OK, so I experienced a first yesterday. Or perhaps I have experienced this before, but was just never aware of it. The “this” being rejection from a potential job due to my political leanings and/or politically incorrect postings made on social media.
In short, a potential client emailed me to request samples of my work because she could not open the original samples I had sent along with my initial proposal/application. A request like this is akin to getting a nibble on a fish hook, but I didn’t get super excited or bother to second guess the original samples I sent, but just resent those originals. I am confident in my skills, tend to get a fair number of bites in my constant fishing expedition for freelance editorial gigs, and felt that I had provided the client with enough initial information with which to gauge my skill set and ability to handle the job.
Not to say that there wasn’t a bit of excitement, as the job—content development for a large website dealing with subject matter I find quite interesting—would have brought in some fairly decent coin and what I believed to be likely work satisfaction.
I went about my business after responding to the request and received this email response about an hour later: “I am no longer considering you for the position. Thanks for applying.”
Rejection is a standard part of the freelance process, but in this game rejection often comes without any notice—one just never hears back from the potential client.
I appreciated that she had taken a moment to inform me that I was no longer in consideration, and so answered the email by thanking her for the politeness of letting me know. Perhaps I even let out slight sigh of dejection as I turned my attention back to other work, but within a few minutes noticed I had eight new notifications on my Twitter feed.
This seemed odd as I had not posted anything in a couple of days. Lo and behold, it was my potential client, vigorously taking issue in 140-characters-or-less with various comments I had posted over the past few months. It was quite apparent that my posts irritated her and that she heartily disagreed with them, but I will not claim that she was overly aggressive or obnoxious (though I imagine that I could easily respond in a manner that would provoke her into the screeching illogical rage that seems to be coming from so many on the Left these days).
Speaking of “logic,” most of my former-potential client’s posts were noteworthy for their lack of it. Some of her responses served as non sequiturs as they weren’t really addressing the issues I was originally posting about, and a couple of others relied on the oft-used-by-the-Left “red herring” and “strawman” fallacies. And one just served as a non-sensical sarcastic rant.
Now, to give my former-potential client a touch of leeway, she was responding to my 140-characters-or-less with her own 140-characters-or-less. It is difficult to make a succinct argument in 140 characters or less; nuances, sarcasm and humor can often be missed; and the point of such postings can easily be misinterpreted.
Anyhow, upon realizing that I had perhaps been rejected due to my Tweets, I sent her another email message stating that “I now understand that perhaps the rejection is politically motivated. And apparently you now plan on trolling me. Interesting!”
And it is interesting on so many different levels. I would like to examine her actions and other posts more at length, but the narcissist in me is telling me to bring the focus back to me, me and I.
So, my first thought upon realizing the likely reason for my rejection was, wow, do I need to be more careful with what I Tweet? And then, when I determined that she had spent a fair amount of time reviewing my website (first-time play in Oak Creek, baby!), I briefly thought, wow, maybe I should be more careful with what I put down on my website?
….Yeah, no. Fuck that!—much like I’m not about to start checking my alleged “privilege,” I am not about to start checking my writing due to political correctness considerations.
Bottom line is I am who I am, believe what I believe, and will stand firmly for both (though always willing to question and debate aforementioned beliefs). And these days, with the country so significantly divided on so many different issues, it doesn’t matter where one stands on the political spectrum, as roughly 50 percent of the population stands in opposition.
And judging from today’s job rejection, I guess this pretty much means that folks should just assume that 50 percent of a given job market may be closed to them. Of course, that assumption would be a gross generalization and illogical conclusion.
Whenever I travel to an unfamiliar area I always try to get out on the water. It’s not enough to just feel a sea breeze on my face while taking a walk along a city’s waterfront or by strolling barefoot on a beach. I need to experience the feel of water passing under a boat’s hull. I need to experience the area from the perspective of a sailor, and take regard of the shoreline from the sea instead of regarding the sea from the shoreline. I want to get a feel for the lay of the waterways, a sense of what it might be like to ply these unexplored waters on a regular basis. There is also my sense that “adventure” is much more likely to be found on the water than on land.
And it’s not just ocean water that attracts me, as I’ve always been drawn to lakes, ponds and rivers, as well. If there is water, I look for boats and/or the means to get on one. Take this long-ago away-game, for example:
Shortly after my first stint in university, I visited my friend, Lee—Mister X—Perkins, in Sacramento. Not much water to speak of there, but after he mentioned a whitewater rafting trip he’d recently taken down the American River, I convinced him that we needed to explore the river further. So we packed a lunch, filled a cooler with beer, bought a cheap blow-up raft at WalMart and drove an hour or so northeast to a known launching area. Lee made arrangements for someone to pick us up at the end of the day at the take out some 20 miles downriver and we proceeded to blow up that raft with a foot pump.
A few people hanging about at the put-in spot gave us quizzical looks, and one man asked, “do you boys know what you’re doing?”
