As IF Times

Source: 40+ dead in Iran at Gen. Soleimanis funeral after stampede

This seems like a preposterous headline until you dig a little deeper and find out that a large number of the ‘mourners’ who turned out to grieve the death of the recently dispatched Iranian military leader Soleimani were convinced to attend…at the point of a gun.  We assume that the other contingent of people who were not so persuasively convinced to attend did so because of the free food, also offered by those in charge.   Still, it’s hard to believe that it’s worth taking a day off work to go to a funeral and risk getting stampeded to death, but perhaps they really do love their despots.  Every culture is different. Over here, people line up to buy telephones.

A similar such scenario plays out regularly in Western nations, in particular within the small cabal of those in the fantasy entertainment business in the U.S.  A few outspoken heroes speak out and the rest of the community are forced to show obeisance to the cause for the same reasons as do the faithful in Iran; either for the food or at the point of a gun aka, employment.  Most of the people in the entertainment business are not exactly Rhodes scholars, or else, well they wouldn’t be actors. Heck, many of them are barely Dick and Jane scholars. They have achieved success at reading lines created by others, or by pretending to be personalities that they are not.

Yet, this doesn’t stop them from pontificating on all sorts of real life issues for which they have no educational or intellectual grounding, including science, geopolitics and most obviously, common sense. Oddly, while the people may be fake, the sanctimony is real. For the most part, the fanbase for their opinions….are themselves.  This was most evident at the recent Golden Globe awards, another of those interminable masturbatory fetes that entertainers hold among themselves, seemingly every other week.  And the speeches are predictably similar.  There is usually some straw villain that they nod their heads lemming-like in agreement for action against.  Apparently things such as hate, poverty, murder and oppression are issues that some people are for, but they alone are against.  There is often some cause of injustice that they ‘bravely’ address for whom the worst perpetrators are themselves or their own heroes.

Well finally, someone had the cojones to drop a figurative bomb in their midst and you could tell that those that had been forced to walk the plank of political correctness had trouble hiding their glee.  Ricky Gervais did what no one had the guts to do for years and that is, call out the vapidity in their community. You could audibly hear the outraged gasps among the self important as they sat stunned by someone having the temerity to push back against their collective circle jerk.

It’s hopefully only a matter of time until the aged Mullahs running Iran get turfed from their despotic influence in that nation.  When that happens, people will have the freedom to attend funerals of political figures…or not. I wonder if Ricky Gervais will be responsible for the freedom of the serfs of Hollywood.

Source: ProPublica audio tape of crying immigrant children plays during Kirstjen Nielsen briefing – Washington Times

To those paying attention, the tactics used by ‘progressives’ to sway people’s opinions in their favor are virtually the same from issue to issue.  Rather than engage in a logical discussion on cause and effect, a discussion they would surely lose, they instead try to influence by emotion.  Of course much of Hollywood’s success exploits this weakness in people; productions are most successful when some emotional nerve is struck and people are moved by a sappy scenario, which in real life is likely utterly preposterous.  When Hollywood does it well, we get It’s A Wonderful Life.  What they mostly put out however, are laughers like Pretty Woman.

The power of emotional imagery to sell a position is not lost on the political set. Much of what finds its way into public policy results from some event with emotional circumstances.  Recently, images of crying students in Florida after a school shooting predictably re-ignited the gun control crowd.  A few years back, the image of dead boy on a beach spurred international interest in Syria.  Let’s not forget the classic picture of a polar bear on a small piece of ice floe to sell global warming.  In reality, the bear was just going to the bathroom, but it served its purpose among the Al Gore set.

Even the image of the planes hitting the twin towers in New York were important in the now accepted policy of TSA frisking and resultant long lineups at airports today.  People are willing to accept and submit to this non sensical protocol long after the rationale behind it has disappeared.  Since most people are law abiding, they comply.  Contrast this to the current hand wringing drama over adults with children apprehended at the US border while illegally attempting to enter the country.  Naturally, the kids are distressed at the situation that their parents put them in, but the images are depicted as showing the cruelty of the border agents and by extension, Trump.  We are pretty sure that crying kids would not exempt their parents from being frisked before boarding a plane at any airport.  I’m also reasonably certain that kids would likely be distressed if their parents were apprehended while stealing from a Wal Mart, also a crime.

This crying kids image is so powerful that even rational thinking people are budging at the bleating by partisan parties to ‘relax the restrictions’.  It’s not a big stretch to soon have people show up at banks with crying kids to demand money for housing and food and healthcare.

Come to think of it; that’s exactly what’s going on.