Friends, Congress may be getting closer to forcing the sale of TikTok by its Chicom parent company. Would that company, in fact, sell, and if so who would buy TikTok? That's a critically important question, because we decidedly don't want the U.S. government forcing the sale of a major social media platform to a bunch of leftist creeps, which is a horrifyingly plausible scenario, I fear... Elon, are you listening???
In other news, Democrats and progressives are, as usual, whipping up fears that Republicans will gut Social Security and Medicare. Of course, Trump and his GOP allies are highly unlikely to trim these popular programs, although part of me wishes they would, because unless they are put on a firmer fiscal foundation they're both in danger of insolvency in the medium or long term.
Finally, those dastardly Dems aren't dumb. Evil, sure, but not dumb. They realize what the polls are telling them: the presence of a wide range of third party candidates in the presidential race is lessening Joe Biden's chances of victory. The solution? Attack those third party candidates as "spoilers" and, if possible, sue them into oblivion and/or get them off the ballot. Oh, these Democrats sure do love "democracy", as long as the people get only one choice at election time.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/dnc-war-third-party-candidates-rcna143290
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Lemme give you the frank viewpoint of an older (77) boomer on social security. There are still enough of us that if Social Security were in any way altered for us , we would pitch our characteristic hissy fit and scare the devil out of whoever had the foresight to do it. On the other hand I think most of us aren't sweating the integrity of the system too much because most of us won't be around a whole lot longer anyway. On the whole (with many exceptions nonetheless) our generation persists in being the most unjustifiably self satisfied and misguided one ever so count on us to bristle at taking any responsibility for the fiscal profligacy our country has manifested under our stewardship.
ReplyDeleteFROM RAY TO JACK
DeleteI'm also a boomer, but I have no qualms about Social Security and Medicare and whatnot in general. I'm sure you know that a lot more could have been done for Americans in many ways, (and not as handouts), were it not for the multi-billions we "flushed down the toilet" in foreign aid and foreign wars with the many thousands of maimed (physically and mentally), not to mention the dead. Much could have been spent on OUR infrastructure, just for starters. The U.S. (since WW 2) has "danced" all over the globe sticking its nose in other people's BS, and mostly to no avail for our own country. No! I am not an isolationist!
Dr. Waddy from Jack: I see Russia is conducting an "election" today. I'm sure there will be many antiamerican left observers watching to garner as much information as possible on expeditious methods of assuring a certain outcome. Oh but surely not I suppose; we know how very intensely ,completely and self righteously our left loathes Russia. Surely they would not stoop to unalloyed expedition of any sort, not them!
ReplyDeleteFROM RAY TO JACK
DeleteJack, I'm sure you recall that The Soviet Union/Russia used to be THEE place to be for Left Wing intellectuals and their camp followers. Red Square was their favorite hang out. Guess they decided PRC China is better, and especially since 1991 when Russia dropped Communism, supposedly. They must have decided Mao was more of a fun guy than "Uncle Joe".
Dr. Waddy from Jack: This election is going to be a reckoning! Should antiamerica triumph we can of course expect a deluge of proto totalitarian presumption building on the success of lawfare, command of the obsequious MSM, resolve to make permanent radical control of key cultural institutions such as the corporate boardroom, the academy, public education, free speech and the military. Vindictive punishment of America for daring to doubt would be administered with special zeal. We CAN stop this by VOTING, despite all inconvenience, resignation, quibbling or even fear. VOTE for our nation's life. This is 1860 and 1932 again.
ReplyDeleteRAY TO JACK
DeleteAs you already know, The Left is in firm control of the media, education, and is well entrenched in the military, and many churches. Undoing that would require a dictatorship, which of course is not going to happen here, period. The best we can hope for with Trump and after is re-control of foreign policy, the military, and economy, to name a few, and even that is shaky. More importantly, what happens after Trump's 4 years even if he wins?
