Subtlety and Threat

Time and again I see where Wretchard and I are looking at the same larger panoramic. He does a marvelous job of piecing together the fabric -- the pixels if you will -- of that larger picture. In that sense, I am merely a customer of his.

But beyond that, he and I appear to be equally alarmed (though I could be wrong) by the same developments. The big difference in our responses, however, is that he somehow manages to write of what he sees with subtlety, and I don't think I've ever been accused of that.

Last night I responded to Wretchard's clever and typically subtle White Lies and Promises (which begins: "Who said the Minority Report was science fiction?") with a wry comment that didn't quite convey all of my thoughts (and was grammatically faulty to boot). I will try to fix that error here.

When what appears to be a trap is being built around one, one may feel at leisure to remark at the contraption with subtlety and seeming disinterest. Any threat it might impose may seem too far off.

The danger of course is that at some point one's subtlety may have become a comfortable old habit. For once the walls of that trap you so calmly watched being built have closed in, do you really hope others will say that you must have felt your bones were crunched oh so subtly?

A Progressive Rant

I started to write a screed in July in response to a Belmont Club post, Definitions, entitled Those Hellbent On Leading Us Into A New Dark Ages. But I cooled off after I answered a misunderstanding posted by BC commenter 3Case.

In June I wrote "Progressives" Are Demonstrably Dangerous to Human Life, but I still wasn't satisfied. This was to be followed by a part II that had been provoked by Mark Alger here. Instead, it languished incomplete for a couple months. I was feeling downright low about how hard a nut this was going to be to crack.

Many years ago I wrote this of Progressives. My wry humor sprung from the fact that it didn't take long for the Progressive reform movement that grew out of the late 19th Century American Populist movement to degrade into a comfy home for deceptive power seekers who succeeded in breeching our government's constitutional limits incrementally for "only the best of reasons."

In early August, Our Curmudgeon, in the pursuit of another topic, wrote of the treachery of "Progressives" as I've always wished him to do, but it still was not enough. For, on that same day, I had heard parts of a speech by Hilliary Clinton that got me started on another screed that I never finished: The "Progressive" Hatred for People.

And now this last week, Mark Alger needled me with the thought that we who are representative of true progress ought steal the progressive label from the phonies.

ARRRGGGGHHHHHHHH! 8/17/07

Continued on 9/05/07

The people who have been granted (by the PC crowd) the leave to wear the label Progressive are anything but. In addition to having long ago become the home for those whose lust for power may well set a new standard for perversion, they are well on their way to making a pejorative of the word progress just as they have made an unbearable burden for anyone who is truly liberal. Those who would wish we will not progress could not be happier.

More and more I run across both writers on the Internet and casual conversants who see that "Progressive" must be put in scorn quotes whenever we refer to those who claim that label.

This is unacceptable. This is Orwellian Newspeak being thrust upon us because we people who must speak with each other in order to counter this road to serfdom and a new dark age do not control the mainstream news media's effluent. We so badly need a new and widely influential means of communicating our viewpoint so that we can counter the anti-language corps. Where is our John Galt who can pirate, even for a little while, all media outlets away from those who relentlessly destroy our language?

A few days ago I had to contend with the confusion over what is a "Progressive" at The Belmont Club. After my initial comment to Wretchard, I had a short interchange with two of his active readers, Charles and LarryD, over the words Postmodern and Progressive. I think I stumbled on the best way verbally to deal with our tormentors: call them Postmodern Progressives.

In the end I think we were all dancing around the same idea at core. Today's Progressives are not advancers of civilization even if there were once some who could rightly claim to have been. Just as "Liberals" view as progressive the liberal growth of government -- and thereby the growth of restrictions on the liberty of individuals (anti-liberalism) -- so too when something will lead to mankind's diminishment, that is what "Progressives" view as progress (anti-progress).

I think we all understand that "Progressives" are NOT. But what are we who really love to see progress going to do about it?

I am convinced that most "Progressives" fall under the category of the misled. The most troublesome of them are the true-believers who allow themselves to become useful idiots. But the task that we who are optimists must find is how to unmask the mostly quiescent troublemakers who lend their support to the useful idiots, thereby accomplishing what they themselves could never achieve: mankind's self-destruction.

I know from what I've read throughout the web on the Right that most Right thinkers see that the label of Progressive has been stolen every bit as much as classical liberals have had Liberal stolen from them.