“Of course we do,” we replied. After all, Lee had recently rafted this river…with a guide and on a sturdy, hard-bottomed raft specifically made for white water rafting.
The man shook his head as if to say, fools rush in where angels fear to tread, and off we went, full of excessive bravado and confidence so common in 20-something-year-old men.
A half mile down the river we entered the first rapids—appropriately named “Meatgrinder,”—as our first impact with an unseen rock punched me in the left butt cheek making me howl out in pain. A couple of more strikes quickly followed, letting us know that perhaps our cheap raft wasn’t made for white water. And then we turned a corner to enter the frothing water of the actual rapids and were quickly upended—bye-bye beer, lunch and the first paddle…
…And only 19 more miles and about 30 named rapids to go!
Somehow we made it. We drifted into the take-out at dusk clinging to the last of the raft’s four air pockets that hadn’t yet been punctured, our bodies covered from head to toe in bruises and gashes. Our driver looked with incredulity at us and the remains of the raft and said, “what were you boys thinking?”
“What?” we replied, our bravado still intact. “That was great!”
On the ride back to our car, we did admit to a bit of discomfort, and agreed that we needed a more robust raft for any such future rafting adventures. We also bemoaned the loss of our beer, lunch and paddles. One small saving grace was that we had inverted our life vests to wear them around our mid-sections like diapers, thus providing a bit of protection to the more sensitive parts of our bodies.
And no, we did not have helmets. But it did not seem to matter much, as apparently we had more bone up there in our noggins than we did brains.
In case you haven’t been following the news of late I can tell you: “The Russians did it!”
Yep, it’s clear, Russian machinations are behind all the bad things happening in the world today.
At least, that’s what the Democrats and mainstream media (MSM) outlets such as CNN (Clinton News Network), The New York Times, and (especially) The Washington Post want you to believe.
Hillary Clinton lost the election— Russians colluded with Trump; hacked the Democratic National Committee and Hillary campaign manager John Podesta’s emails; disseminated fake news via hundreds of complicit or unaware Internet-based news sites; and had in-country operatives trying to disrupt the election.
Syria is a hellhole— Russian bombing!
Unmanned spaceship carrying supplies to International Space Station Crashes— Yep, Russians (never mind that it was a Russian spaceship).
Netflix went down again— Russians!
This whole “blame the Russians” effort seems to have started after Donald Trump jokingly said in July that he hoped the Russians could find Hillary’s missing 30,000 emails. Leftist MSM outlets jumped all over it with frothing hissy-fit stories ranging from how it made Trump unfit for office to how he should be tried for treason.
It didn’t take long for both the Democratic campaign of Hillary Clinton and President-himself Obama to start pointing the finger at Russia for all kinds of nefarious workings designed to undermine the election. At one point Obama even threatened—no, promised!—massive retaliation for alleged Russian hacking.
But gee, despite all that Presidential anti-Russian pontification back in September and October, there have been no signs of any retaliation, nor has the President (let alone Hillary and company) released one shred of evidence tying the Russians to any hacking or other activities that were detrimental to the electoral process. In fact, Obama seems to have gone completely silent on the issue*.
Meanwhile, the MSM is upping the ante, with The Washington Post leading the charge Nov. 24, with the feature story, “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say.” The story was based largely on research conducted by “The PropOrNot Team,” an anonymous group of researchers reputedly “dedicated to identifying propaganda—particularly Russian propaganda targeting a U.S. audience.” In short, PropOrNot identified about 200 websites—primarily those on the Right-wing of the Political spectrum—that were knowingly, or not, disseminating fake news stories crafted by Russians. The Washington Post story was quickly picked up by much of the rest of the MSM, accepted as the Gospel Truth and is now leading to a massive drive by the Left to shut down in whatever way possible the listed “Russian propaganda machines.”
As an aside I’ll just note how ironic it is that the Far Left is trying to shut down purported nefarious activity emanating from its erstwhile idol and icon of Leftist ideology.
Fortunately, not every Left-leaning media maven is buying this horse-feathered tale. The New Yorker yesterday released a critique of the PropOrNot list and those MSM outlets that accepted and spread its findings. The New Yorker story—“The Propaganda About Russian Propaganda”—essentially rips the PropOrNot findings apart by pointing out how the anonymous group’s broad criteria and methodologies are so utterly subjective that any news organization, including The Washington Post itself, could be dragged onto the list at the whim of the researchers. As quoted in the New Yorker critique by one well-respected researcher of fake news, “I think [The Washington Post story] should have never been an article on any news site of any note.”
All-in-all, when I consider how the Leftist Mainstream Media has reported on this alleged propaganda coming from the Right, I’d have to say that, Russia aside, it is definitely a case of the “pot calling the kettle black.”
In closing I’ll just say: Привет русских. Нравится ли вам мой рассказ? Если это так, то, пожалуйста, нажмите на кнопку “как” ниже.
