for the course in politics? From what I have seen he flies in, does his rallies and flies back out, then does his “connecting” with voters via late night Twitter attacks and the cable news circuit, not up close and personal. His campaign started with Roger Stone as his campaign manager. Stone quit or was fired in August, when the Trump/Megyn Kelly dust-up happened. Oddly enough, Stone is still out there speaking for Trump and no other visible campaign advisers or spokespeople emerged until November, when this former Tea Party activist, Kat Pierson, started hitting the airwaves as the Trump spokesperson. Stone, according to Wikipedia, has a book due out January 26, 2016 – “Jeb! And the Bush Crime Family”. Note that since Stone quit or was fired he seems uneasy and nervous whenever he appears on TV defending Trump – something smells off to me, but hey I’m a woman and we roll with that female intuition thing.
Another thing I noticed is that the Trump camp sure compiled massive opposition research, which Trump and his campaign advisers (whomever they really are) dump these nasty stink bombs at the most strategically brilliant times. For a novice politician, who can’t even spit out coherent political policies, the political astuteness of both content and timing of these attacks seems quite incredible. Any GOP competitor rises in the polls – boom, the Trump campaign dumps a full payload. The Trump campaign even seems to be feeding opposition research to The Last Refuge blog, which has become Trump Polling Update Central, and when Mark Levin came out criticizing Trump for attacking Cruz, yesterday that blog ran this hit piece of opposition research asserting the son of Levin’s fianceé works on the Cruz campaign. For Trump, who isn’t much on the details, his campaign is more effective than the Dem operatives who launched that Bush DWI stink bomb years ago. The irony of The Last Refuge blog is they no longer welcome opposing opinions from actual conservatives. It’s Trump or the road, and they ran this hit piece on Levin, which appears to be opposition research (sleaze to damage Levin’s credibility) provided to them by the Trump campaign. If Trump ends up exposed as a fraud, there will be a lot of very angry populist mobs, with so many conservatives investing so much hope and belief in Trump, so hope I am wrong about Trump being a fraud, as this could get very ugly, very quickly.
National Review orchestrated a “Stop Trump” campaign, ostensibly to save conservatism. My friend, Minta, sent me an email last night stating:
“This new issue of National Review is a big problem, but not for the reasons someone might think. The general view around here is that instead of the authors writing a manifesto about what Conservatism is, and what it means, they look as though they are attacking one person. They could have achieved the better result by supporting someone like Cruz. I love the authors of the Nat’l Review this time, but they are risking looking like elitist snobs. Where were these manifestos when Lois Lerner wasn’t indicted, when the IRS was going after the Tea Parties, when the military was being dismantled, when the VA was shown to be anti-military?”
Minta got it exactly right, the Trump supporters get angry when other conservatives disagree and conservative stalwarts like George Will end up screamed at by populist pundits like Bill O’Reilly, another speaker for the little people, who also is a friend of Trump’s, so when Trump doesn’t articulate his positions clearly, O’Reilly helpfully fills in the blanks on what Trump meant and does character references for Trump too. In this environment, Trump’s supporters are emotionally invested in Trump, in the same way Obama supporters became cultish in their belief that one man could singlehandedly transform America. They want a Messiah or a strongman, not a President, with clear CONSTITUTIONAL checks on his/her power. I want less government control and less power in Washington’s hands, especially after President Obama’s imperial presidency. Herein is why I don’t think Cruz will ever gain much traction – his fellow GOP establishment peers in Washington want him annihilated and Cruz talks like an elitist Harvard lawyer. Cruz has nowhere to go to attract voters, if he moves to the middle he loses the conservative base voters who stuck with him, the GOP establishment is throwing in with Trump and moderates will never gravitate to Cruz, with his hardline conservative record and on top of that he comes across as an elitist Harvard lawyer who talks down to the little people. He is not someone your average Joe would want to have a beer with. Rubio, Christie, Kasich all have more personal appeal frankly. They come across as nice people. Jeb is doomed by his last name, Carson hasn’t been able to convey he’s a viable Presidential choice and Fiorina, smart, does her homework, but she always comes across too scripted and worse than that she usually seems angry and uppity. She does not convey much personal warmth.