Dr. Waddy from Jack: So the antiamerican left intends to extend lawfare to 3rd party candidates. So far , with their cynical legal onslaught on DJT they have generated sympathy and empathy for him. One would think that any attack on Cornel West is ruled out but why is he running anyway? Surely he doesn't want to help DJT and the America he stands for. RFK Jr. no doubt inspires in them the vicious antipathy reserved for apostates by these paragons of justice though his convictions are hard to classify and his possible effect hard to predict. Of course they would like to give Jill Stein, who may well have unforgiveably changed our history by tripping up darling and long denied her due Hillary in 2016, a "deserved" and very painful rebuff which would , eh, discourage, other presumptuous interlopers. The dems' increasing desperation, as they face the harrowing possibility of the unthinkable , is reflected in their determination to deal with this distraction, which requires effort and resources they would like to concentrate on the detested implacable main foe!
ReplyDeleteRay and Dr. Waddy from Jack: I think our only concern now must be to concentrate fully on supporting DJT and if he wins, then set to work on the long and hard, hard task of taking this country back.We must believe it can happen, NOW, or we are lost. The analogy is not direct but I do see some parallels between the threat America faces from antiamerica and that which England faced in 1940. They might well have wilted; had Halifax become PM they probably would have and unimaginable misfortune would have been their lot. But great good fortune provided them with perhaps the only leader capable of redeeming them. Yes, I do see some similarities in DJT, (and I realize how very controversial that is but Churchill seemed to many of good will to be just as counterintuitive and unendurable as DJT does to so many today)especially if he is reelected. He has endured excoriation and disempowerment with confidence in himself and the moral courage needed to persist in the face of the present harrowing domestic threat to all that American civilization holds dear. He has done so at a time in his life when most of us pack it in and take it easy. Wasn't it Big Bill Heywood, one of the leaders of the "Wobblies" who actually moved to Stalin's Russia and consequently realized to the full, his terrible folly? Those who blithely celebrate Mao, "Che" etc. adnauseum, manifest utterly damned and tragic foolishness. It is appallingly necessary to face the fact that they actually aspire to total , dictatorial control of our country even now and as fantastic as it may appear, again, to so many of good will. If we fail to stop them now we will bitterly rue the very thought of the time we gave up on the most successful country ever when we could have saved it.
ReplyDeleteRay and Dr. Waddy from Jack: As to a necessity for dictatorship in order to defeat antiamerica's onslaught on America: Mayor Guiliani proved that a democracy can defeat one of the main manifestations of far left insanity: its pusillanimous excuse of lawlessness and violent crime and its purposeful enablement of criminal savages in order to promote the chaos it needs to prevail. He became Mayor of a NYC which to all appearances was permanently uncivilized by radical dreamers and cynical barbarians freely doing what they do best, victimizing! It took common sense and the political will to succeed in as trying a setting as can be imagined. Can it be done nationally? We must try; perhaps some authoritarian measures may be be shown to be inescapable but the thought of the CERTAIN and proven unshirted hell of the marxism appallingly established already in our country and ready to rule absolutely, must guide and chasten us.
ReplyDeleteRAY TO JACK
ReplyDeleteThanks for including me in your posts to Dr. Waddy. I appreciate your including me. I also appreciate your posts in general, although we did have a disagreement about the meaning and causes of anti-semitism in the recent past. But so what! I was being petty about pushing the ticket on that to begin with.
In addition, your responses to Dr. Waddy's articles have, frankly, somewhat more details than my very often sarcastic quips, or whatever they can be called. Anyway, I'm glad you are sharing
opinions on this blog. Too bad we don't have more people comment. but if we don't then we don't, and so be it. Thanks again for including me in your responses to Dr. Waddy.
Jack, you are a boomer like me, but not all us boomers got caught up in the Leftist BS in the 1960s. But you know, my Dad who was in WW 2 took the G.I. bill and became a High School teacher, and he always said that a lot of Soldiers, Sailors and Marines who survived the war were already leftist before the war, and that all those middle age leftist professors did in college was brain wash them formally. I even remember one of my teachers in grade school in the 1950s was fired for expressing leftist views in class, and that was during McCARTHY times of course.
I do have a theory that I lot of things that plague our society today got started in the late 19th Century with large waves of socialist oriented immigrants from Europe, and then picked up in the 1920s and started an avalanche that is still rolling. Just a theory, but I do think a lot has been written that prove the facts.
Take care.
Jack, you are right that oldsters will bristle at ANY consideration of reforms to Social Security or Medicare -- even if, as seems likely, those reforms would not impact people currently receiving benefits in the least.
