A Shriek in America's Night

 

                                     

                    A Shriek in America's Night

In the future, when everyone, or most everyone, has forgotten the America that was, there won’t be any wrong-thinkers. There will only be shades of right-thinkers. Those who know that the stories Americans once told about themselves were lies, that the great, existential quest, the striving for a more American America, the New Jerusalem, the paintings it painted of itself, the Hudson Valley, the Great Plains, the Great Lakes, the sprawling, harried novels it wrote about this deeply flawed, beautiful, wondrous experiment, the sonorous, dissonant symphonies it composed, the ticker-tape, black and white movies it projected onto its screens — it was all a ruse.

We should be grateful, these post-Americans will tell themselves, that we do not live in this place, that we never knew it. That we have been liberated from the fictions of this bloodied land. That we are finally, at long last, free.--Peter Savodnik

The Emperor Flaunts His New Clothes

 

                                   The Emperor Flaunts His New Clothes

The All-Star Game has been moved from Atlanta to Denver in protest of Georgia's new voting laws, yet Colorado has similar stringent voting rules.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp was also scratching his head on this...
"Georgia has 17 days of in-person early voting including two optional Sundays, Colorado has 15... So what I'm being told, they also have a photo ID requirement. So it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me."

Sexton raises a good point (good points not really being appropriate for modern thinking.) "The hypocrisy is pretty thick on this one... If ...[ MLB Commissioner Robert]...Manfred believes relocating the All-Star Game demonstrates MLB's "opposition to U.S. voter restrictions," why just pull one baseball game from Georgia? What about the Atlanta Falcons seasons or all the Braves games?"

Reality abuts against consistency and purity. We can only watch to see what a subculture that ignores diminishing returns will do here.

The Upside of Asian Criticism

                                               The Upside of  Asian Criticism

The kerfluffle over racism aimed against American Asians has left me strangely optimistic.  (This does not include the self-destructive international image of America as a cruel and bigoted state, an image that is being used by the Chinese in their propaganda war against the West in Asia. That is not optimistic.) But the animosity toward Asians is a different kettle of the usual muckraking stew.

Bigotry exists. People generalize from their own personal experiences to include the larger group that an individual experience does not represent. This is the essence of bad science: large generalities from small samples. But that is not happening with the Asian community. They are not being punished by their fellows because they are seen as a negative subset on the population curve, they are being attacked because their attackers are envious of their familial and economic success. Bigots usually look down upon their targets. In the Asian community, their attackers are looking up.

The Asian community is seen as successful in a competitive environment, successful where their opponents are not. That implies the recognition of success, of a hierarchy that the culture values and appreciates.  

So, while some small number of idiots are acting on their limited views, their victims, Freedom's success stories, are being supported by the Left. That's progress.

The Self-sacrifice of the Press

 

                           The Self-sacrifice of the Press

A number of years ago during the hunt for bin Ladin, the American press learned the American military was tracking terrorist leaders through their cell phones. The government asked that the information be suppressed so they could continue to track them surreptitiously but the press, particularly the NYT, said they would reveal it. Nothing like the Truth.

So the press revealed the Americans had the locations of all the terrorists, the terrorists threw away their phones, and the Americans lost a terrific advantage in their conflict with murderous anarchy. But the press, somehow feeling they were immune to murderous anarchy, swelled with pride.

The saintly press is repeating their mistake with the Chinese. They are presenting the Americans as anti-Asian bigots, to the delight of Chinese propagandists who are using this in their efforts to influence the Asia they don't control. Once again, the press acts as if they will not suffer when the rest of us will suffer. 

I don't know if they are stupid, but they are certainly unwise.

The Heroes of Baseball

 

                                    The Heroes of Baseball

Major League Baseball has taken a moral stand--if coming to a decision after surveying some of your members for their opinion can be called moral. Maybe a moral headcount. Maybe a new take on the moral majority--of those answering the questionnaire. Anyway....

There are many of us that have thought all along that morality was an abstract idea that actually transcended voting. All more the fools we. Anyway....

So the Major League is not going to have the All-Star Game in Georgia. This is because the majority of players polled thought the voting laws that Georgia was voting on are discriminatory on the basis of race. This leads to several simple questions. Which laws are discriminatory and why? And, since discrimination is illegal, how are the miscreants going to escape justice? What has Georgia done that allows them to avoid prosecution? Or ...are the points under debate less definite? Or are some points more...symbolic?

One thing certain, revolutions, like George Bush, don't do nuance.

                                                                Easter

Easter is the essential Christian event. Every aspect of the Christian church hinges on Christ's resurrection.

The gospel is filled with little particulars (the woman hesitant to enter the tomb, Peter being outrun to the tomb, the meticulous arrangement of the burial cloths, the assumption that the body was stolen--after the assumption by the Pharisees that the apostles would steal it)--all giving misdirection and specificity to what becomes the philosophical earthquake of all time. And, of course, another biblical irony: The first to arrive, the women, could not be legal witnesses.

Yet how does this all hinge? Hearsay? The interpretation of a sacred book? Amulets and magic rites? No. Amazingly it hinges on us.

By the time Christ rises, we know all the players. We even have some insights about them. They are not revolutionaries, not mystics and, while seemingly sincere, they are not special. They are relatively normal working folks with responsibilities and, probably, annoyed families. As seen by their behavior during the Passion, they are not fully aware of what is happening. Nor are they particularly brave. Yet, after this crisis where their leader is tortured and killed, they somehow emerge as philosophers and martyrs. They all, to a man, experience a mind-changing, life-changing event. Scattered and leaderless they raise a religious movement that challenges everything in its time and, eventually, forces mighty Rome to adapt.

Christ performed the great, unarguable miracle. It was the behavior of men, people, who confirmed and developed it. No leap of faith was necessary. They were convinced and changed. Then they convinced and changed the world.

 

Immigration

 

                                    Immigration  

As the border becomes a discussion topic again, here are some factors.

Building “the Wall” would cost less than half of what we spend to educate illegal immigrants every year

Illegal immigration costs American taxpayers $116 billion a year

62 percent of naturalized immigrants are for the Democrats; only 25 percent are for the Republicans

Competition from immigrants costs American workers $450 billion a year

The Founders wanted to admit only immigrants who would make a net contribution—and assimilate

Millions of nineteenth-century immigrants who couldn’t make it in America went back home