*Postscript: On December 9 President Obama ordered a full-scale U.S. Intelligence investigation into the alleged Russian Hacking, which begs the question as to why he was running his mouth prior to any investigation. In related news, The Washington Post has issued a partial retraction of its Nov. 24 Russian Hacking story in which it stated that it could not vouch for the veracity of PropOrNot’s Russian hacking allegations.
**Postscript II: As of January 3, the Obama Administration had not released any conclusive intelligence proving Russian complicity in the hacks; though MSM outlets such as CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, etc. keep releasing news stories that suggest the intelligence information released by Obama does prove complicity. A close inspection of Obama intelligence releases and MSM stories about the intelligence has many outside experts doubting the veracity of the intelligence and of the media’s reporting of it.
Meanwhile, Julian Assange continues to insist that the “Russians” were not the source for either the DNC nor John Podesta hacked emails. Given WikiLieaks’ 10-plus-year history of releasing only “true” information, I am certainly inclined to believe Assange over Obama.
***Postscript III: Boy did I call this one correctly. As of November 12, 2017, there is still no evidence supporting allegations that Trump colluded with the Russians. However, all indications point to Hillary and her campaign being deeply involved with Russia on two different nefarious, if not illegal, schemes. Stay tuned!
Well kids, we’ve got another one of those “are-you-fucking-kidding-me?” stories to put in the “Gone Batshit Crazy” book. But I suppose the surprise election of Donald Trump for president has triggered the Loony Left to such a degree that all of its inane and illogical thinking is being exposed for the world to see.
The relatively benign “Suck it up, buttercup!” has served as just one popular (and apt) rebuttal to dismayed and outraged Liberal supporters of Hillary Clinton who just can’t wrap their head around the fact that perhaps their Queen may have been a touch flawed…. Or just can’t understand why a significant portion of the U.S. population is thoroughly fed up with the attempted Lefty imposition of various sanctimonious, hypocritical, politically correct ideologies on just about every facet of American life.
“Suck it up, pussies!” is another such rebuttal, as recently offered to the delicate snowflake Leftist students and faculty at Edgewood College in Wisconsin. The Post-It note message, accompanied by a winking, tongue-out, smiley face drawing, was stuck to the window of the Office of Student Diversity and Inclusion in response to a campus invite for students to express their feelings about the election on Post-It notes that they were supposed to attach to a nearby “designated” table.
“Designated” for what, I’m not sure, but universities these days have designated cuddly bear rooms and a variety of other similar “safe spaces” where students’ delicate constitutions can be soothed from all the horrible stresses of life—you know, like Donald Trump, described by many on the Far Left as “Literally Hitler.” And, as an aside, how is it that this popular Lefty sentiment is not deemed “hate speech?” Is not calling someone the equivalent of a horrible mass murderer more “hateful” than calling someone a coward, that is, a “pussy?”
Anyhow, Vice President for Student Development Tony Chambers, with the full support of a “group of cross-functional college staff representing campus security, student conduct, human resources, Title IX enforcement, and diversity and inclusion measures,” deemed the Post-It note a “hate crime” and reported it to the Madison, Wisconsin Police Department.
In a lengthy bloviation to the campus, Vice President Chambers alleged that the Post-It note elicited a “great deal of fear, sadness and anger” among students, faculty and staff, and all but suggested that the perpetrator should be tarred and feathered. OK, perhaps not that far sanctioned, but clearly indicated that the perpetrator’s academic dreams should be shattered, and, if the long-arm-of-the-law can be successfully invoked, he or she should suffer a severe criminal justice system smack-down.
Are you fucking kidding me!!!
Sorry, I’m still trying to wrap my head around this one: one of this college’s top dogs, and his lackeys, asked the police to investigate a non-threatening message with a smiley face that happened to be posted at the wrong space, and is seeking to impose every punitive measure possible on the perpetrator of the missive?
OK, OK…posted at the wrong place on purpose. Still, is this a matter for the police? Is this an issue that really deserves the full attention of the college administration? Don’t they have more important issues to be concerned about? This begs the question of what Tony Chambers and his ilk would do were they to find something like “Blow Me!” written on a bathroom stall wall? Call out the National Guard?
Hey, Tony Chambers—and to be absolutely clear which Tony Chambers—yeah you, Edgewood College vice president for student development….
You, Sir, are a complete and utter fucking dipshit!
Now “them’s fighting words,” but do they also constitute a “hate crime,” and are you, Tony Chambers, going to call the cops on me?
I believe my statement is an opinion, not “hate speech,” and I’d be more than happy to engage in public debate (or perhaps a little cage fighting?) about my opinion of you and your support for politically correct petty grievance mongering.
Whad’ya think? Can you “suck it up, pussy?” Or will you react like most on the Far Left and just resort to calling everything you don’t like a “hate crime,” and every person you don’t agree with a “racist,” “misogynist,” “homophobe,” “islamaphobe,” or whatever epithet serves the purpose of shutting down any logical debate?
