They don’t seem to be able to do it on global warming, at Glacier National Park. (We visited there in the early nineties, then went on to Banff, Jasper and Yoho).
Category Archives: Media Criticism
White Nationalists Versus SJWs
They’re not fighting over ideological differences, they’re fighting because they have so much in common. Much like the Nazis and the Communists.
I’m always amused when the most race-obsessed people in the world accuse normal people of being racists.
[Sunday-morning update]
The thread seems to have drifted into discussion of Joe Arpaio. He was a sadistic scumbag, but the people of Maricopa County re-elected him multiple times. There are many Joe Arpaios and terrible county jails in this country. The only reason Arpaio was prosecuted by the Obama Department of (In)Justice was because he refused to knuckle under to their insistence that Arizona not enforce federal immigration laws.
[Wednesday-afternoon update]
Don’t call these people (or anyone, really) “anti-fascist”:
We may not take today’s anarcho-communists as seriously as we did back when they had the power, the weapons, and the infrastructure to murder tens of millions of people. But their goals are no different. As they put it, they don’t want a “U.S.A. at all.” The country they want to occupy the center of North America has no First Amendment, no freedom of expression, and people with opposing views (of any views, not just Nazis) are beaten, imprisoned or murdered for intellectual dissent. They may run the gamut from anarchism to revolutionary socialism in their views, but they have far more in common with fascists than they do with the people they seek to attract with the sweet-sounding “anti-fascist” label.
Davies notes that the propaganda value of “anti-fascism” in the West reached its apex when Francisco Franco won the Spanish Civil War, with help from the fascist governments of Italy and Germany. It then fell out of favor when Stalin aligned with Hitler in hopes of devouring half of eastern Europe. Before the Germans turned against them, the Soviets seized half of Poland, annexed the Baltic States, and invaded Finland in the 1939-1940 Winter War, casting its democratic government at the time as a fascist enemy (of course).
So always with these little would-be tyrants. When you use the label “antifa” or “anti-fascist,” you are helping and enabling a resurgence of terrorist liars in the exact same tradition, who are indistinguishable from neo-Nazis except in the specific motivations for and targets of their authoritarian impulses and irrational violence.
Yup.
[Bumped]
[Update a couple minutes later]
Yes, “antifa” is the moral equivalent of neo-Nazis.
Yes, as noted above, going back to Stalin.
Dream Chaser
… had its first captive carry flight in years today. I disagree that the big test is whether it can launch on an Atlas V (though there may be aero issues). Its real big test, assuming successful drop tests, will be whether it can survive entry.
Trump’s Support
Clive Crook has it right:
The first theory, if it were true, would be an argument against democracy. If tens of millions of Americans are racist idiots, how do you defend the popular franchise? That isn’t a sliver of reprehensible people who’ll be safely overwhelmed when elections come around. And there’s plainly nothing, according to the first theory, you can say to change their minds. Why even go through the motions of talking and listening to those people?
This sense that democratic politics is futile if not downright dangerous now infuses the worldview of the country’s cultural and intellectual establishment. Trump is routinely accused of being authoritarian and anti-democratic, despite the fact that he won the election and, so far, has been checked at every point and has achieved almost nothing in policy terms. (He might wish he were an authoritarian, but he sure hasn’t been allowed to function as one.) Many of his critics, on the other hand, are anti-democratic in a deeper sense: They appear to believe that a little less than half the country doesn’t deserve the vote.
The second theory — the correct theory — is a terrible indictment of the Democratic Party and much of the media. Why aren’t the intelligible and legitimate opinions of that large minority given a hearing? Why must their views be bundled reflexively into packages labelled “bigotry” and “stupidity”? Why can’t this large minority of the American people be accorded something other than pity or scorn?
Those who scorn Trump’s supporters might argue that none of their opinions are in fact intelligible or legitimate. After all, don’t their views on immigration boil down to racism and white supremacy? What about their idea that the Charlottesville protesters and counter-protesters were morally the same? Or their morbid fear of change? Or the hypocrisy of their opposition to “big government,” when everybody knows that Trump-voting states such as West Virginia are the biggest net recipients of federal money? If you read the New York Times, you know they have an endless supply of stupid, evil opinions.
In fact, this automatic attribution of stupidity and bad faith is just another kind of bigotry.
Yes, and it’s the kind that gave us Trump, and will continue to do so, because they can’t help it. As Glenn notes, a key element of being a leftist is the psychic income of feeling morally superior to better, happier people than you. I just wish that we could have gotten a Trump that is just as harsh on the media and the left, but did so in a less ignorant and buffoonish manner. I could certainly do it.
The Permian Basin
An analyst says that it’s a virtually infinite source of oil.
There will be no peak oil, just peak oil demand. https://t.co/wmEDGeboJE
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) August 25, 2017
And it’s bad news for bad people around the world.
[Update a few minutes later]
Mexico’s largest shale field is now open for business. In theory, this should help the economy down there as well, and perhaps relieve the pressure to emigrate. But the place is still pretty corrupt.
The Latest Internet Meme
My space take:
Distracted NASA pic.twitter.com/lI6vp6ctIw
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) August 25, 2017
New York University
This account of life there reads like something from the Soviet Union:
This is daft, certainly. Even funny, in a macabre way. But it also raises a serious point: the university experience in America is now not one that will adequately prepare students for real life. In real-life democracy, people disagree — and normally they don’t die or suffer emotional injury because of it. In normal life, there’s no reason not to like someone with whom you disagree politically. On campus, opinions are often ontology: you are what you think. But this is dangerous logic: if I hate what you think, I must hate what you are.
Who is going to want to hire these people?
[Update a few minutes later]
“American higher ed is rapidly becoming a worldwide joke. What if the high-dollar foreign students stop coming?”
[Update a couple minutes later]
This seems related: Video shows that Millennials support socialism even if it results in starvation.
Afghanistan
Trump has no strategy there.
But to be fair, he has no strategy in general. He’s more of a tactics kind of guy, which sometimes work, and often don’t.
[Update a few minutes later]
“We Will Fight In Afghanistan Until Victorious, Or I Change My Mind, Get Distracted, Look Bad, Or Get Bored.”
The “Pipeline” From Libertarianism To The “Alt-Right”
Nick Gillespie says it doesn’t exist.
[Afternoon update]
The real reason that libertarians become “fascists.”
Scientific “Consensus”
Why we should expect scientists to disagree. In general, science is much more complex than many people are comfortable with.