We had a family movie night. We watched The Perfect Game, a fairly charming vehicle for children about a ragtag group of Mexican kids who go to the Little League World Series and win. It takes place in 1957. The kids as they journey through the southern portion of America are forced to sit at separate counters and to use separate bathrooms.
One of my kids yelled, "America is so racist!"
I was a little stunned by this outburst.
I love America.
Sure, we have had some problems historically. But this would be true of any country. Japan held Korean women as captives and used them as whores during WWII. The Indian nation has a caste system, and although it's been officially disbanded, there was a brutal public rape very recently in which a young woman who had been friends with a Brahmin boy was so damaged that she died. This took place on a bus.
Although her friend intervened he was also beaten badly and now walks with a cane.
Public rape is extremely common in India. Harassment of women is the norm. Just google it for heaven's sake. There are hundreds of cases.
In South Africa, young black men rape the women so often that people take it for granted.
As we look around the world, the Protestant West is as good as it gets. We're not perfect. We're fallen. But we're as good as it gets. It's sheer ignorance not to know this.
I lived in France and was shocked at the news in the papers every morning. Police officers raped women. A woman who was an official "escort" for French diplomats "disappeared" after she named some names of high officials. Her name was Pauline Laffont (she had become a B-movie actress). She was found in a hole up in the mountains although she was not known to hike.
In Finland the blacks are treated quite severely. Even I was told to go home to India. If you read the papers there you can be rather shocked at the almost daily incidents of racial bias. But violence is also pandemic. A man sharpened sticks and put them in the swimming hole so that when kids jumped in they were impaled. If this had happened in America everyone would say "America" is so savage.
I often feel that America has a news blackout with regard to other countries in order to preserve the fiction of multiculturalism. Whereas North Koreans are told that their country is perfect (even though many of them aren't getting enough calories), Americans are told that their country stinks. That everyone in it is a racist and classist and sexist and is irredeemably violent. Anyone with just a tiny bit of foreign experience can attest that we're as good as it gets. President Obama goes around bowing his head in shame because he's completely ignorant of what other countries are like.
I liked the movie The Perfect Game, but the almost seamless beanball thrown by the director is that the boys triumphed against the odds stacked against them by the American establishment. In point of fact, the boys had shoes and uniforms because the St. Louis Cardinals supplied them. The boys were treated rather well throughout their trip, and enjoyed themselves at least partially due to American largesse. Waitresses loved them, a reporter followed their story, and many white males (umps, and other authority figures) guaranteed that their trip to Williamsport could happen without major incident. Meanwhile, the Mexican boss of many of their fathers wouldn't even let them take a day off to watch the final game. No American boss would do that anywhere from Maine to Oregon. The main reason the boys won the game is that they were Christian. God helped them. They said this themselves.
If all the countries around the world were half as fair as America, the globe would be heaven. Americans should learn other languages and get out more. Spend a year in Rwanda. Spend a decade in the Congo. Visit Myanmar. Live in Cairo. Vacation in Syria. Conduct business in Uzbekistan. And stop being so ignorant. We need universal human rights. We should not trade with countries that mistreat their citizens, or that force them to work at violent wages just so that their poor workers can manufacture our toys and clothes. It isn't right.
29 comments:
The story today is that the Republicans are all secretly happy that the Sequestration went through--i.e., since they hate all government, any reduction in government spending is just fine.
But they want to blame the cut-backs on the President, because he wouldn't cut even more than with sequestration. Why?
Because they want to dodge the negative feedback caused by the cutbacks in their respective constituencies. Most Tea Party delegates come from poor districts where government pork is most common. So when "the pain begins to be felt" they will point fingers at the President.
But this is so ironic, because it's exactly what they wanted. More cuts.
I'm sure Kirby has a quick comeback here, so I'll cede the podium to him.
I'm following the cuts and the sequestration. The main thing is that Obama's Democrats haven't passed a budget in four years. They can't bear to make cuts for fear they will piss off their constituency which is eating the country out of house and home. I feel for them. They are the party of pork.