We must fight to take back the label Progressive so that those that follow us will be able to progress. So that those that follow do not find themselves under a yoke that so many Americans have fought to keep from being institutionalized on these shores. This is a patriotic battle. This is a battle that the bulk of humanity will always have with the effete elite. Understanding it does not require rocket science. It does not require knowing what Postmodernism is, only that it is something that wants you to return to times of enslavement over men's minds. It wishes for nothing less than a new Dark Age.

My friend Og often suggests that at some point the need to argue must end; that it is time for the cricket bats. He may be close to right.

On Balance, Jay Leno Owes Us One

I have to admit I've had trepidations about Fred Thompson announcing on Jay Leno tonight.

The primary reason is that last actor to do so was Arnold Schwarzenkaiser, the radically green, anti-conservative governor of California.

Since most conservatives know how to pray, I think this might be a good time to pray that it is the progressive statists who will be sold out this time.

She Thinks Her Shit Doesn't Stink

I grew up where the vernacular expression for someone who believes themselves more important than anyone else was "He thinks his shit doesn't stink." It was invariably heard about a man whose attitude fit the expression.

I don't know if there were women then who rated such an observation, but given experience which shows that human foibles cross the sex line, I suspect there must have been a few. Only the niceties of the times prevented most men from using it to describe her haughtiness. "Niceties." Right. Reality was that any man who dared use such language risked running up against other men who'd ride to the damsel's rescue whether or not she deserved such gallantry. And the woman who used it on another woman or man would have caused a scene since women were believed to be above such gutter-level language no matter how accurate. Afterall, such a line appears only to be a derogatory statement of opinion about someone else's attitude. And are you not warned against judging others lest ye too be judged?

Well, to cap it all, the intent of my raising this issue is that civilized behavior often prevents noting that civilization's shit doesn't stink. Somehow we just don't bury what we know to be our toxic waste-products as more primitive cultures have done without giving their crap a second thought. No. We pick it up and carry it around and force our subsequent generations to learn to live with it and even venerate it.

Let's be clear so that our elected officials cannot hide their behavior no matter what banner they serve under. In our time, Leftism is not only practiced by the official Left, but also by members of our Right in high office.

Among the worst shit that Leftism still refuses to admit stinks is Marxism and its fundamental determination to secure "social justice." In their relentless grasping for power, today's "progressives" will harass anything and everything that is or may be successful in its insane attempt to secure Nirvana for everyone equally. But what they ultimately achieve is an awful outcome for everyone as they stifle the creativity (the least negative of its known behaviors I can think of) that is buried within the few who would be our culture's future champions.

The legacy of Marxism is a trail of human tragedy unmatched in the annals of history. Yet our Leftists still think that shit doesn't stink.

And we now have a major candidate for one party who has always been focused on aims that are clearly seen to be Marxist. And that's even before we bother to note her unmistakable bearing which provoked this commentary.

Well, now that the period of nicety is over, let me be the first to put this in print: Hillary thinks her shit doesn't stink. Do you really want that for President?

Some Problems On Our Right

I have since as far back as I can remember been associated with the Right by those who know me. That was primarily because of my archly conservative nature compared within my family and circle of friends. Still, because of familial influences, I considered myself a liberal politically up to 1972. I knew of one vocal conservative in high school, and that was from a distance. My exposure to Right thinking was pretty much limited to warnings from my Dad about using my common sense. What more need be said for the well-rounded (not!) early 60s secondary education on Long Island?

It was in my freshman year at Michigan when the first Teach-Ins were staged that my conservative nature began to kick back in to affect my political viewpoint. But even after witnessing those early Viet Nam war protesters and how quickly they turned viciously anti-liberal on anyone who dared question them earnestly, I was slow to associate their behavior with what liberal politics was becoming.

That was mostly because I was somewhat oblivious to the blow-hards. The presence of the Right on any campus stage was almost non-existent except for the engineering students in general who would turn up for student votes in large numbers and set-back the hopes of the radicals, who were mostly from the school of Literature, Science and the Arts. That is when they weren't "professional students" like Tom Haydn (Did he ever earn a degree?) and others in his chapter of SDS. The campus Leftists would mostly rejoin after every student defeat of whatever anti-war, anti-American resolution they tried to foist with the threat ( I can still hear her raspy whine today) "oh, we will educate you." (It is now too apparently clear what it was they were planning to take over -- everything linked to education. Too bad I was unaware back then of C.S.Lewis' lecture Men Without Chests.)