Trump has severely damaged the entire GOP field with his scorched earth campaign style, so it’s hard for me to envision any of them being able to repair that damage by November, but this is the season where anything is possible. And on the bright side, for this conservative, at least the Democrats have an even worse mess on their hands. Whatever happens, the larger question of, “Are we a democracy, where angry mobs silence dissent and popularity polls rule over principles or are we a republic grounded in The Constitution?” may become the defining issue of the 2016 campaign. In the meantime I am looking for some good books or sources to explain Our Republic to my 10 year-old granddaughter, so if you have any recommendations, please let me know.
So, the big news tonight: Sarah Palin is endorsing Donald Trump. Unfortunately, the GOP has a reality TV campaign on its hands and who better than TV reality stars, Palin and her daughter, in Trump fashion, fluttered to Twitter today to bash Ted Cruz. Tonight, Sarah Palin showed up in Iowa to announce her endorsement. She just finished a disjointed, rambling speech at a Trump rally.
Palin’s endorsement should not come as a surprise, as their mutual adoration fan club goes back a ways, so for a flashback here’s Palin’s interview of Trump, back in August on OAN. Please note their mutual whinefest over those mean mainstream media folks, who dared to ask such unfair gotcha questions (Palin was asked where she gets her news and Trump was asked what his favorite Bible verse is – just so unfair ) :
Politico now has the other side of the Obama hostage release “swap”:
“As part of a prisoner swap with Iran, President Barack Obama granted clemency to seven men of Iranian origin either facing criminal charges in U.S. courts or already serving time in U.S. prison, an American official confirmed Saturday.”
The article continues:
“While an official confirmed Obama issued seven grants of clemency in the deal with the Iranians, spokespeople at the Justice Department and the White House did not immediately release the names of those spared in the U.S. legal system.
However, Iran’s Fars news agency released seven names, which correspond with U.S. court records on pending or recent cases.
Obama appeared to have granted rare, pre-trial pardons to three men awaiting trial in Houston for violating U.S. export laws by shipping high-tech equipment to Iran: Bahram Mechanic and Tooraj Faridi of Houston andKhosrow Afghahi of Los Angeles.
On Saturday, prosecutors moved to drop charges against Matin Sadeghi, a fugitive in the same case who was being sought in a wanted poster available on the FBI website. A court filing said the move was undertaken “based on significant foreign policy interests of the United States.””
And in typical Obama administration obfuscation the 7 turns into more:
“A U.S. official confirmed charges were dropped in cases involving 14 individuals. The moves will allow those individuals to travel more freely outside Iran.
Well, the Iranian propaganda blitz continues and so far neither the President of the United States nor the Chairman of the JCS have spoken publicly, but the Secretary of Defense gave some kudos to John Kerry’s diplomacy. Quite the confidence-inspiring chain of command we’ve got here……
Yesterday afternoon The Daily Caller ran an article on the US sailors captured/released by Iran, adding more pieces that do nothing to fill in this puzzle. Before delving into this chapter of the Obama Chronicles, let me toss out another odd bit of news released just this morning, from FOX news, stating Iran is releasing the US prisoners, it has been holding, in a swap. A “swap” where the full terms of what the US swapped seems unclear, but I’ll quote my husband, who responded to my question, asking if he heard anything about who the US is “swapping”, “No, they haven’t released that information yet, but whoever it is, we won’t like it once we find out!” Assuredly true!
Watching these Obama “narratives” unfold follows a familiar pattern – ever-evolving “facts”, shifting story lines, major plot twist, turns, even complete rewrites, where the administration feverishly tries to use mass media propaganda techniques to create mass delusion. By dragging their feet, throwing out numerous false leads, obfuscations to goad a reaction from the Republicans, who always take the bait, the administration successfully casts the Republican reaction as the problem and just more partisan politics or right-wing witch hunts. The original matter in question fades into the background, while the partisan rancor takes center stage as the “real problem”.