ReplyDeleteRay, you are right that the U.S. has flushed literally trillions down the toilet over the years, which only exacerbates our fiscal emergency. Of course, what's done is done. We can only aspire to mitigate the damage with sensible adjustments going forward.
Ray, I think the truth is that the new (neo-)Marxist center of the world is probably NYC or LA, not Beijing or Moscow. Actually geography hardly matters. The Marxists have been camping out in our heads since the early 20th century, and maybe longer. And their purchase on our Weltanschauung is only growing, as far as I can tell.
Jack, I agree with Ray's doubts about the efficacy of a Trump win. Control of the presidency doesn't come with control of any of our other major institutions, and, as the lefties have shown, they can actually DEEPEN their hegemonic suasion over most of those institutions in the midst of a Trump Administration, and probably will, if Trump hasn't got a brilliant plan to prevent it.
True, Jack: any effort that the Dems expend slapping down third party candidates is effort that they will have to divert from their main effort, i.e. destroying, once and for all, the MAGA movement and its champion. I continue to believe that the former Dems who don't vote Dem this year will be vastly more important than the increase (if there is any) in support for Trump.
Hmm. I think Trump and Churchill may have one more thing in common: they were (and are) both major contributors, albeit unwittingly, to the advance of Marxist ideology. I'm not talking about their intentions, of course, but the practical effects of their leadership. Prove me wrong!
Jack, you're right that Giuliani worked wonders in NYC. On the other hand, it didn't take long for the Dem majority in NYC to undo every single one of his accomplishments, did it? That's presumably why Ray thinks a dictatorship would be needed to make conservative hegemony stick.
Ray, interesting theory, and of course demography sometimes IS destiny, as someone once said. I have no doubt that America would be a different country if it had handled immigration more...severely? Circumspectly? A better or a worse country, who knows.
The Left (also called Democrats etc.) have already established an ironclad dictatorship. While they were doing it, conservatives did not do a damn thing to prevent it, for the most part, with the exception of McCarthy who wanted to marginalize them without any sort of dictatorship, as such. Even back in the 1950s it was probably too late.
DeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Your reasoning on Trump and Churchill unintentionally advancing marxist ideology is unclear to me. Please elaborate. The Brit Laborites who ousted Churchill just after victory no doubt had very powerful marxists among them who might have taken frazzled Britain down the totalitarian road had not Churchill led an effective opposition.
ReplyDeleteI think the weary Brits tired of Labor's failure to alleviate their continued straitened standard of living for a terribly discouraging time after the war and they consequently reimpowered Churchill. But then, when have devoted doctrinaire leftists ever done right by a nation which risked granting them power? Britain had the great good fortune, denied to so many unlucky countries, of having retained the means to oust socialists. Later, Labor may almost have gotten the job of "fundamental transformation "done for good and all but for steadfast neo Churchillian PM Thatcher, whose advent was another terribly lucky break for old England. Well, conservative difference makers like Pres. Reagan, Mayor Guiliani and Gov. DeSantis were empowered by democracy. We must embrace the absolute necessity of follow up by using democracy to identify, motivate,and enable successors determined to build on their accomplishments and NOT to spinelessly temporize or apologize for them.NYC's astonishing redemption by Mayor Guiliani proved that NYC's present redegradation by disdainful antiamericans can be remedied. The antiamerican left does see itself today as closer to assured totalitarian victory as it openly practices injustices such as lawfare and dictated and ruthlessly enforced DIE. Is an American Pinochet in the offing? Our democracy has far deeper roots than that of Chile and it can redeem us, I think, if we WILL have it so.
Ray, Dr. Waddy et al: I'm certain the majority of the boomers were good citizens but the radical ingrates were a considerable faction. With a generation that enormous even a faction can have inordinate influence and the tragically naive among us did a rare old job of consequently deconstructing our country. Some of them are still at it. I never thought before about the Depression having made leftist sympathizers out of guys who went on to serve faithfully in WWII. I should have because it happened in my family. But I think the majority of the returning vets, many of whom had seen totalitarianism's depraved handiwork first hand, were poor candidates for subversion. Immigrant 19th century European socialists: it makes alot of sense that they brought and spread their contagion.