I started to write simply what is to immediately follow, and decided to fill in the above background first. Go figure how my own mind works. It surprises me constantly. I guess this is the price I ask of my readers if I'm going to write more material.

Some problems I identify on the Right.

• Too calm for our own good. Almost always arguing with a calm facade when it takes thoughts like that expressed by Michael Savage (but too polite or fearful to admit it) to drive many people to act against even the worst affronts by the Left. The Right needs less "country-club rules of behavior" Republicans and more street fighters to be installed in GOP leadership if the GOP is to mean anything. God grant us far less Bushes and at least one more Reagan.

• The Right's kowtowing to the mythical political center voter. Provide leadership and the Right will shift the center to the right rather than letting radical Leftists dictate the march. The Political Center is hardly middle politically since even yesterday. It is left of last week, and widely left of last year. The term Progressive was used for self-description by left-leaning Republicans even before the Dems abandoned their Liberal label (because by their owning it they had made it a dirty word) to try and gain some ground under Progressive (before they brought a pejorative sense to that word too). The Right needs to strip much if not all of the authority it has allowed its Progressives because they keep forcing the party to move Left and thus allowing the middle to shift left. WTF are you saying Pascal? I am saying that our society is being dragged left because the Dems and the GOP Progressives are constantly placating the Left fringe. And then they have the balls to call progressive their stupid responses to anecdotal hardships both real and staged, and their cowardly giving into interest group tantrums and threats of even wilder antisocial behavior. Or is it really stupid and cowardly? I think that perception most heavily depends on which side of the tax bill and liberty infringements you are sitting on. It is hardly news that both government lovers and corporate financiers gain when the central government grows. But the depth of the corruption brings on more corruption because govt's vast inefficiencies guarantee that the bulk of the largess and power will go to the providers of whatever service yesterday's radicals had been given the microphone to ask for. The perpetual charade of responding to radical demands is insane only to the taxpayers, not to the taxers. We are funding our own long term destruction for the short term feather-bedding of those whom we allow to run our institutions.

• Who today on the Right, in a notable leadership position, is arguing consistently at all the last highlighted segment of my last point? It is maybe the biggest problem of the Right that I do not know of a single one.
  

Regarding that last point. C'mon you allegedly brilliant writers on the Right out there: show me how wrong I am.

What Makes This Video Extraordinary?

I was directed to this video posted at Observanda by 2164th who was quite astounded and pleased. He was hardly alone.

An Englishman explains Islam:

However, aside from the danger that has been directed at people such as this brave man by Jihadis, there is also the intolerance of those in positions of authority and censorship watchdogs of political correctness.

Here's my observation:

The problems posed to us by militant Islamists I don't think are really in contention.

I think the real problem was only obliquely touched by the man in this video:

"we live in a liberal democracy and therefore have certain double-standards to maintain... which seeks to portray legitimate comment as some kind of hate crime."

How far would any of this nonsense have gotten if it weren't for these fifth columnists, whose hamstringing of frank assessment of the threats and those who are most threatening, aids and abets the enemies of the West? The Left and other Statists would have us "submit" one way or the other.

This video is only extraordinary because our "leaders" kowtow to everyone with a "chip on their shoulder the size of a mosque," and to hell with the rest of us. If our leaders spoke like leaders, this man wouldn't feel the need to show them how.

The video that needs publishing is one that would drive the PC crowd from office.

Wouldn't you pay to see that one?

I would.

 

Dilemmas Facing Advanced Civilization -Pt2

Part one of this series can be found at Open List: Dilemmas of Advanced Civilization

1. Wanton wastefulness solely to temporarily slake the appetite of a bored audience for exciting entertainment.
   
2. A sense of defeat -- "oh, what's the use?" -- that may sideline a cultural defender. This effect may be temporary but can be permanent.
   
3. Exhaustion of the virtuous. An otherwise strong defender recognizes a clear adversary; adversary's offense could be anything from an incremental point of contention all the way to a significant assault on an essential institution, but defender still retreats from even a verbal battle for reasons unstated; letting important opportunities slide becomes easier with each passing incident.

For an "entertaining" example of wanton wastefulness, click on this episode of Top Gear. Top Gear is the BBC's most watched program (at over 50% share). BBC programing is paid for with the BBC tax on all UK TV sets. Watch for the intermittent expression on the face of the host (one of the three) affectionately known as the Hamster.

