Impeaching Trump and Faith in the Status Quo

Sep 25, 2019 | Culture, News, Politics, Television

Last night’s impending impeachment compounds other recent lessons affirming my contention that America is dwindling, slipping into a culture of faith, not reason. I think it’s an insidious decline because America coasts on the Industrial Revolution’s aftereffects and its progressive byproduct, today’s technology with advancement in medicine, aeronautics, science, robotics and artificial intelligence.

Yet regression is real.

Two recent cases in point come from CBS News, press that I’ve praised (read my post here). The first instance involves two anchors for the CBS News streaming app, Vladimir Duthiers and Anne-Marie Green, both of whom thoroughly and feverishly endorsed the concept, if it can be called that, of divine intervention after reporting on a child’s brave attempt to survive her father’s suicide and attempted murder.

After the man jumped with his daughter in his arms in front of a New York City subway train, the girl survived, apparently by lying down between tracks. After the deadly leap, someone jumped down and assisted in rescuing the child by guiding her out of danger, instructing her not to look at the dead father and, instead, to “crawl like a puppy”, treating the child as a child, encouraging her to come out from underneath the train. Green and Duthiers raved instead about what Green calls “divine intervention”, trivializing the girl’s intelligence and the heroism. It’s an instance of irrelevant, inappropriate and improper editorializing, really proselytizing for faith, during what should have been a somber report on suicide and an act of heroism.

Also on CBS News, billionaire media titan Oprah and bestselling author Ta-Nehisi Coates appeared with Gayle King, Tony Dokoupil and Anthony Mason on CBS This Morning to discuss a new novel being promoted by Oprah in partnership with Apple Books via Oprah’s book club. The hosts were interested in knowing whether Oprah’s running for president. There was one line during the entire segment about the novel. The author was reduced to fragments.

Here, faith lies in the cult of a woman’s personality, in this case Oprah. As I’ve written before, the cult of Oprah Winfrey is entirely based on Oprah Winfrey. She is the ultimate narcissist. Everything she does is centered upon herself in crass, vulgar and undignified ways and means. That most of her musings appear in superficial bursts on self-improvement makes her narcissism more insidious.

Consider her appearance on CBS This Morning. Rather than invite the author of a potential new bestseller to appear on the program to answer informed and intelligent questions about the plot, characters and theme, the trio, declining to disclose that one of the hosts maintains an intimate personal relationship with Oprah Winfrey, proceeded to defer to Oprah — strictly on the grounds that she’d bestowed attention upon a new novel, whose author sat silently and obediently by her side. Coates was asked to speak once or twice. Though this is presumably done for the sake of “diversity and inclusion”, note that the intellectual was sidelined and excluded.

The religion for this particular application of faith is multiculturalism. The audience learned next to nothing about the book; not the price, not the publisher, not the publication date, certainly not the characters, plot or meaning — really, nothing was learned in any substantial sense. However, the audience did learn that Oprah read the book twice and that her friend Gayle is in the middle of reading it, too, and that Gayle called Oprah to find out what’s going to happen next.

This is the culture of belief in the superficial; facts and analysis matter less than faith in personalities, small talk, impressions, what others think because others think it and trends.

Greta Thunberg is another example. I call this braided girl the anti-child. The teenaged environmentalist and activist is clearly disturbed. Her faith that the world will end in 12 years based on apocalyptic preachings is apparently encouraged by her environmentalist-activist parents. I can think of few transgressions worse than exploiting a child for religious purposes. The new religionists tout environmentalism, feminism, multiculturalism, statism and total government control or totalitarianism and they are wildly irrational and overzealous. Propagandizing this delusional, hostile, wayward child became a media sensation.

That a child on an internationally sponsored press tour preaching alarmist rhetoric gets more press at the expense of examining the fact that millions of Americans suffer and struggle to pay for unaffordable health care after nearly 10 years of the monstrosity known as ObamaCare, enacted as the preposterously named Affordable Care Act, or that rebels launched a historic protest against Communism in Hong Kong or that the Islamic dictatorship of Iran escalates acts of war against the West is an unmistakable sign of regression.

I’ve encountered everyday signs, too. During a recent airport ride with a Lyft driver, I observed the danger of religious zealotry.

Upon activating the ride, I had pre-designated the destination airline. But the driver asked which airline when she arrived to give me a ride to the airport. I told her the airline. The driver would ask again — and again — which airline. The most disturbing part of the trip involved her explicit proclamations of belief that God is in control of life on earth. As the driver of the vehicle, she was in control of mine. Accordingly, I remained silent. Upon each mention of God, I diverted the conversation from her belief in a supernatural being. At one point, she explained that she believes God controls her every action. In that moment, she struck me as mentally unstable. As we came closer to the airport, and she asked again which airline, she slowed to five miles an hour — a rate of speed she maintained for the trip’s duration — as I sat in silence. She rambled about speed, God and what she called the need to believe in obedience.

