As IF Times

Source: LeBron James Faces Backlash Unseen Since ‘The Decision’ – The New York Times

That’s the thing with free speech in a free society; any idiot can say anything they want without concern for any repercussions from the state.  At least that’s the theory. What you don’t expect in a free society is that something that someone says, causes actions to be taken  by another state.  The recent furor over the events surrounding LeBron James, Daryl Morey, the NBA and China and the Hong Kong protests should make some issues very clear to those people ( and there are a lot ) not paying attention to the state of society.

The first issue is the very basic identity of what it means to be an American.  Freedom is the prototypical American trait; fought for by the original founders and enshrined in an hallowed constitution;  supported numerous times by the sacrifice of the nation’s own sons for other nations; and the reason that every aspiring immigrant yearns to become a citizen. legally or otherwise.  The only people who seem to take freedom for granted are the people who live there and have never been without it.  You would think that any American would hold this aspect of their society as sacrosanct and worth defending passionately.  It wasn’t that long ago that anyone seen to be undermining core American principles was viewed with great scorn and suspicion.  Just ask Jane Fonda.

The second issue is the corruption that seems to be the flip side of the coin of obscene wealth.  This is hardly new; it’s been a characteristic of society since they first started making them.  Someone always climbs to the top of a society’s pile. Kings, Robber Barons, Gangsters and Dictators have always wielded huge amounts of influence in a society and generally, the public fared poorly if they happened to get in the way of the powerful elite.  A few generations ago, the perceived dangers of having too much concentration of power in industry led to the breakup of AT&T, then the most powerful and dominant communications company in the world.

The rise of the recent generation of Internet based companies was supposed to be different.  The Internet companies today dwarves the size of AT&T at its peak and their influence today is truly global, not just national. Even as they dominate all aspects of culture and commerce, they stridently craft their public image as being socially responsible, or as they call it in today’s parlance, woke, a nod to their hippie roots.

As it turns out, the most powerful multinational companies in the world, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter as well as retail behemoths such as Nike and Starbucks are every bit as sinister in their commercial activities as their antecedents in the world domination racket.  It seems that warm fuzzy guiding principles which are framed in corporate hallways are less important than shareholder value.  When you consider the size of the Chinese market, it’s not hard to see why that nation’s sensibilities are at the front of corporate decision making. This is Animal Farm at the corporate level. At least the old Kings and Robber Barons didn’t pretend to be doing good things for the people.

The third issue is as important as the first two and that is the realization that entertainers are not cultural and political savants. They sing, they dance, they juggle and they run around throwing and catching balls.  In other words, they are well paid to entertain us doing children’s activities that we wish we could do for a living instead of pushing either paper or brooms.  As a group they are endowed with skills that others will pay them to perform.  They’re lottery winners.  But you wouldn’t heed someone’s opinions on geopolitics just because they happened to win a lottery!

Yet this is the delusion that many of them operate under today.  They think that a narrow physical skill set entitles them to pontificate on things that are clearly out of their intellectual plane. More often than not, their utterances are not well thought out, have little basis in reality and usually fail the simple test of logic. As in this recent case, they can be terribly confused philosophically. They are out of their intellectual depth.  It’s easy to pile onto James for his recent comments, but he’s not alone.  There’s a long undistinguished list of ‘celebrities’ who continue to embarrass themselves by their uninformed utterances.  All Lebron James did was to prove that they should just stick to running and dribbling a ball…no thinking required.  There are lots of geniuses who want to play ball for a living.  James plays ball and wants to be a genius.  Neither is likely.  At least here, in the bosom of a free society, he’s able to express his vapidity.  Too bad for Hong Kong.

Source: Russian 6th-generation fighter will employ powerful lasers to burn enemy missile seeker heads – Washington Times

We expect these types of developments from the military sectors of any society because throughout history, nations have always searched for any and all military advantage against possible enemies.  No one disputes this, since there is an evidence trail supporting this notion going back probably well over 5000 years.  Rocks and stones were usurped by bows and arrows, then catapults, then supplanted by guns, then by machine guns, to bombs to lasers, etc etc.

In the present day, China has been quite publicly showcasing their military might as has Russia and of course, North Korea, which fires off ICBM’s regularly as proof of their ability.  Sabre rattling and huffing and puffing to be sure, but that is the entire point; to intimidate your enemies.  Meanwhile, if the American popular media are to believed, the U.S. army is consumed with the idea of the eligibility of gender confused individuals being members of their armed forces.  This could in fact be a brilliant military ploy on the part of the Americans to render their enemies hapless through laughter.

Oddly, many today seem to forget the fundamental truth about military conflicts:  that they’re in it to win since losing likely means death.  If military conflict is seen to be the only resolution, then there should be no holds barred to achieve victory.  When soldiers sign up to an army of any nation, one of the first things that happens is that they become anonymous.   They become numbers and not individuals.  They are homogenized by haircut, by dress and by behavior. The individual is sublimated to create strength for the group.  No one should care about the next person’s peccadillos, nor should they command any special consideration of them.  There really is no room for the new age sensitivities that are in such vogue these days at newly effete corporations.  There is no inclusiveness, no micro-aggressions, no gluten free diets and no choice of hairstyles.

The media obsession of rooting out ‘injustices’ in all aspects of normal life really don’t apply to a community of people who are expected to kill or possibly be killed in the course of their duty.  There are no standard cappuccino and restroom breaks.  In fact, in theater, there may be no gender specified washrooms; unless you wanted to post a sign over a hole.

We may tolerate the effete sensitivity required in many of today’s PC businesses, but why not leave the serious business of killing people to those that aren’t going to be offended because of micro aggressions or hurtful name calling?  If the enemies ever found out how soft the military underbelly is, they’d give up developing weapons and just make their soldiers watch old Don Rickles videos.