Perhaps I'm overly optimistic, but I think his mugging could indicate that while shame may not be thoroughly dead in the UK, its agonizing death throes are beyond the denial stage.

For an example of ailment number 2, I offer my own intermittent posting of entries here.

For an example of ailment number 3, I offer this episode from Eternity Road.

**UPDATE Aug 7**
Coincidentally, Dennis Prager wrote this for Townhall.com today: Excitement Deprives Children of Happiness, that explores the circumstances that lead to consequences such as ailment number 1. He admits it is not just children, but the adults they grow up to be.

Litmus Test

Does your favorite champion unflinchingly defend innocent human life?

Fear and Hatred for Real Leaders

Pursuing themes I raised earlier this month, (causes of civilizational decline, and more specifically, who and what blocks reforms) I spoke with Og the Neanderpundit about how much we providers and guardians of real progress need a true leader. Og, widely known for his love of the simpler life (not to be confused with Luddites), hates red tape more than the average guy, and complicated arguments even more so.

I spoke with Og on this because he is excellent at cutting to the essentials of an issue. For instance, he reduces John Galt's 57 page speech down to the summary: "Liberalism is stupid." When I want to make important points concisely, I find my thoughts condense easier while speaking with him.

Yesterday Og rendered one part of our discussion down to the "simple" question: Why can’t we find a hero? His illumination of the situation facing potential leaders culminates with the rhetorical question: "Sure, why isn’t there a HUGE line of people anxious to serve?" Please read it all and then come back.

The most virulent attacks on emerging heroes will reach you through from our Establishment's media, more widely known as Mainstream media (MSM).

Well, who pays the salaries of MSM? It's customers do. One is forced to the conclusion that a majority of MSM's customers are either comfortable with or favoring such attacks.

Well, who are MSM's customers? No, it is not readers and viewers. Reading and viewing fees provide a small part of all MSM costs, including its salaries and profits. It is advertising that provides the vast bulk of MSM's revenues.

Readers and viewers are merely MSM's audience. And we know from polls that the majority of MSM's audience is beyond tired and is now outright annoyed with most of the inane reporting, reporting spin, and commentary emanating from MSM.

MSM's customers -- the people who pay for the programming and editorial decisions with their advertising fees -- are the heads of our institutions. The bigger the corporation or public servant's office or public or private institution, the more money they will pay to MSM to get out their messages. And the more they spend, the more MSM is inclined to be influenced by its customer.

This situation is in place all before we even consider the political inclinations of the people employed at MSM, which tends to be collectivist in one way or another. And if you think that even the largest corporations do not favor collectivism, you are not paying attention.

The point I am aiming towards is how much those steeped in management perspective - its power and perquisites -- have every reason to be fearful, loathsome and outright hostile to leaders whose actions and abilities sway public opinion simply through the strength of their persona or depth of character. They fear loss of what they now have, and they will play with your fears of losing whatever goods you now have should you dare vote to endanger them.

Leaders of that sort might upset their applecart. They want a handle on every potential leader so much that it has become -- at least in their narrow minds -- a need. They need to be able to bring every leader to heel -- or else -- when the need arises. They are paying big fees to MSM to do so. They will try with every trick at their disposal.

Dear reader, I am hoping you have learned to greet every new revelation about some rising leader with quite a bit of skepticism. At some point in the future, maybe the near future, you will be asked to make a decisions favoring leaders who have compromising situations hounding them. Among them will be real leaders.

Know this to be a fact. Those currently in positions of greatest consequence and power will fear the most heroic. MSM's customers will wish them to be feared and detested by the majority of us for all the wrong reasons. MSM will find some and any cause to rain upon your heroes' heads; all kinds of visually compelling nastiness. MSM is well on its way to owning and controlling YouTube. There are countless reasons to believe how every other delivery system on the web could come under moneyed control too in one way or another.

It's going to be up to you more than ever to improve your analytical capabilities and communication skills in order to keep the web the potent new forum it is quickly becoming. Forces bigger than us are working against your interests -- against what's good for you in the long haul -- simply to protect their short-term goals and to lengthen their retention of power.

The most powerful in our world -- a kind of new aristocracy we have little control over -- wants to control every potential real leader. They feel they have paid for that right. They will control the leader or they'll aim to destroy him.