The Daily Caller article mentioned above states:
“Congress wants to know if the State Department held any influence on the U.S. Navy sailor who apologized to Iran after he and his nine other sailors were arrested and detained by the regime. The video, which aired on Iranian television, showed all ten sailors kneeling on the decks of their ships with their hands behind their heads.”
John Kerry pompously hurled snide attacks toward the Bush administration’s war-mongering, while bragging about his brilliant diplomacy in this matter. He rambled on about how a few years back a situation like this would have led to a war. Josh Earnest, the puppet-on-a-string, bobbed about, but recited his ludicrous talking points in a serious tone, asserting that the Iranian photos and video of our sailors kneeling before Iranian forces is nothing to be embarrassed about. Really??? Why and how these US sailors were captured remains unclear. The Kerry State Department diplomacy effort also remains unclear. The young US commander’s apology seems quite clear – he apologized to Iran. The Pentagon has remained mum about details, in fact, the Pentagon seems to have abdicated its command of US Forces to John Kerry and the State Department.
An anonymous leak from the Pentagon suggested that the US sailor’s apology came after contact with the US State Department, Was the sailor told to apologize by the Kerry State Department? Why isn’t the Defense Department speaking to an incident involving US sailors?
All the incident specific questions will lead to the usual partisan charges and counter-charges, along with the added fuel being tossed on by 2016 Presidential contenders and their campaign teams. None of this gets to the larger system failure of the US Armed Forces corrupted chain of command, which really is a grave national security risk. In the last three US administrations I believe this occurred, to varying degrees. The politicization and enforced regimen of political correctness within the US military also escalated, where we now have retired generals forming partisan cheerleading squads for the two major political parties in the US. Each political party even has its own set of retired top brass to parade out to sell their political agenda and fight it out in a propaganda war on TV news and in print media.
Just a few short examples to make the general point, during the Clinton administration, bad military decisions were followed by gauging public opinion polls before making a decision and those decisions were subject to change by a dip in the opinion polls – polls guided the Clinton foreign policy, not substance nor long-term US national strategic interests. The Bush administration stuck to a foreign policy in the Mid-East based on two tracks, the “war on terror, no safe havens for terrorists” and a belief that democratization was the magic pill to cure the Islamic malignancy known by many names, radical Jihad, radical Islam, Islamism, Islamic imperialism, Wahabbism, but never acknowledging the “holy war” and religious components to this malignancy. PC often overruled acknowledging and speaking to hard facts in the Bush White House and while they did use military force, they were reluctant to acknowledge serious strategic failings or facts on the ground that differed with their policy. The Obama administration tries to run two separate US foreign policies, of the shabby caliber of tin-pot dictators, where they’ll use one set of talking points for foreign leaders and a completely different set for domestic partisan political consumption. You could liken it to a Wizard of Oz operational system.
Within the Obama administration, all semblance of a clear-cut organizational control structure collapsed and herein lies the serious big picture system failure. In each Obama administration scandal a pattern of obfuscation emerges, which ends up being cast as a partisan witch hunt of Republicans out to get them. Democrat partisans in Congress and the media serve as willing purveyors of the Obama “narratives”. The Republican partisans rant and rave and conduct endless investigations, that lead nowhere. A recent example demonstrating this point is the collusion of Democrats in Congress, who aided in obstructing the 13 hours of Hillary Benghazi testimony. The Democrats on that committee stuck to an organized talking points campaign to obstruct the Republicans. There was obvious collusion between the Clinton camp and Congressional Democrats to orchestrate this. The Republicans threw everything, except the kitchen sink at Hillary Clinton in their questioning, but never honed in on specific wrongdoing.
The release of the Benghazi movie, 13 Hours, revived public interest in the so-called “stand down order”. The Obama administration tried to pin the attack on Benghazi on an obscure filmmaker, but it’s obvious the attack was a pre-planned terrorist attack. Hillary Clinton sent the terrorist explanation to her daughter in an email and to an Egyptian official, while publicly stating the filmmaker caused a spontaneous riot in Benghazi. Then you add in the “stand down order” question and here is my question: “Why on earth would the Secretary of State be considered as a source for a stand down order given to the US military?”
