As IF Times

Source: Iranian General Accuses Israel of Causing Drought by Stealing Clouds | Breitbart

Well this is a new one.  Over the past while, especially in the world of politics, no claim is too preposterous or accusation too unhinged to level  against ideological foes.  Stealing someone’s weather is actually quite novel and creative.  It hasn’t quite acquired the traction and mass hysteria concerning weather that Al Gore has wrought with his inventive and mercantile mind, but you know what they say about imitation and flattery.  But for creativity and the “way out there” factor, it’s a good one.

By now, invocation of the “N” word, that word being Nazi, to characterize anyone who happens to disagree with a preferred point of view, is as cliché as lisps and facial hair on hipsters.  That “N’ word is applied like cheap olive oil onto most every social and political issue.  Anyone resorting to that smear to silence their opponent has already lost the argument.  Closely following on the list of toothless barbs are the epithets of “racist”, “misogynist”, “sexist”, “Islamophobe”, “homophobe” all the way down the list to “anti-dentite”.

In my view, these supposed slurs expose two enormous and dangerous issues threatening  civilization.  The first is the obvious absence of originality.  It’s like calling someone a fatso. Rather than accurately portraying opponents in any articulate way, the smear industry lazily resorts to recycling tried and true monikers in their campaigns as if they were the next in the series of Rocky movies; or Star Wars; or Fast and Furious.  We know that numbers are important to successful films, you just don’t expect it to be the number in the film’s title.  It all becomes just noise, analogous to the cacophony of crying babies in a hospital birthing ward.  As we know, the entertainment industry is seemingly bereft of any new creative ideas and thus depend solely on retreads of the same tired franchises to pay the bills.  This represents an intellectual laziness that is also reflected by social justice warriors in their tired clichés and characterizations, contributing to the blunting of  intellectual thought.

Which brings us to the second fatal issue.  People willingly consume this crap. Like most Hollywood drivel and that includes the “music” industry, the wholly unoriginal social justice smear warriors can only exist if there’s an audience for their banalities.  We can postulate that there may be an almost chemical like dependency of a large swath of the population to consume the same drivel over and over again.  We expect to see this kind of behavior in adolescents, as epitomized by an entire generation hooked on video games and Facebook. But people generally grow out of this groupthink behavior as they mature.   Incredibly, large segments of the populace seem to be zombie-like  consumers of…crap.

Unfortunately, the present state of public discourse shows that lack of critical thinking, normally hallmarks of adolescents, has been pushed farther into adulthood than in previous generations.   People with wholly illogical and preposterous notions are given audience that rational people would dismiss as utter nonsense.  We are all familiar with the notion of the popularity of anti-heroes, but the embrace by much of the public of the moon bat ideas offered by many recent political demagogues is analogous to chickens embracing Colonel Sanders.  Right now, there’s a lot of willing chickens.

Source: New litmus test? Dems demand elimination of ICE amid immigration furor | Fox News

Over the past 10 years, it’s clear to anyone observing the state of political discourse in America that the dignified to and fro from a period long ago has given way to pretty sharp elbowed acrimony by modern participants.   Historically, both of the major US political parties have been characterized as representing their own particular constituencies.  But while the GOP can still be painted as being stodgy conservatives, the Democratic Party has morphed like a melting candle into an unrecognizable blob of discordant principles.

For years, that party liked to be portrayed as the party of inclusion and of the working class average man.  Unfortunately, that characterization is as dated as handlebar mustaches on barkeepers, or for that matter, even the word barkeeper.  In fact, it’s unlikely that the Dems would like to be known as merely representing men; that would be offensive.  They want to include all the sexes: 16 at last count.  You know that animals and plants will be on their radar soon. The Democrats’ main tool of recruitment is the balkanization of the population into identifiable victimized sub groups,  but now they’ve modified their message  to also include those that aren’t even citizens.

As a matter of common sense, if you’re a political party trying to win the hearts and minds of Americans, it seems obvious that your particular vision of America should resonate with a big chunk of the population, representing ‘American values’.  Not only has there been a departure from this logical path, the route now taken is to champion causes and values that are absolutely antithetical to the very notion of America….and in a very unapologetic way.

The most recent surprise victor at an electoral runoff for state representative in New York, Alexandria Cortez, ran unabashedly and proudly as a socialist and has expressed that communism is the end game.  The most shocked person was the defeated incumbent who thought he owned all of the space on the left.  Imagine his surprise at being out lefted.  Clearly, Cortez was able to galvanize a support base with her message of anti establishment sentiments.  It was the usual songsheet of ostracism, racism, unjust laws etc etc that progressive politicos all sing from.

What’s most radical is Cortez’s insistence that ICE, the immigration police force,  be disbanded and borders should be freely open.  While this may seem a reasonable idea for a 28 year old idealist, you’d think that rational voters, whom are presumably older and can see the folly of such a platform, would be resistant.  Picking up a newspaper and reading about Venezuela, or Cuba should have been a reality check.  But no. So much for logic.

What’s more worrisome is the willingness of the Democrats to embrace such radicalism because it can lead to a seat in the House at the expense of the GOP.  It’s the old “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” idea. We see an increased acceptance of political fossils like Mad Maxine Waters calling for public intimidation of political opponents. We observe public calls for violence against non believers by actors and jugglers and assorted media talking heads.  People are not left in peace in public spaces, nor at their homes. Gangs of people threaten people with violence who don’t share their worldview.  Schools at all levels stifle speech and opinions which are not in accordance to progressive sensibilities.  Of course the irony of this fascist behavior even as the left accuse others of fascism is completely lost on them.  The resemblance of their behavior and dogmatically irrational beliefs to a certain militant religious group is uncanny, but again, that irony is missed.

The Democratic Party is going through a period of significant upheaval, a process which the Republican Party itself went through years ago and which is still in process.  But whereas the GOP at its core still champions the values of the founders of the nation, the Democrats seem to have abandoned any classic vision of America, choosing instead to allow the party to pursue a direction that is everything that Americans have historically fought against.  The gulf between the GOP and the Democrats is now enormous.  Choosing between their platforms is like choosing  between chocolate ice cream or earwax. This has come about from years of distorted narrative about the history of the nation and its people from a revisionist education system and buttressed by the media.   It has been exacerbated by the exaggeration of moral relativism and spurious social justice causes.

One of the most prescient authors of our time made many astute observations about the predictability of humans, human nature and especially of governments.  One of these quotes seems apt here: ” The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history”  

It’s unclear whether the election of Cortez will embolden Democratic candidates to be more nakedly militant against a traditional America.  You can bet that tack will be tested on the public, especially in the increasingly radical western states.  We’ll see if the public prefers ice cream or earwax.