There is a risk to us all from every popular new leader. Hopefully the checks and balances will still work in that regard. The best leader will do more than merely give lip service to it. So that is one important test we can make. But there is a bigger risk.

If will don't permit them to grow, if we aren't aware enough or courageous enough to back those we like (for the most part) in the role of reforming new leader, we will lose in the long run. The reforms most needed involve ending the growth of government and large institutions. As things stand, those who think they know better have gotten to where they think they can overwhelm opposition to their fondest wish: to control every aspect of our lives. To defeat it will require a leader much like Ronald Reagan in his appeal, but for whom the well-established entrenched are willing and are planning to destroy. The entrenched mentality that is managing 21st Century America is in position and ready to convince you and your fellow citizens to fear and hate the next real leader.

Be prepared.

Watermelons

I just had a conversation with a friend who is a considerably more avid reader than I.

Politically speaking, he seemed only now to have learned what is meant by "watermelon."

I was quite surprised. Once again, I suspect MSM at core of this.

Since Establishment media suppresses the use of the apt metaphorical phrase "watermelon" in any of its reporting, it may very well be more obscure a term than it deserves to be.

Green on the outside, red on the inside, "watermelon" has been around from even before the fall of the Soviet Union heralded "the end of Communism as a force on the world stage." For those of us who've been fighting the Left for so many years, when we were confronted by the actions and programs of extreme environmentalism, the "Greens," we were not surprised when how "coincidentally" the greenies wound up with the same goals as Marxism: collective control of human activity ostensibly for the betterment of the common good. For yours truly, demonstrating the threat revealed by the vast death toll under Marxist regimes and the hatred for human life displayed by extreme environmentalists has long been my mission.

When the tiger who killed you before changes his stripes, you can be pretty sure he still aims to kill you.

Yes, the old Leftist's metamorphosis was clever enough; but their cover is quickly revealed by the metaphor "watermelon."

I'm adding a poll to my site asking simply: "Politically speaking, do you know what a watermelon is, yes or no?"

The poll software doesn't allow comments directly. However, as always, you may add your comments to this thread.

It also seems that Blogger doesn't provide a hyperlink address to so that anyone could send traffic to it directly.

Kindly consider adding the question to your own site and tie it to http://pascalfervor.blogspot.com/
with a note that states the poll is at the top of the left side bar.

Those Who Are Beyond Embarrassment

With Roasted Chickens Roosting, Wretchard calls our attention to the continuing self-serving trail of destructiveness that Ward Churchill wallows in. Be careful not to misread the last word in that title as roasting. For it is one thing for us to see dead people who don't know they're dead, and entirely another to continue to let their specter ruin us.

For you see, this is one heluva "cooked goose." A dead chicken come home not just to roost but to tear up the place as poltergeists are said to do to the domains from which they were unwillingly snatched.

Not satisfied with contributing to the intellectual bankruptcy of an academy, Churchill and his fellow travelers will now attempt to fiscally bankrupt it too.

I somehow doubt it will come to that though. Nihilists, having long been nurtured and protected by the Ivory Towers, are expert at avoiding annihilating their own home.

One more thing. Churchill is not at all embarrassed by his misconduct. He derives comfort from the evidence that CU let him slide until his outspokenness brought their hiring malfeasances to the attention of the outside world.

I have often said that the one thing the deepest cynics cannot abide is the possibility that someone somewhere is not corrupted. The corrupt are necessary for cynicism's existence, and so the corrupt are welcomed. But the very idea that innocence could exist becomes terrifying, because the existence of a single innocent becomes a devout cynic's self-condemnation to hell.

God, if there were only some way to sentence Churchill and ilk to life in perpetual embarrassment, it would provide a veritable stake through the heart of such destructiveness.

Oh dear fellow Americans: is it not time to bring back public stocks precisely to weal some small measure of appropriate punishment to such desperately needy reprobates?

Our Reform Dilemma

This Democratic Congress is the realization of the threat by the RINOs (combined with one other thing): "you better vote for the GOP run by us or we are going to give you them! Har, har, har!"

You know what that one other thing is? The majority of conservatives are not ready to put in the time to seize control of the GOP from those who accept -- however reluctantly -- the status quo.