The Republicans simply care more about the country than they care about their own selfish needs.
The Republicans since Lincoln have always cared more about the big picture, and getting it right. The Democrats are simply about giving something to their constituency in exchange for a vote. Foam, free apartments, condoms, abortions, free citizenship, free rides through college, get out of jail free cards, it doesn't seem to matter to whom or how they pander, so long as they get to stay in power.
This works, but it's very short-term thinking. The country is going under. It will take time for a huge ship like this to go under, but the Democrats have seriously damaged America. And they don't care. They say as much. Who cares what happened in Benghazi? They literally do not care.
What matters is that the handouts continue at home. It's very similar to the end days in Rome when the bread and circuses viewpoint prevailed and the harder more Republican consuls were replaced by Heliogabalus and co.
Obama like Heliogabalus, can dance.
But the truth isn't in him.
He did at least promise sequestration if he couldn't bear to make a cut, or if his team of six did nothing. Sequestration was his fallback plan.
Some say he's secretly pleased because it will make us further defenseless harming the military and letting criminals run free once more. It's how he rolls.
I don't think the Republicans hate all government. But there is such a thing as globalization, and then there's such a thing as Heliogabalazation, which are two different things. Obama's all about the latter.
The Tea Party people are America's bedrock.
Rove thinks we should throw in the towel and roll out the red carpet for the Mexican illegals. I think instead we should court the Cubans. There are 16 million Cubans in this country, and 16 million Mexicans. The Cubans are all here because of the Castro brothers. We got the cream of their business community. We should only court people who are in business and leave the unemployable to the Democrats. The business of American is business.
We should never play ball with the 47% for any reason, even if we are down to 1%. There has to be a remnant that argues for enduring American values and for the flag and all that it stands for. We have a great country and a great history. The Dems run it down and try to smash it, but we need to reclaim America and its entire heritage from the left's legions, who are trying to fight the Civil War all over again, and again on the side of race, and not on the side of universal principles.
Kirby:
I won't dally with you over your stubborn misconceptions, except to note this--
"The Dems run it down and try to smash it, but we need to reclaim America and its entire heritage from the left's legions, who are trying to fight the Civil War all over again, and again on the side of race, and not on the side of universal principles."
This sounds suspiciously as if you'd like to go back to the Ante-Bellum south with African slaves working huge plantations without remuneration or rights.
Are YOU trying to fight the Civil War all over again? Do you think universal rights should be rolled back to the franchise of privilege and power, the way it was in pre-Revolutionary Europe?
Interesting . . . .
I see Republicans as on the side of universal human rights. I know the left screams that it's the party of the rich but then why is Hollywood almost all Democrat? Why are Soros and Gates and Buffett Democrat? Democratic theory doesn't allow in reality. Democrats are Marxists.
They don't even know it.
Republicans are the party of individual freedoms and rights.
It's easy to forget that the American Civil War coincided in time with Mexico's war of independence from colonial oppression in the struggle between America's ally, the mestizo lawyer, Benito Juarez, and the Hapsburg Emperor and monarch, Maximillian II. The convulsion in the United States severely restricted its ability to enforce the principles elaborated in the Monroe Doctrine. The Union victory over the Confederacy ensured the defeat of the Empire. If Lincoln had not succeeded in restoring the union of the United States, the Confederacy could easily have become a province in the French colony of Mexico, with the renegade northern states annexed to Canada as a colony of England and the world ridded once and for all of the folly of government of the people, by the people and for the people. The United States would have been a failed experiment in democracy, just as the Soviet Union became a failed experiment in state socialism. The Civil War would serve now as a constant reminder of the foolishness of democratic principles. God Save The Queen (from her gastroenteritis).
In the Lincoln film he knew what was at stake. Central Park was built by the Republicans to illustrate the beauty of freedom for everybody. Democrats fought that too. Democrats get on the wrong bandwagon sixty years too late.