Yeah . . . I already know your answer, but is anyone else willing to argue on behalf of Tony Chambers?
Breitbart News Texas earlier this week reported that Mexican authorities had arrested the former mayor of a rural community in the border state of Coahuila in connection with the extermination of hundreds of victims by the Los Zetas cartel. This followed several months of investigative reporting by Breitbart News Texas detailing the 2011-2013 murder and incineration of more than 300 victims—including women and children—with complicity and help covering up the crime by elements in the Mexican government.
This news is noteworthy for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, criminal activity such as this is all too common in Mexico, and most normal Americans do not want to see such butchery become commonplace in our country. Thus, many Americans’ support for President-Elect Donald Trump’s wall, or at the least, a much more stringent vetting process to better ensure that such criminal elements do not become our next-door neighbors. Given that perhaps a million or so illegal aliens have criminal records—with at least a few undoubtedly being prone to gruesome criminal activity as reported by Breitbart—the news lends further support to Trump’s recent suggestion that his immigration priority is to remove “criminal” illegal aliens first, and worry later about how to address those who’ve been illegally living and working here for years.
The news also is quite interesting because, well, the complete and utter lack of any interest in it from the U.S. mainstream media. Sure, the murders themselves are a couple of years dated, but even Aljazeera thinks the story is still worth reporting on, as it has been doing since March 2015 in a three-part detailed series, “Terror in Coahuila.”
Guess, the “terror” just wasn’t considered a big deal by CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, and others in the liberal mainstream media, as none ever provided the American public with even a whisper about the crimes.
Or perhaps, as we suspect, it was too much of a big deal. The story would have horrified Americans and perhaps led more of them to support Donald Trump’s ideas about controlling the border. And the MSM certainly wasn’t going to report on something that might support a Trump position—kind of like how they purposely avoided mentioning “Islamic” or “Muslim” with any reported acts of U.S.-based terrorism over the past year.
But the emerging details of Mexican government complicity in the Coahuila mass murder must surely be newsworthy now?
CNN’s Jake Tapper thought so a couple of days ago when he Tweeted: “Shocking story by @brandondarby [Breitbart reporter] about a cartel that used a network of ovens to cover-up mass murder in Coahuila.”
But other than that brief mention of the story, we only received the typical “crickets” from a liberal press that remains quite adept at ignoring news that doesn’t fit their liberal agenda for how the world should work.
Yeah, but Trump ditching the press pool to enjoy a quiet steak dinner with relatives and friends sure fit their narrative. Yeah boy, it obviously represents a prime example of why Trump is unfit to hold the presidential office.
—Written for Monday-Monday Network, but may not have run….
OK, kids, here I go again. But to clarify, first of all let me please point out that it is not so much that I am Pro-Trump, but that I am Anti-Hillary. If this election is a choice between projectile vomiting and long-term bloody diarrhea then I choose vomiting—that is Trump. Once the dry heaves are over, I honestly believe that Trump will prove to be far more reasonable and effective than most people believe, especially if he can draw good people into his cabinet. With regard to the diarrhea that is representative of Hillary, I feel that it’s just a sign of a much deeper illness, and one that would prove especially cancerous.
Second, and most important with regard to this writing, no one has ever been able to call “Bullshit” on anything WikiLeaks has ever released—nothing released has ever been proven to be a forgery or fabrication construed by WikiLeaks itself.
Third, especially for my “Lefty” friends, let me remind you that when WikiLeaks first started exposing the “truth” 10 years ago, the Left was in full support, especially given that WikiLeaks exposed some of the more nefarious elements of Bush’s Iraq War. Thus, WikiLeaks is a non-partisan, equal-opportunity exposer of truth—that is, if what was originally written down or filmed and then exposed by Wiki was truthful to begin with.
Now that WikiLeaks is inconveniently exposing “Truth” about one of your [supposedly] Leftist idols—Hillary Clinton—you have determined that WikiLeaks is full of crap and, ironically, a tool of Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
While most of you on the Left ignore WikiLeaks because the mainstream media refuses to report on it, and because CNN (Clinton News Network) told you that it’s illegal and just a Russian-Hack tool, it is an eye-opener with regard to the inner workings of the Clinton Campaign. I’ve been reading WikiLeaks every day, and as a writer, Iv’e got to say you can’t make this shit up.
Let’s just ignore the fact that out of the 100-thousand or so emails released so far, not one, to my knowledge, displays any hint of altruistic motive or desire to do good for America, the world and/or its people. Instead, these inner-campaign communications focus on the machinations of this political machine. Granted, this political machine is all about getting Hillary Rodham Clinton elected as President, so perhaps one shouldn’t expect that positive discussion about “how we’re going to make America great again” would be part of the day-to-day exchange of ideas among staff.