And I'm as guilty as the rest of you. I am wishing for a leader so I can stop feeling guilty for not trying hard enough. (In Los Angeles, I've tried and failed: a story for another time). I can't say I haven't the faintest idea how to be a leader myself. However, in politics, I only know what has happened to so many who've expended their own efforts only to be attacked or whittled down by the system.

One thing is clear. Those currently in power do not trust anyone who does not seem to have well-known failings. They want a handle already in place so they don't need to invent one.

Before the next leader appears on the scene, remember how much managers hate leaders until they need one.


(This commentary was inspired while I was commenting on Elasticity of Mind's posted graph showing, among other things, the Dem Congress's approval rating at 14%.)

Open List: Dilemmas of Advanced Civilization

Just trying to identify major and minor factors that challenge today's advanced civilization. The developed world's pathologies affect the whole world. Here's a start with no leading item identified.

• Pessimism.
  
• Cynicism.
• Protection of wealth.
  
• Enervation of motivation.
  
• Lack of gratitude.
  
• Lack of humility.
• Seeking power for the sake of power, or "King of the Hill."
• Misanthropic notions.
• Reemergence of ancient irrationalities.
• Deliberate monkey-wrenching.
• Abandoning reasoning, preferring feeling. (Og)
• Choosing to go along with whatever is made popular. (Og)
• The notorious get press; the notable don't unless they screw up. (mts)
  

Help me add to this. Take as negative viewpoint as you wish. It is my position that for every trouble there is also some optimistic view that can be taken.

Update: Please see Dilemmas Facing Advanced Civilization -Pt2 for part 2 in this series

The Secret of Utopias

Practical jokers find delight in the confusion, discomfort, and predicaments they can inflict on their targets.

Misanthropes -- haters of humanity -- are easily enraged when humans find happiness in their "miserable" lives.

Utopia is commonly understood to be a perfect place where nothing bad happens. Those who are selling their vision of the perfect the world are oft described as Utopians.

Question:

What provision do Utopians make for practical jokers and misanthropes?

Answer:

What? Do you really expect them to reveal to you ahead of time that it is they who plan to run things?

Practical jokers are the salesmen, misanthropes run the camps.

Missed the Misanthropes Hiding Behind Malthusianism

Dennis Prager wrote a column today, Why Are Atheist Books Best Sellers?.

Among the reasons he stated, he did not mention the haters of humanity.

The radical environmental movement has provided the misanthropes the perfect place to disguise their hatred. They do it under the cover of the "moral" authority asserted by Neo-Malthusianic movements like that foisted by the Global Warming crisis mongers.

I've made the case for this connection many times. Notably here and here. I've tried to get Mr. Prager to acknowledge the threat before. But for some unfathomable reason he chooses to miss it, not discuss it in depth. He even outright evaded it as can be heard here. Notice in that clip how he shunted all of the death worship onto the shoulders of radical Islam and let the radical Left slip by unscathed.

At the core of the Judeo-Christian branch of theology is the conviction that innocent people (like children in the womb) must not be sacrificed to whatever human fear or true-believer movement demands it.

It should thus come as no surprise that because of this protective covenant with their God that observant Christians and Jews -- and their rights to be safe with their thinking -- are being targeted.

It is not hard to see that we are in the middle stages of gradually having Christianity deemed intolerable by authorities with the mind-altering intolerance that these anti-theists (with whom Mr. Prager slammed all atheists with the title of his column) are advancing. The final stage, for which they are clearly aiming, is the status of the church depicted in the Orwellian dystopia of the novel 1984: for the church to be a vague memory.

Bottom line: It should be no surprise that Malthusian misanthropes and radical environmentalists, including some of the GW true-believers, would be prevalent at the same time as the popularity of these books. Mr. Prager failed to include them.

Essential Tangential Capture

When in conversation -- talking at length invariably touches on many subjects and... -- I frequently catch hold of a phrase of my partner's -- I delight in catching these things because it so frequently leads to discovering new depths. For instance... -- and I either can hardly wait to share my thought, or my mind is racing well past what my partner is saying.

Needless to say, this has been off-putting if not damaging to my development of friends quickly. First impressions are hard to break. And I have to admit that even I find that a fast-talking, both seemingly distant and yet interruptive conversant is not one of my favorite types with whom to spend much time.

Then add varied degrees of defensiveness or a desire to stop the other in mid-speech when they've misunderstood me, and what started out as a simple conversation, can quickly development into a heated discussion or a consequential dispute.

All this even before anything of substance has been stated.