ReplyDeleteRAY TO JACK
DeleteThanks for your post in response to mine. It will always be an unsolved mystery to me how Leftism effects every human being. You know, David Horowitz was probably (in my opinion) one of the top Leftist leaders back in the 1960s, and is now an arch enemy of The Left. I suspect that his story is one fine example of how The Left can seep into individual lives and take root. But, you know as well as I do that those boomers who were sucked in were a bunch of spoiled brats from middle class homes who got manipulated through drugs and BS professors.
Take care.
Ray from Jack: Horowitz was one of the editors of (I believe) Ramparts , a '60s journal which appealed to idealistic middle class collegians. He has extensively documented his gradual realization of the evil of the radical left, including murder of apostates, in several fine books. Naturally he is anathema to the antiamerican left; I once challenged the college I attended, SUNY New Paltz, which Horowitz once termed "the most communist college east of Berkeley" to welcome and protect him on campus. Predictably they would have none of it.
ReplyDeleteBoy, what an interesting observation: "even back in the 50s it was probably too late". Could be! More to the point, "conservatives did not do a damn thing" to prevent the leftist takeover of our culture. Honestly, I don't think most noticed it, or cared, as long as the money kept rolling in.
ReplyDeleteJack, what I meant re: Trump and Churchill is that, while they both talk a good game, the net effect of Trump's four years in the White House was (I daresay) to hasten the consolidation and mobilization of leftist forces and to FURTHER ENTRENCH them in all institutions except the judiciary. Is that what YOU voted for in 2016? It wasn't what I had in mind... Trump's errors contributed, and continue to contribute, to this process of national degradation. As for Churchill, he was an avowed anti-Marxist...who sent billions in aid to Marxists to help them achieve domination over half of Europe. He also governed with socialists throughout the war, and, by helping make the perceived outcome of that war a triumph for Marxism, aided Labour in transforming Britain into a socialist society...which it substantially remains today. And when, frankly, was Britain ever MORE socialist than during WWII, if central government domination is the measure of socialism??? That's my two cents.
There were indeed refugees from leftism in the 60s and 70s, usually called neoconservatives, who many see as the ancestors of today's RINOs! In any case, Trump is accelerating a realignment that has made many squishy "conservatives" into Democrats, if not necessarily progressives. Of course, many ex-Democrats are now Trumpers. It's the cycle of life, I suppose.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: I respectfully disagree on Churchill: he supported the USSR in the war out of the dire necessity of allies ; by 1946 he was warning of the Iron Curtain. He considered a national gov't, featuring 2 Labor members in the initial makeup of his close War Cabinet of five members, to be essential. He prosecuted the British war effort with success perhaps unattainable by any other British leader and that probably endorses his conviction that such visible unity of leadership was sine qua non. I believe that , as Conservative leader, he strongly opposed Labor's later '40s policies and often publicly characterized them as leading to dictatorship. During the war, a great degree of regimentation was indispensable, especially when Britain faced the ultimate in 1940.
ReplyDeleteSeems to me you're giving the (alleged) great enemy of socialism the leeway to be as socialist as he pleases, to battle National Socialism. With master strategy like that, I'm not surprised we ended up in the mess we're in!
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: I think we are agreed to disagree on Churchill on this point. As for DJT : I think it is to be expected that a movement as amoral and convinced of its own consummate virtue would react with vicious antipathy to the unprecedented and blunt expression of contempt for them manifested by DJT. And as their outrage grows into real fear that DJT and the America which perceives that he stands for them are not intimidated by those reflexive methods of condemnation which have worked so well for antiamerica (eg. accusation of any of an unlimited number of "isms" which customarily bring summary apology and abject recompense) ,then they resort to even more totalitarian measures like lawfare.So sure, DJT has generated a tsunami of characteristically emotional bustle from the antiamerican left; their unendurable anxiety over him lends their current effort to ruin him personally the cachet of frantic and detestable desperation often seen from challenged and juvenile overidealists.
ReplyDeleteAgreed -- the screeching now coming from the Left smacks of desperation, but the fact is that their irrational Trump-hatred has repeatedly borne fruit, in the form of election victories (2020 being a rather notable example). Political power isn't worth much unless you know how to wield it AND know how to keep it.
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