But the amount of apparent sleazy back-room dealings, slimy smear jobs, launder the dirty money, manipulate the gullible, hide the truth, planned pandering, and outright insults to just about everyone outside the campaign’s inner circle is beyond belief. While perhaps there is nothing contained in these emails that could lead to an outright conviction for any number of insinuated-within-the-content criminal activities, most of these writings come from obviously corrupt, narcissistic, power-hungry, greedy, outright despicable excuses for human beings. Based on their words, I cannot imagine sharing a dinner table with them…and I’m pretty much game for sitting down for dinner and wine with most folks.
To add to the surrealism of these narcissistic interchanges, we get to learn about some of the Clinton staff’s peccadilloes. For example, we now know that John Podesta is a fervent believer in UFOs and Area 51, and can’t wait until he gets White House powers via Hillary so that he can force the military to give up its secrets about crashed alien spacecraft and the recovered remains of dead extraterrestrials.
And from today’s batch of released emails we learn that he might be into some pretty warped meal planning. “Spirit Cooking,” to be exact. I don’t know enough about the said cuisine to make a comment, but Paul Joseph Watson provides a good explanation in his latest video:
***Postscript (as of 11-5-16): I need to point out that the WikiLeaks emails concerning John Podesta and his alleged participation with “Spirit Cooking” only include those “inviting” John Podesta to participate in the said cuisine. No WikiLeaks emails released thus far provide a response from John Podesta or anyone else that indicate he actually attended any such feast as portrayed in the ensuing video. Thus, unless a future WikiLeaks email proves otherwise, please consider this video as being for “entertainment” purposes only.
For the record, Paul is prone to hyperbole and I question whether Podesta is as warped as insinuated in this video. In fact, I’m not buying some of the latest email interpretations* that suggest a pedophilia ring within the campaign cabal. Nevertheless, there is usually a bit of truth in any hyperbole, and any truths that may get exposed within this hyperbole would be more than I could stomach….
Anyhow, judge for yourself, and try to objectively consider all truths that may be exposed by WikiLeaks.
*WikiLeaks does not “interpret” the information it exposes/adamantly denies that Clinton-related emails were “hacked by the Russians/and during its 10-plus “expose-the-truth” years, has never falsified any of its leaked documents.
Who would have ever thought that George Orwell’s dystopian “1984” vision of a government-mandated belief that “two plus two makes five” would be first borne by sexual deviance of a sort?
That is: “transgenderism.”
And it is “deviance,” all of you politically correct adherents poised to eviscerate me for the apparent abject insensitivity of my words.
Look up “deviance” in the dictionary, and you will see it defined as “deviating from the norm,” and/or “different from what is considered to be normal or morally correct.” And please note that, as so defined, transgenderism is “deviant” even if not speaking about the issue from a moral viewpoint.
But let’s push those semantics aside, as I am far more concerned about how the transgender movement is successfully pushing governments and universities to adopt the first officially sanctioned efforts to force the populace to believe that two plus two does in fact make five.
How so, you ask?
Well, for what appears to be the first-time ever with modern democracies, governments and schools across North America are starting to pass measures that mandate how you speak to transgendered folks by forcing the citizenry—under various penalties for non-compliance—to use the preferred pronouns as requested by individual transgendered people. Under the most simple construct this means identifying transgendered folks as either “he,” “she,” or “they,” as so requested. But the ever-expanding ideals of the transgender movement are not so simple, as it has created and adopted dozens of made-up pronouns, such as “xer,” “faer,” “aer,” “per,” “xem,” “hir,” “xe,” “xyr,” that have not yet even been accepted for usage by any lexicon.
It’s almost like governments and learning institutions are getting ahead of themselves. I mean, isn’t there something in western society’s legal canon that insists that any laws or regulations promulgated must utilize words that actually exist? Does this now mean that our governments and schools can pass laws and rules based on the “Klingon” language and culture?
But think beyond the language component of these measures and realize that they are designed to manipulate thought. You might be like most people and believe in the traditional binary gender system in which about 98 percent of people are either male or female, with another 1 percent of indeterminate gender due to biological factors beyond their control, and the other 1 percent just confused. Or perhaps you’re an adherent to this new “gender spectrum” way of thinking in which you believe the idea of “male” and “female” is a modern construct that wrongly “assigns” one’s gender at birth, and that there are 25, 50 or maybe even more than 100 different gender expressions.
If you want to believe in the latter, fill your boots! It’s not up to me to tell you what to believe. But when a government or institution of higher learning and critical thought tells me—under threat of penalty—that I have to use words describing something I don’t believe in, then we have a serious problem.
Hypothetically, you might think that you are a “firegender demiboy,” or some other gender expression of the 70 or so identified and named by the movement, and thus proclaim your preferred pronoun is “xir,” but I should not be forced to follow suit. If the government by mandate tells me I have to refer to you as “xir,” then it is forcing me to accept your belief, even though I believe you to be just a woman with serious psychological problems.
“Two plus two does not make five.”