This calls to mind Starbucks’ new Sirens blend, another example of belief without evidence — in feminism.

Starbucks introduced the blend this week in an email professing the company’s commitment to women. I have never heard of a coffee blend being produced on the basis of discriminating on behalf of one’s sex. Starbucks, which claims it’ll donate some of the blend’s revenue to women’s groups, broke the mold by singling out a single sex, excluding the opposite sex, with charity toward women because they’re women. This act sanctions feminism’s premise that identity is based on sex. Early advocates of what was once called women’s liberation promoted feminism as a means of achieving equality with men. Today’s feminists have dropped this pretense. Big business takes this offshoot of egalitarianism, which at once segregates and blurs the two sexes, on faith.

Last night’s announcement that America’s Speaker of the House supports an inquiry into impeaching the American president over a telephone call with a foreign leader is the ultimate profession, however, of faith. She literally declared an inquiry into impeaching the president without evidence.

I was an early Trump critic long before it was considered acceptable, let alone hip or “trending”. I argued against Trump on my blog. I did so repeatedly and on principle. I did so after Trump was elected president. But Trump’s supporters, whatever their faults and errors, are right to dub the Democrats’ delusional opposition as Trump Derangement Syndrome. The opposition to this president is worse in its irrationalism than the opposition to the previous president (which includes mine).

Today, President Trump released a transcript of his conversation with the president of the Ukraine — the supposed flashpoint for the Democrats’ grounds for impeachment. If and when the Democrats pursue impeachment on these flimsy grounds, the contrast between a president who takes America and its interests seriously — and, whatever his vulgarity, stupidity and errors, Trump does — and the party that wants the government to control every aspect of every individual’s life will be inescapable to the most disinterested, apathetic and asinine American voter.

“The House must impeach,” 2020’s Democratic Party presidential frontrunner Sen. Elizabeth Warren posted yesterday on Twitter. “It must start today.”

In fact, in accordance with frontrunner Warren’s wishes, impeachment did. Senator Warren is the matriarch of a new Inquisition. With her radical environmentalism and feminism, vehement opposition to capitalism in favor of statism, attempts to rationalize explicitly fraudulent multiculturalism, redounding to her authoritarianism, Sen. Warren is the ideal preacher for today’s faith in the statist — and regressive — status quo. America’s been dwindling from decades of welfare statism. The United States is dimmer after 50 years of Earth Day and poorer after 10 years of ObamaCare. As Americans strive to live better, facing the scowl of an anti-child, the congregation of brash believers gathers, chants and peddles influence, preparing to strike in a grab for power.

 

 

Jesus Garcia, Dolce & Gabbana vs. Elton John

Mar 15, 2015 | Culture, News, Politics

The climax of the New Left in American politics continues, built as much on faith as is the rise of the religious right among conservatives, bolstering the idea that a new dark age looms over Western civilization. For those inclined to think that’s hyperbole, if the success of Duck Dynasty and its supporters’ intimidation campaign to pressure a television network to rescind a suspension does not demonstrate wider cultural acceptance of archaic ideas, there’s today’s stark battle of words and ideas between gay celebrities, too. More on this later.

For now, consider the possible election of a New Left blank slate, merely the latest such candidate, as mayor of Chicago. His name is Jesus Garcia, though apparently he goes by the name Chuy (pronounced chewy), and he is the subject of a blistering report in the New York Times. The article by Julie Bosmanmarch begins:

When asked for his position on the pressing issues facing Chicago, Jesus G. Garcia, the man trying to unseat Mayor Rahm Emanuel, often has an answer — and sometimes more than one. When Mr. Garcia was recently asked what he would do about the red-light cameras that endlessly irk Chicagoans, he said that he would keep some of them. But almost two weeks ago, he had said he would get rid of them all. On the nearly 50 public schools that Mr. Emanuel closed during his first term, Mr. Garcia initially said that he would reopen some of them. Later, he said that he has “not committed” to such a move. As recently as January, Mr. Garcia said he opposed using public parkland for an Obama presidential library. Then this month, he reversed course, saying that he would support using parkland for a library.

So, in the wake of other New Left blank slate candidates in recent years, such as Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio—to the extent they were blank slates to obscure, distract or divert from their New Left political philosophy—how do Chicagoans respond to this elusive candidate who “presents himself as a warm, inclusive alternative” to Chicago’s incumbent mayor, himself a New Leftist, Rahm Emanuel, nicknamed “Rahmbo” for being an abrasive power-luster?