This, who is in charge in the Obama administration and who makes the decisions and calls the shots, remains nebulous. President Obama has not come out and made any statements on the US sailors being taken hostage by Iran. It appears John Kerry speaks for both the State Department and the Defense Department, with an assist from the Vice President, Joe Biden. Often, Valerie Jarrett’s name gets tossed around as the force within the White House or narratives by Ben Rhodes, a political flunkie with no military or foreign policy experience. So, where are the Joint Chiefs of Staff in military matters in this administration and what in the heck is the chain of command if a State Department official instructed an US commander on what to do when held hostage by an American adversary, whose government rants, “Death to America!”? This lack of a clear-cut chain of command puts US troops in grave danger!
With the laxity of operational behavior, our entire executive branch is a very compromised system from how information flows up and how it flows down, from how decisions and orders are made and carried out and from how US servicemembers in harm’s way are forced to operate under vague, conflicting, confused rules of engagement. This administration put a retired military officer flunkie as the State Department spokesman and removed trained military Public Affairs officers at the Pentagon, who were replaced by a civilian political flunkie. Domestic partisan battles subsume national security. This lax operational behavior permeates the Obama administration: John Brennan and Obama reviewing drone target lists in the White House, ISIS bombing targets subject to White House approval serve as two striking examples, but the day-to-day casual and reckless handling of information, decision-making process and relentless back and forth to thwart domestic partisan opponents creates a huge opportunity for foreign intelligence agencies to exploit this operational weakness.
The Republicans want to focus on Hillary Clinton, but with Benghazi and the stand-down order issue – if she gave it, did the President or someone in the White House tell her to, but why would she be giving an order to US commanders? That is what confuses me in this administration – who the hell is in charge??? And then we can talk about Madame Secretary and her private email server, where she ran the State Department on an unsecured server, but the true scope of the unsecured email problem in this administration looms large and as yet unexposed. We have the Lois Lerner and her numerous undisclosed personal email accounts, we have the US embassy in Japan email chaos, run by Caroline Kennedy, but assuredly among this administration, where no one seems to be attuned to sound information and operational security protocols, this information compromise likely goes much deeper and much higher. This lax operational system, compounded by grave polluting of national strategy by domestic partisan political battles, took decades to reach this crisis point. Our national security structure appears to be dangerously compromised. How convoluted the inner-workings of the White House really are, remains unknown, but the glimpses of serous internal hemorrhaging keep leaking out.
Restoring integrity in the system is the only way to prevent a total bleed-out. How we restore that integrity will be a looming question that goes far beyond the 2016 election, it goes to do we the American people want to restore our constitutional Republic?
“Availability cascade” is an academic term that basically has to do with manufacturing public opinion approval for a policy of some sort. Any kind of policy at all. In fact, think about how you might make an implausible idea seem plausible in public discourse, an idea no one ever even considered before. Next, think about …
President Obama delivered a rambling, disjointed final State of the Union address last night. He warbled on about American values, bridging partisan divides, and more hopey changey blather, but he did not mention an international incident with Iran taking custody of 2 US Navy ships and detaining 10 US sailors.
Today, Secretary of State, John Kerry, bragged about kowtowing to Iranian officials and unbelievably he bragged about his smart diplomacy, where he lauds his handling this situation peacefully. He actually thanked Iran for releasing our sailors.
If there are any people left in the Pentagon who aren’t political hacks, they assuredly must be furious about this administration bowing to Iran. What really happened was not brilliant diplomacy, but a complete submission of the US to Iranian muscle-flexing. The Obama administration has failed to respond to escalating provocations, emboldening Iran to engage in this latest stunt, knowing full well that the Obama administration would not respond forcefully. Thanks to these clueless, wimpy, leftist nitwits in this administration, video of these American sailors, on their knees in submission, will now be broadcast all over the Mid-East. So, the message Secretary Kerry is not brilliant diplomacy, it’s America’s military on its knees.
In the real world, far away from the neutered Obama administration, weakness is a potent provocation. Safe to state – neither smart nor powerful!
libertybelle diaries 