Such can be the troubles of the owner of a semi-rapid mind like mine.


However, anyone who has dealt with me professionally and wants to gain from the skills pent up in this semi-rapid mind, knows to just let me go and occasionally check that I haven't gone too far afield. In my day job I rarely run across a problem that didn't look like another one I've already solved, so this is seldom a problem there.

There my problems can stem from others not knowing what I'm doing. When I move fast it makes some nervous even if it regains time others have lost; though I've never gone wrong [knock wood], I am reluctant to say so lest spoilsport "Murphy" be listening. I can do things that I often can't easily explain to others. Why? See above! The best thing would be for them to go away until I'm done. Sometimes they can't. So it has sometimes come down to this: they either trust me or I tell 'em to find someone else.

Usually they trust me. [knock wood]. But why should they?

Oh, I could write it out all right. But in the heat of the battle, you don't write out your tactics as you're figuring out what the next one must be even as you're deploying the last tactic. You're moving and reacting to rapid changes. And remember, I only have a semi-rapid mind. Hence, you can see why I attribute much of my success to luck.

Heh, heh. Well, if you know the nature of luck, then you know how much my success really isn't all luck.

Anyway, I have just passed along to you what its like to live with my limitations. They can and have made things difficult.

However. It is the very nature of my mind, a type that I share with to some extent with a lot of nerdy engineers, that makes our performance possible. The applying of ingenuity to solve problems quickly, safely, and profitably.

Tangential thought is key to human ingenuity. You run up an alley. Take in the view quickly. Run back to the main path. Run up the next alley. Repeat. Just suppress mentioning it all. Even if you could, hardly anyone will understand. One simply cannot speak as quickly as one can make observations, note the values revealed, and not be distracted from the task at hand. Well, at least not someone with a semi-rapid mind like myself.

And you can see, if this is possibly a wide-spread attribute of engineers, then in this is why many often seem distant to the rest of the public. Their experience tells them that conversations about their work aren't always productive. The essential product of their tangential minds -- well suited to solving problems on the fly -- is not easily captured in conversation, and even on paper. As to speaking with someone who has no experience at all, well, after a minute or two these are typically looking for an exit, any exit.

And so, here is where I get to one solution that has worked for me and which I heartily recommend to others.

I've rediscovered something that helps fill in for my limitations. The great tool to extended and useful conversation that is made possible by instant messaging -- IMs.


I have much thanks for Og, the Neanderpundit, who sought me out some time in the past years because of my comments and contributions at Eternity Road. And who recently renewed our acquaintance by replacing those brief IMs with now some rather elaborate ones that have helped me make this blog explode.

The gist of the matter as far as I am concerned is demonstrated thus.

When I am writing an entry to an IM, Og is doing whatever.

As he responds, I am writing more to elaborate.

He isn't distracted by my voice or by what I've written and continues to write his response.

I latch onto what he has written, and elaborate on some tangential thing.

He continues to write, or starts to respond to what I've taken off on.

Each time I hit enter, I go back and read what he's written while I was writing.

At no time do I miss what he's written, nor he mine.

When I did this with my Dad some five or six years ago, all those conversations we used have that deteriorated into shouting matches became history. Even in person, our ability to converse in a more gentle manner had been established (although my ability to hold on to a new thought of my own while he was speaking had only gotten a little better) He'd let me cue him while he was speaking and he'd continue and we could come back to my thought, sometimes even successfully. The most important thing of all, is that IMs led to the best moments I had with my Dad in his last days; and intellectually speaking, this was our best days.

So, for me at least, there still is nothing like the IM to let a wandering mind capture those things it generates off of another great mind. So thank you Og for helping me in many ways.

OTOH, for those of you who don't like the product of my output? You can blame Og for enabling me.

Sharing Fates, Indeed

As I read

"Even within the Muslim community -- especially within the Muslim community -- there is great awareness of how closely the terror attacks are linked to issues within Islam."

at the Belmont Club's Sharing Fates, Wretchard prompted my recall of the following conclusion from observation.

Multiculturalism promotes the destruction of the Social Contract.

The Social Contract is the fundamental promise that legitimizes the governmental system of the United Kingdom, that of its commonwealth legacy nations, and that of the United States.

Briefly stated: "In preserving rights equally among our people, we reserve the right to the use of force." In the United States, the paramount of human rights were written down in the Declaration of Independence: the rights to life and liberty.