Judging by Garcia’s unexpected electoral success, pushing Emanuel into a runoff as a New Left Democrat who’s too pro-capitalist (!) for Chicago, and the Times piece, Chicagoans may be ready to swap a government-controlled economy for a government-controlled life. This is what they’re likely to get under Jesus Garcia, 58, a county commissioner, former alderman and Chicago community organizer like Obama. Garcia, who came to America as a child, admires Cesar Chavez and seeks to impose “social justice” with more government control imposed by more police officers, giving government-run schools “back to the people” which usually means less school choice, more school dictates and higher taxes. As the Times described the views of one voter, Rosa Alfaro: “[S]he is not sure how Mr. Garcia would fix the pension crisis, or pay for the new police officers he has promised to hire, or improve the struggling public schools. But she is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

In the words of one of his biggest backers, people have faith in Jesus Garcia: “They’ll trust him, they’ll believe in him.”

With faith—in the state (“public” schools, TSA, NSA, DWP, ObamaCare, etc.), in God, in the collective—rising above reason, and Mayor DeBlasio and President Obama among others as examples of radical New Left politicians taking enormous power over people’s lives in real, demonstrable terms, Jesus Garcia may become mayor of Chicago. Will Chicago’s people have faith in the blank slate Jesus Garcia? No one in Chicagoland should be surprised if and when people will.

Rational, secular and freedom-loving Americans should look to pop superstar Elton John for an example of what to do when others go by faith and announce an intention to impose their dogma on everyone. Gay fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, a former couple who created Dolce & Gabbana, told an Italian magazine that they oppose gay adoptions. In true Duck Dynasty/Islamic state/Iranian ayatollah fashion, the gay designers proclaimed:

The only family is the traditional one. No chemical offsprings and rented uterus: life has a natural flow, there are things that should not be changed.”

Speaking as a religious fundamentalist, Dolce said that procreation “must be an act of love”, adding: “You are born to a mother and a father – or at least that’s how it should be…I call children of chemistry, synthetic children. Uteri [for] rent, semen chosen from a catalog. The family is not a fad. In it there is a supernatural sense of belonging.”

When Elton John, who with his married partner has “synthetic” kids, promptly denounced them and called for a boycott of Dolce & Gabbana, pointing out that in vitro fertilization, which the Pope also condemns, adds value to the lives of heterosexuals and homosexuals alike, the designers affirmed their position and denounced Elton John as being close-minded, a favorite ploy of religionists, projecting their own bigotry to deflect from their irrationality.

This is the new faith, the new dogma, the new religion, same as the old. Watch for conservatives to rally around Dolce & Gabbana. Watch for leftists to rally against the designers, if not exactly around Elton John, a great artist with an independent, rational mind. The backlash against the New Left‘s incessant egalitarianism, pushing the transgendered as the same as gays, for instance, and other irrational ideas such as state-sponsored abortion and health care, is a stronger, more virulent strain of religious faith in fundamentalism. Besides the kneeling quarterback, Duck Dynasty patriarch, preacher, priest, pope, rabbi, mullah or ayatollah, add the gay fashion designer to those doubling down for a newer, darker age of faith, not reason.

It is fast approaching, it is happening and it is real. Watch it. Look to the rare, exceptional individual, such as Elton John, to act like a man, which is to say to act in his self-interest, defend his values—in this case, his family—and speak out against injustice with neither equivocation nor hesitation. He is the hero. He is the one who acts, who matters. He is the civilized man. He is the enlightened man: a man of both reason and action. This type of man is the avenger. Emulate this type of man if you want to live free.

Go ahead and feel free to boycott Dolce & Gabbana—also Duck Dynasty and absolutely reject and oppose dealings with religious dictatorships such as Iran—but above all stop putting others first and speak up for reason and justice. Start by naming the irrational when you see it, hear it and notice it going unnoticed, silently sanctioned, implying everyone’s consent. Don’t go quietly into the darkest times, places and chambers. Think, study, speak up, self-activate and don’t let up. Do it fast—or be damned to live under someone’s “supernatural sense of belonging”, whatever New Left or conservative religion or gang claims you as one of its own.

Merchandise links

Buy The Diving Board by Elton John

Buy The Union by Elton John & Leon Russell

Reference links

New York Times: “In Chicago Mayor’s Race, Garcia Is Upbeat About Prospects but Vague on Plans” By Julie Bosmanmarch 

My Thoughts on Activism by Scott Holleran 

Music Review: The Union by Elton John & Leon Russell

Music Review: The Diving Board by Elton John