Central Park would be Crown Land, stocked with deer and foxes that only bluebloods are allowed to hunt. The statues of the real Republicans, Carl Schurz and Franz Sigel, if ever erected, would have been toppled by royal edict.
I myself was meditating today about what would have happened if the United States had developed as separately governed entities.
Clearly, Texas could have ended up as a sovereign nation.
The Southern States--excluding Texas and perhaps Virginia--could have been a separate country.
Here in California, people have been proposing a splitting up into Northern and Southern California, since our respective needs are different. California's too big. Why should we in the north give all our water to the desert cities? The desert farmers?
There could have been about six nations on the Northern Continent: New England, The South, Texas, The Rocky Mountain States (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota), the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon, and Northern California), and the Southwest (Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico), and the Midwest-Plains (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma).
That would have had profound effects on the course of European history, as there would not have been as distinct and powerful military force to participate in WWI or WWII. If America had been five nations, would Hitler have been defeated in Europe, and Japan in Asia and the Pacific? Interesting questions.
But idle. It didn't happen. So get used to it.
I definitely agree that the Left suffers from a guilt complex over American history.
I think we have to move on. My ancestors never kept slaves, but if they had, I wouldn't spend my life doing penance for what they may have done.
As it happens, my people were all Northerners. So does that entitle me to some kind of moral free pass?
Actually, it doesn't impose any burden on me at all. I don't believe in reparations. That's like saying we should give California back to Mexico.
Duh.
We owe the Union to Lincoln, and hence to Republicans. People should be more grateful.
Lincoln was against Polk's land grabs in the southwest and thought they were illegal, but he was apparently just hoping they didn't fall into slave hands. This was when he was in Congress. He apparently made several speeches against Polk.
But think about if we didn't own these lands. Mexicans would just have to walk further to get out of their legislative dysfunction to a place that actually works thanks to Madison and the Federalists.
The Spanish systems, like the Catholic systems, arrogated too much power into a single entity, and thus created monstrous institutions with no source of appeal except that of getting out the luggage and braving the high seas.
Or walking across rivers and scaling walls, and hoping for amnesty.
The legal systems that spread outward from Luther's Reformation created the only livable countries on earth. Everything else is a hellhole except Israel, and even that is a hellhole because of the surrounding populations pressing in and demanding "justice." Which they themselves know nothing about.
Every Sunday we read the ten commandments in church. I'm so grateful for those commandments. They're the best thing God ever did, except perhaps for sending down his Son to clarify matters in person.
Baseball, with its fair rules, was invented in New York State. Some say it was in Cooperstown. Still others claim it was alongside the Hudson down near NYC. Still others claim it was invented right here in Delhi. There are mentions of a game quite like it in local period papers. My kids play it. We like it. It's a good game.
Other good games invented in America include basketball. I love it.
Our Delhi team was up for the regional NJCAA championship yesterday afternoon. A thrilling game: we were up by 2 at the half. In the second half, the Herkimer County Community College baseball team suddenly poured out of a bus and were so raucous they drowned out our minimal cheers, and ignited their team. They won by 16.
Sports like poetry have an emotional foundation to them. A guy named Jonathan Feiler for their team was 6'8" and although only 200 pounds had such a wingspan and such passion that he blocked several shots and made it almost impossible to penetrate the paint. Our outside shooters kept missing.
The shooting guard was Stefan Bach, a guy from Staten Island. The day before he had had a brilliant game against Mohawk Valley. I don't know how many points he got -- like 25 -- plus ten assists and several steals and many rebounds.
But yesterday he looked exhausted from the previous day's efforts, perhaps, and plus Herkimer was outrageously good. I wonder if they will win the NJCAA finals in two weeks over in Sullivan County Community College auditorium.
I predict that Feiler will ultimately be signed by an NBA team. He's just a tad too thin at 200 pounds.
Our line-up yesterday was peculiar. One of my favorite students a guy named Shakeel Simmons, only played two minutes. He had four points and a rebound or two, but was then benched. I think he would have led the team back to victory.
