Category Archives: culture

How Terrible Is That?

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Jeremy Corbyn, British Labour Party’s MFWIC, has “accused” British PM Boris Johnson of pushing for US-style deregulation of health care.  The horror.

As the UK election campaigns got underway, Corbyn said his rival wanted to “unleash Thatcherism on steroids” once the country was no longer bound by EU trading treaties and regulations.

Channeling our own Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT), Corbyn thinks “capitalism” is a dirty word.

He went further:

Corbyn also said…that Johnson wants to strike a trade deal with US President Donald Trump to sell off parts of the UK’s National Health Service, or make it easier for US pharmaceutical firms and medical companies to sell into the UK healthcare market.

Because all that foul capitalism would lower health costs to British citizens and deprive Government of control over their health choices.

Then Corbyn made plain the breadth of the wicked that the Brits’ way comes:

They want to move us towards a more deregulated American model of how to run the economy.

It’s clear that Corbyn—and his fellow Labourites—think British citizens are just too blind stupid to make their own health decisions; he and his insist those unwashed masses must be led by his Know Betters.  Just like our own Progressive-Democrats.

Separating Blue and Red America

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A growing number of local television stations across the country are reviving an older practice of broadcasting our national anthem once a day, pairing it with all-American imagery that further celebrates our nation.

Gray and Nexstar executives [two of the companies whose stations have revived broadcasting our anthem] said the reason to bring back the anthem was simple: encouraging national unity at a time of deep division in the country[.]

The stations broadcast our anthem in the wee hours of the morning, reminiscent of how our stations used to sign off for the night around midnight, broadcasting our anthem and showing imagery as part of the sign-off.

The New York Times disagrees; it says this is a divisive thing to do; it divides Blue America from Red America.  That’s the message of their Julia Jacobs in her column last week.

The decision to revive the anthem tradition comes at a time when overt allegiance to “The Star-Spangled Banner” has become one of the lines that separate blue and red America[.]

The NYT isn’t alone.  Here’s a University of Michigan music professor, Mark Clague:

It is somewhat provocative to bring the anthem to the fore in a new way at a moment of tension in this country[.]

Divisive, provocative to play our national anthem, to celebrate our great nation.  Wow.

This piece was published a week ago, and still not a single Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential or Congressional candidate has objected to the NYT‘s, or to Jacobs’ (or Clague’s), claim that playing our national anthem is bad.

That’s highly instructive, and it should inform our voting decisions in a year.

Love Me that Censorship

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That’s what that icon of the Left, Juan Williams, says.

The reality is that [Facebook CEO Mark] Zuckerberg doesn’t seem to understand, from my perspective, that he’s undermining his brand by allowing political lies to be put on his platform. That, to me, lessens the trust that the consumer has.

Because censoring speech—especially politically speech—is the way to win the hearts and minds and trust of the consumer.

Certainly, controlling speech and allowing only that which the Left approves—what Juan Williams personally approves—can be a tool for winning controlling the hearts and minds of citizens, but trust? No. Censorship destroys trust.

But, hey—the Left doesn’t approve.  Juan Williams doesn’t approve.  That makes it all OK.

Williams had this gem, too, accusing folks who disagree with him on this—Conservatives—of flip flopping:

I remember when the right was always on Facebook, “Oh, you’re trying to silence…conservatives.”  Now it’s like, “Oh, yeah, put Trump’s lies there, please.”

Because objecting to censorship is flip floppery.  And that last bit: the Right Reverend Juan Williams is the arbiter of lies, distortions, and facts because us ordinary Americans are just too grindingly stupid to make the discriminations for ourselves.

This is another example of the Left’s—the Progressives’—utter contempt for those who don’t agree with them.

Typical

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Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO, has struck again.  Now he’s banning “all political advertising on Twitter globally.”  He’s justifying this move with this bit of fantastical rationalization:

We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought.

I suppose, then, he believes television, radio, print media—along with his competitors, Facebook, Alphabet, et al.—also should ban political advertising on their platforms.  After all, political message reach should be earned, not bought.

A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet. Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people.

This contempt for ordinary Americans is just Liberal Know Better-ism. No one is forced to read the material whose promotion is paid for; we all can make our own decisions to read or to scroll past. It’s even already clearly identified by Dorsey’s minions as promoted material.  Beyond that, it may be the case, especially with the rapidity with which the Twitter feed runs, that the first many folks learn of a political message is when a promoted one appears at the top of their feed.

We don’t need the Big Brothers of the Left to lead us around by the nose, instructing us on what we’re to read or not to read.

Maybe Dorsey should just get out of the censorship business.

That Was No Gaffe

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Donald Trump, Jr, says The Washington Post is destroying its credibility with its gaffes.  Young Trump is correct on the first part (except, perhaps, for the tense), but he’s being generous with the last part.

This newspaper headlined its article purporting to be an obituary about Daesh’s head, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, styling the…person…an austere religious scholar.  Earlier, the newspaper smeared a high school student, saying he’d mistreated in some way a Native American who had, in fact, accosted the boy, banging a drum in the boy’s face.

Trump said,

They don’t even pretend to be objective[.]

This is plain to see; however, the words of WaPo aren’t gaffes. The folks who lead and who write for the WaPo are professional, highly talented, thoroughly trained pressmen at the top of their game.  Words are their stock in trade.  They knew, and know, what they’re writing; they knew, and know, what they’re going to write as they form the thoughts.

They write what they write with careful deliberation.