But no, refusing to recognize transgenderism’s “two plus two makes five” is fast becoming North America’s first officially sanctioned Thoughtcrime, with the Thought Police poised to drag transgressors such as myself to the Ministry of Love. And actually, Thought Police prototypes, referred to euphemistically as “bias-response panels” and “bias-incident-reporting teams,” are already quite active on university and college campuses, where they subjectively monitor and sanction students and faculty for offensive “Hate Speech.” And now dozens of campuses are wholeheartedly adopting the transgender pronoun usage guidelines, and will consider the failure to abide by the guidelines as a form of Hate Speech.
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s New York City is the first jurisdiction in America to adopt laws that require all employers, landlords, businesses and professionals to use whatever identity, name and pronoun requested by employees, tenants, customers or clients. Failure to abide by this directive can subject violators to legal sanctions based on the city’s amorphous gender-based harassment laws, which can apply civil penalties of up to $150,000 for standard violations, rising to $250,000 for violations considered “willful,” wanton,” or “malicious.”
As written, legislation—Bill C-16—introduced by Canadian Premiere Justin Trudeau can reportedly be interpreted to mean that failure to use correct transgender pronouns is harassment and discrimination, and would thus be subject to “hate speech” sanction by the Canadian Government’s powerful Human Rights Commission, another Thought Police prototype.
To my knowledge no other group of people in modern democratic history has ever been accorded such deference in mandated language usage. And while transgendered folks are certainly entitled to civil rights protections afforded to all people, it should not come at the cost of limiting everyone else’s freedom of thought and speech.
In short, anyone should be allowed to believe that two plus two makes five, but no one should be forced to accept that belief.
Well, Kids, we’re more than halfway through the semester, so we’d better take stock of the level of Left-Wing battiness roiling North American university and college campuses to see if Loony-Left students, professors, and administrators are going even more bat-shit crazy than last year. All indications point to one big “yes,” which is hard to believe given the utter absurdity of many of their actions and pronouncements from last year. But then again, they’re probably feeling empowered as the mainstream Left seems to be adopting some of the inane belief systems and political correct ideals coming out of universities these days. Moreover, professors and administrators seem more emboldened and open about their Leftist tendencies and their influence on the behaviour and thoughts of their students.
And without further ado, and in no particular order, here is a partial run-down of this school year’s campus follies to date:
Forget the campus establishment of “safe spaces,” as the new drive appears to be “free-speech zones.” This supports the ideal of making a campus one big safe space where speech that may be construed as harmful, inciting, triggering, or in any way controversial is prohibited except in specially designated free-speech zones.
You know, like that small parking lot behind the cafeteria next to the dumpsters.
A few universities have also experimented with “free speech walls” where students are free to post or write whatever they want without fear of retribution from the campus thought police. However, ever-so-tolerant members of the Left tend to destroy or erase comments they don’t agree with. These Lefties seem to take great umbrage at any mention of “Donald Trump,” and his slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
Speaking of which, the “chalking” of Trumpisms continues to be reported and investigated as a hate speech crime in campuses across America.
While considering such as “hate speech” is ludicrous enough, I’ve got to ask, “when did college kids start playing with chalk?”
Conservative speakers on campus? Hah! I’ve lost count of the number of conservative speakers who have had their speaking engagements cancelled by administrators over the past few months. Another trick to keep such harmful thinking off their campuses is to insist upon outrageous fees for security purposes.
Conservative speaking in general is frowned upon on college campuses with numerous campus conservative groups reporting incidents in which their meetings get disrupted by angry Social Justice Warriors. Of course, administrators take no action against the agitators, as the disruption represents the exercise of their First Amendment rights.
Overall, when a majority of university students polled say that the ideals of freedom of speech are over-rated or that the First Amendment should be repealed, I’d say we have a serious problem.
Campus bias-incident tribunals—or whatever names these campus Thought-Police prototype groups go under—seem to have become even more powerful in just the few short months since the end of the 2016 Spring semester. Instead of just waiting for students and professors to anonymously report their peers for possible acts of bias and dissemination of hate speech, these shadowy groups—whether composed of administrators, students, professors or some mixture thereof—are actively seeking out thoughtcrime. For example, dozens of these bias-incident groups have warned students at their respective schools not to wear Halloween costumes that may be offensive, with most threatening administrative action against potential transgressors. Tufts University in Boston even went so far as to warn the student body that campus police will be actively looking for potential violators.
My response to this is beautifully summed up by Paul Joseph Watson in this video:
“Inclusive language” policies seem to be an even bigger hit with administrators this year, with dozens of campuses launching new Thought-Police-like campaigns to discourage students from using words and phrases that may perhaps offend someone. This year’s policies are going way beyond the old-school PC efforts to to replace potentially offensive words with sugar-coated euphemisms that rely on soft catchwords like “challenged.” No, these policies—most of which suggest punishment for non-compliance—are going after those really hatful terms and phrases such as “hey guys,”“man up,” “mankind,” “man-made,” “color-blind,” and just about any word that might suggest exclusivity to a particular gender, race, sexual orientation or “ability” (or lack thereof).