But these things are second guesses.
I like the fast pace of basketball better than the bureaucratic drudgery of baseball. I do like long pop flies as they are so beautiful especially in the lights of a summer evening.
Basketball seems to require more athletic prowess. Speed, agility, the ability to think quickly. In addition to Feiler, Herkimer had a very very very quick set of guards. They were so fast it was stunning at times.
Still, we should have beat them. I've been depressed ever since it happened.
yes we should give california back to mexico even though we stole it fair and square
Curtis, what are the chances of splitting California? I haven't heard of this. California is very definitely a huge administration problem. The inland areas are very conservative and the coastal areas are completely batty. Driving inland from Los Angeles is peculiar because you drive almost two hours before the housing stops. Way out there somewhere is Yorba Linda where I once went to pay homage to Nixon's house and the beautiful museum they've built to honor him there. Wax exhibits include a lovely tribute to his odd peace treaty that he concluded with the Maoists in China.
I'm still not sure what to think of that.
Trade promotes peace.
But the Chinese government is sick beyond belief. Harvesting organs from political prisoners? The complete destruction of Tibet? The support of northern Sudan, Zimbabwe, and other maniacal places such as North Korea in exchange for the extraction of minerals?
China is a completely depraved country in which all power belongs in the hands of a few oligarchs. I can't think of any place where I would be less willing to be a citizen.
Christianity IS spreading there though against all the efforts of the psychotic government. If it keeps going they will get a tipping point. Meanwhile, we just have to keep sending Bibles.
China also has a fledgling democracy movement. They are much further along than say Afghanistan, in spite of our decade of occupation. I don't think anyone in Afghanistan has ever read the Federalist papers. I could be wrong.
We've taught 9 million women there to read. What are they reading?
Probably romance novels.
"surrounding populations pressing in and demanding "justice.""
This is exactly what the Mexicans are doing.
Sneaking in, forming cells of resistance, then demanding rights and privileges, on humanitarian grounds.
Humanitarian my ass. Go back to you own country and figure out solutions! Don't come here illegally and demand them here!
jh:
I don't like giving anything to the Mexicans. They'll take whatever they can get. They have no shame.
The Amer-Indians, on the other hand, I have different feelings.
I've considered ceding the Indians parts of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. It was theirs to begin with, and we reneged on all the treaties we signed. It's the least we could do. A few nasty-minded ranchers would raise a stink, but we could still do it.
Kirby:
Here's a choice bit of news.
It turns out that the shale-oil which Canada wants to sell to the U.S. is so "thick" that it can't be efficiently transported by pipeline. It's actually cheaper to transport it via rail.
So the issue of laying pipe is no longer of any importance. Mitt's bitch about preventing progress was just hot air.
We don't even need to build the Keystone.
My name is Curtis Faville, and I approve this message.
Time questions of course come into play. Who knew what when. Bam did nothing on Benghazi and it is now said he was hiding and no one could find him.
Rom thought we needed a pipeline.
Rom can scrub the gymnasium.
Benghazi.
Well, maybe one life is worth a thousand words. Or one death is more important than two pointless wars.
Really, just a talking point.
Time to move on.
Next topic?
Systems that don't work have to be replaced.
You should think about systems not individuals.
Every body write a PO-EM.
Sports are fun. Sports are good. It is good for humans to come together, and experience ritual, and cheer things on, and be communal and all riled up and whatnot.
But there is much danger here - much danger in terms of linking the FEELINGS such rituals engender, and the BELIEFS that are attached to them.
Things like sports - that are, by their nature, inherently contrived and without meaning - are great for this sort of thing.
I get suspicious when these things are attached to ideas, or ideologies - religious, or otherwise.
It's why, I think, I have long felt a bit uncomfortable with some aspects of big-tent evangelizing -
the person in the moment is being swayed by the power of group-think, the power of persuasion, not coming to faith via personal meditation, or thought, or reason, or faith - but through an emotional experience, that is by definition contrived.