In the Muslim communities, out of which the recent terrorist plots emerged, there are surely some members who have the uncommon opinion that the terrorists are bad.

But due to multiculturalism and its promotion, Sharia Law has been allowed to take the place of English common law in Muslim communities. Could there be a more explicit surrender of the UK's promise under its social contract?

Were it still universally adhering to the social contract, Britain would see that its legitimacy, let alone its security, would be on the line here. Were it still defending its authority even in Muslim communities, it would be easier to gain intelligence. Were it still unapologetically offering protection to those who wish to report to the authorities the plans of terrorists they see mounting, the Brits would increase their security.

But under Sharia Law, the informers become criminals as soon as they take a stance with infidels against any other Muslims. The security of England is demoted to the Left's insistence on instituting multicultural acceptance at every level.

Hence, the weak of the Muslim community are put out of reach of the protection of the wider and more powerful UK justice system. And so are any English patriots who happen to be Muslim.

Thus England, in allowing multiculturalism to spread, is systematically delegitimizing itself even before it allows hostile forces to mount within it. In allowing them legally to cut the throats of those England has abandoned to it, the terrorists will find it easier to cut England's throat.

Yes Wretchard, sharing fates, indeed.

Orwellian Crazy Quilt

There was a time when politicians of any party knew they couldn't get away with blatant hypocrisy. They would typically leave the hurling of unsavory charges (of which they themselves may have been guilty) to their friends.

They knew they couldn't get away with such impertinent attacks because the major media wouldn't miss an opportunity to feed the hypocrite to their audiences.

Apparently Hillary Clinton has no fear about spitting into the wind.

For today she came out hammering President Bush for commuting Scooter's incarceration. (courtesy, Savage Nation)

Can you imagine CBS evening news leading with "In a shocker, Hillary Rodham Clinton lambasted the Bush Administration for cronyism in pardoning Scooter Libby." And then listing Bill and Hillary Clinton's vastly unprecedented number of pardons, including Mark Rich and Susan McDougal.

Nuh-uh. MSM wants to chuck the Clinton pardons down the memory hole. They'll probably succeed.

I hope I'm wrong. I surely wish we conservatives get loud again and bring embarrassment to its rightful owners.

The Dems have gotten notoriously shameless. And why not? Our GOP country-clubbers never hand them their head, let alone shame them. What price will the Dems pay if balance is conceded to MSM?

Every issue is tacky to the "leaders" on the Right, nothing is to the whole of the Left. That's some leadership we got!

As incidents like this add up, shamelessness unexposed becomes positively Orwellian. So will we now add this, and the next, and the next, to the crazy quilt of acceptable nonsense that is woven from the litanies of the Left? We will if the BS goes uncorrected by the Leftist dominated media, which more and more includes Fox.

So here is my Orwellian version of the Democrat's latest litany that will go uncorrected everywhere but on the Internet and on most conservative talk shows:

We are at war with pardons.
We have always been at war with pardons.
Strict enforcement is our friend.

Of course, back at the end of the Clinton Administration, this was the Democratic rant:

We are at war with merciless sentencing.
We have always been at war with merciless sentencing.
Pardons are our friend.

Unless you help make a football of Hillary's chutzpah, get used to the pattern.
Your masters declaring what you may remember, and their weavers making you learn to love crazy.

The Belmont Club: Here Be Irony?

With his commentary on London's extraordinary surveillance system, Here Be Dragons, Wretchard concludes:

"One of the supreme ironies of recent history is that the policies and attitudes which declared all borders open, passports unnecessary, wars obsolete, all cultures equivalent and 'soft power' the only kind that could be countenanced may have led directly to rise of fearful police states."

Why call it an irony when the police state is the consequence of all that openness?

For that matter, why does the Left side with the 'insurgents,' the Greens insist that fighting GW is more important than fighting terrorism, and our WOT's odd Rules of Engagement is the policy of the man who calls Islam the ROP?

After all, what do Leftists and Statists and Islamists all have in common?
S U B M I S S I O N.

A Curious Visitor

I received quite a bit of attention today from a new visitor out of Palm Harbor, Florida.

Over an hour long, and 54 pages views, but not a single comment. Then he went off to Eternity Road for almost 5 hours. He came to me from the Belmont Club. Lord know how much time he spent there. LOL.

Who are you fella? Stop awhile and say hello.