And remember what I said about the Mainstream Left adopting emerging campus ideals? Well, the Obama Administration recently dictated that all those kind folks doing time in federal prison shouldn’t be stigmatized by being called “prisoners,” “inmates,” “convicts,” or “criminals,” and must now be referred to as “Justice Involved Individuals.”
It appears that last year’s identifying and shaming of potential “cultural appropriation” was just a warm up. Consider that fraternity and sorority members at the University of California Merced have been “instructed” not to use the terms “Greek,” “rush,” or “pledge” because they “appropriate Greek culture” and are “non-inclusive.”
Guess we’re going to have to change the name of the “Olympics,” so as not to offend those delicate Greek sensibilities.
Canoes, yoga, a whole range of food items, and a massive expansion of “inappropriate” Halloween costumes are also increasingly under the campus cultural appropriation gun.
Canoes? Yeah, how dare we white privileged Mo-Fos enjoy paddling in the native people’s traditional conveyance. Tell you what, we’ll give up our canoes if SJWs quit appropriating our modern transportation and communications systems.
“Toxic Masculinity” appears to be a new academic buzzword on several campuses, and is being taught as the primary reason for many of North American society’s ills, including mass shootings and violence in general. Orientation for incoming Gettysburg College students “who identified as male” included movies, lectures and group discussions on the subject, with one student reporting that the effort seemed to be driven to teach students that “masculinity is an unacceptable human trait.” Professors at the previously mentioned U of C—Merced lectured students that an Islamic student’s knife attack that seriously wounded four other students was driven by toxic masculinity and not radical ideology, despite his ISIS flag and hand-written radical manifesto. Students at this school seem to be already fully indoctrinated as all indications—Facebook postings, memorials, “teach-ins”—point to the stabber (killed by police) receiving far more sympathy and accolades than his four victims. And last, for the purpose of this blog, a Dartmouth professor is reportedly teaching a course that relates the Orlando shooting to toxic masculinity.
Yeah, my son’s definitely not going to any of those schools.
In the “irony of ironies” department, the pro-life, Catholic DePaul University banned public display of a campus pro-life group’s “Unborn Lives Matter” poster because the message is rooted in “bigotry” by theoretically mocking the Black Lives Matter movement, and might “provoke” other students….
You know, provoke those pro-choice students who probably have no business going to a pro-life school to begin with.
And while this incident happened last year, a Columbia University student this month provided a Kafkaesque account of his experiences with the “Gender-Based Misconduct Office” after being accused by an anonymous student of referring to himself as “handsome” in Chinese during his Chinese language class. The Gender Misconduct administrator apparently told the student that his actions were likely the result of “white male privilege,” but the student refused to admit any wrongdoing, and after an hour or so of apparent “re-education” efforts the administrator gave up.
Like the student, I’m not quite sure what the offence was, but this just goes to show that SJW, Loony-Left culture on campuses is poised to find just about everything offensive.
And I could go on and on and on, but getting into it so deep is making me howl-at-the-moon crazy. I’ll just close by relating the latest Loony-Left campus story to hit my news feed: The University of Denver has placed “content restrictions” on what can be placed or written on the university’s “free speech wall.” Because the university has a “zero tolerance policy for discrimination, harassment and gender-based violence,” any form of hate speech put on the wall will be considered a violation. Not only is the university’s definition of “hate speech” described with especially broad strokes, but a camera has been installed to monitor what people put on the wall.
Oh, and the language that instigated the restrictions included the following (and is construed by the university as prosecutable hate speech): “I’m Sorry for Something I Didn’t Do/Lynched Somebody, But I Didn’t Know Who” and “GUILTY OF BEING WHITE/GUILTY OF BEING RIGHT!”
I have long been enamoured of nautical charts, by far my favorite navigational tool. And sure, I enjoy the convenience of navigating by GPS chart plotter, but there is no art or romance in it. A chart plotter is all push button and cursor with any resultant specific details available in whatever scale or format you desire. In this age of computerized instant gratification, the paper chart takes a bit of work, but you get to look and touch an artistic canvas, discern subtle details by your own eyes, and use the chart as a backdrop to mentally visualize the transit from point A to B.
Give me a paper chart, compass, parallel rules, close approximation of the starting point and average speed, and I can guide a boat via dead reckoning (DR) to just about any point on a chart’s navigable waters, even in the face of a thick blanket of fog or shroud of night. To those unfamiliar with the art of traditional navigation methods it can seem like necromancy, and perhaps to some extent it is.
My friends were certainly amazed the first time I navigated a complete voyage by dead reckoning, taking them almost 40 nautical miles through thick fog via an unseen narrow channel and then over open ocean to meet up with another narrow channel at voyage’s end. It was wondrous enough that I got us to our destination without ever seeing land except at departure and arrival, but I was also able to successfully gain visual sight of all five sea buoys on the route. Mind you, I must confess to being lucky, or under Poseidon’s watch, because that navigation was just too perfect, and I’ve yet to make another DR voyage that perfectly on course.