And that emotional experience so happens to be tagged with a certain belief.
And so the belief is cited as the reason for the emotion, as opposed to being something that is attached to a ritual/experience that will inspire emotion regardless of what the attached belief may be.
It's all hypnotism, all the time. It's like most 'naturopathic' medicine...
I think ritual can be a good form of EXPRESSING or DEEPENING belief... But it is a shit way to come to belief, and one must be very careful about it.
I want my crowds to be cheering and chanting about meaningless things - 'go Niners!' vs. 'Go Broncos!' as opposed to be cheering and chanting about things that are meaningful.... 'Yay Jesus'! 'Yay Mohammed!' 'Yay Marx!' Yay Mao! Yay Hitler! Yay Palin! Yay Obama! Yay Reagan!'
It's why I love singing camp songs - get all riled up and emotional and into it with a song about a little guy in a spaceship, or a frog that goes split-splat.
It's why I like the recent trend at SXSW of people celebrity-worshipping a grumpy cat... Because those who are doing it recognize the silliness and meaninglessness of it.
But when folks worship gurus, or celebrities, they take it seriously...they honestly believe that these individuals are better / different / bigger than the rest of us, and deserve / have earned / require some sort of higher level of interaction.
Christ leveled the playing field forever and ever, made us realize how much hypnosis and emptiness is to be found in anyone claiming superiority, or in the worship of any Thing.
It's also linked to why I've come to believe that enlightenment, and anything esoteric, is pretty much B.S.
Individuals can be relatively healthy, happy, and (perhaps) wise compared to other individuals... But that's as far as it goes.
I can see, say, the Pope as being 'the guy who's well-trained in these matters, and is therefore an expert in a certain area.'
And I kinda grok the Tibetan thing where you designate a leader and that person's life is devoted to being good at a certain thing.
But they've no more reached enlightenment than someone who grew up with a mechanic for a dad and so is very good at fixing cars.
_________
Rant over.
Which is why Obama's mass rallies were no different than the Nuremberg rallies. I like your logic very much here. Whenever something becomes popular it pulls in the opportunists and the sociopaths. This is why I find campus Marxism so repellent. Or the whole social gospel thing. Or the mad entitlement spending. It's only when something is unpopular and costs you to support it but is still right that it's right. This is why I think Lincoln was so good. I am very nervous about mass causes and mass hysteria. I saw it years ago with the hippie movement. Many people realized that if they could just grow their hair long they could be popular. It cost almost nothing to look like a darned hippy after a while (at first this was dangerous esp in the south). Thinking should be antithetical to popular causes. It's hip now to be a Democrat. It's hip to support gay marriage and to be for entitlements and citizenship for illegals and abortion just like it used to be hip to smoke pot and take LSD and listen to rock. Sports are an interesting problem. The Marxists use the Olympics to push their systems and spread their symptoms. I distrust all stars. How did Kobe get away with rape? OJ with murder? Tiger with his mess? Now it's Obama with his jump shot and drone strikes. I liked Mitt because he was uncool. He struck me as a responsible adult. Ditto for Ryan. We differ Brett but have a core agreement.
The right has no right to keep up its 'Obama is just a celebrity' or 'Messiah' thing until they stop with the drooling Reagan worship.
It's disgusting.
Especially since they don't seem to remember what Reagan actually did.
Your problem still, Kirby, is that you only ever seem to expose yourself to the groupthink of the left.
The groupthink of the right is just as bad, if not worse.
So you can't decide 'the groupthink belongs to this group, therefore I will be with the other group.'
You have to think for yourself.
Being against the group because the group is the group means you are being ruled by groupthink just as much as if you were for the group because the group is the group.
Kobe got away with rape because there wasn't enough evidence to convict him of rape.
OJ got away with murder because he had really good lawyers, and was rich.
Tiger didn't get away with anything.
I mean, he's allowed to still play golf and all, but his public image and his pocketbook took a huge hit.
Post a Comment