Charts are magical. GPS chart plotters are just plastic viewing screens with a bunch of interior computer chips and a need for electricity. Charts might get inconveniently wet (or worse, blown overboard should you bring one topsides), but chart plotters can just quit working. My nine-year-old Raymarine chart plotter gave up the ghost the other day. A bit annoying, but no big deal cause I’ve always got the paper charts in reserve. I’m not so sure that such an event would be “no big deal” with the rest of the world’s recreational boating public.
My grandfather and stepfather, both of whom contributed to the evolution of my nautical skills, used to joke about the pandemonium on the water that would ensue should a GPS satellite or two go on the blink. That was back during the emergence of GPS chart plotters when most mariners—professional and recreational—still learned traditional navigation. Now it seems that few up-and-coming recreational mariners even bother with the traditional methods. Woe be unto them should a satellite, or even just their individual ship-borne GPS unit, give out on a cold, dark, stormy night.
But enough of any such “doom and gloom” scenarios, as I was vying to speak of the “beauty” and “artistry” of nautical paper charts. And the subject matter of “nautical paper charts” only came to me earlier this week, when I opened a box containing a treasure trove of nautical charts.
They were my above-mentioned step-father’s charts—collected, I assume, over the past 60 years or so, and representing all of his voyages, both those actually travelled and those only dreamt of.
The former, covering the seas bounding Nova Scotia, Maine, Massachusetts, Belize, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Greece and Turkey, are obvious. I long heard his sea tales, and his handwriting lightly adorns these charts, giving me visual representation of his thought process as he navigated from each Point A to Point B.
The latter—Newfoundland, West Indies, Venezuela, Brazil, and quite a few places I have yet to identify—are notable for their lack of written adornment.
I can only assume that they are places he longed to navigate and explore. I see this art and want to navigate and explore these places, too.
If “Word of the Year” nominations by the various entities that name such are based on usage, then 2016’s Word of the Year has got to be “racist.” From what I can tell, everyone is either a “racist” or declaring someone else to be “racist.” It is, without a doubt, 2016’s catchall word that defines exactly who one is. If you’ve been called racist, then you must assuredly be one. And if you’ve called somebody a racist, then it obviously (logical fallacy aside) must be assumed that you are not a racist.
So, go ahead, make sure you’re not tagged with 2016’s epithet of disdain and launch a pre-emptive strike by calling me a racist. Hell, I’m questioning the usage of the word, so by golly-gee I must be one.
Still hesitating?
OK, well, I think Black Lives Matter is a flawed organization that has way overstepped its original point of being and led by a group that relies on the promotion of logical fallacies to inject the idea of “racism” into just about every facet of Black American life (Black Life Difficulty Equals Whiteys’ Fault).
Consider: Black cop under tutelage of Black chief o’ police kills Black man who may or may not have been armed and BLM helps incite two nights of rioting over what it deems yet another case of “systemic, institutionalized racism.”
Yeah, that makes sense….
Call me racist, but I believe the BLM mantra that there is widespread systemic, institutionalized racism in America is horseshit. No doubt that pockets of it exist here and there, but if it was in any way “widespread” or “systemic” there is no way that Barack Obama would have been elected to serve as the President of the United States of America for not just one…but two terms in office. Think about it, Black folks only make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population, which means that we supposedly widespread systemically institutionalized racist Mofos put him into office…twice.
Awkward (yeah, the phrasing, too)…
Can’t dwell on that fact now, can we? So guess you’d better shout out “racist” so as to stifle this line of thinking.
What, still hesitating? Can’t call me racist quite yet because there just might be some element of truth in my argument?
OK, “All Lives Matter!”
That usually works. According the BLM and its supporters that statement marginalizes and tries to co-opt the BLM cause and is thus racist.
If you still haven’t called me racist, let me try one more incitement: “Black Lives Matter is Racist!”
Tch-Tch-Tch!
From what I understand that’s a big no-no. According to BLM proponents, People of Color cannot be racists—only Whitey can. Being a dumb Cracker I don’t quite understand the logical reasoning behind this, but it has something to do with “White Privilege” and the belief that “oppressed” people can’t be racist.
I believe the whole political correct construct of “privilege” represents an ad hominem fallacy, or, to put it more plainly, is donkeyshit squared. As for being oppressed, well, if there truly is widespread, systemic institutionalized oppression of American Black folks, you’re just going to have to blame that Black guy living in the White House, cause he’s been in charge of the institutions for almost eight years now.
—M.J. Moye, likely now deemed a “racist,” but personally believes otherwise….
of her responses served as non sequiturs as they weren’t really addressing the issues I was originally posting about, and a couple of others relied on the oft-used-by-the-Left “red herring” and “strawman” fallacies. And one just served as a non-sensical sarcastic rant. 
