Good Morning, and Happy Martin Luther King Day.
1 Priorities, priorities…Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga) has made his career out of the fact that he was an associate of Dr. King during the civil rights movement. On Sunday’s”This Week” on ABC’, Lewis said on he would not vote for legislation that prevents a government shutdown if it did not first resolve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. “I, for one, will not vote on government funding until we get a deal for DACA,” the alleged icon said.
That’s right: Lewis, and presumably many of his colleagues, would waste millions of dollars and interfere with life and daily needs of American citizens to obtain a path to citizenship for 800,000 currently illegal residents, and create a permanent incentive for foreign citizens to break our laws so they can get their kids an entitlement. It’s more important to give illegal residents what they have no right to have, then to ensure legal citizens what their taxes pay for. This is the unethical result when ideology takes precedence over common sense.
2. Fake news also takes precedence, apparently. “Trump’s Words Eclipsing Deal For Dreamers” reads the above-the-fold headline on today’s New York Times. There are many other similar headlines on display. If, in fact, it is true that the President’s (alleged, disputed, reported initially via hearsay, denied by the speaker, and intentionally misrepresented by critics even if the alleged version is accepted) words have a decisive impact on a DACA deal, then the DACA adherents were posturing all along. What difference does it make to DACA what the President says off-the cuff in a private meeting? Apparently it is more important to Democrats and the “resistance” to denigrate the President than to accomplish substantive policy goals. Good to know.
UPDATE: I just read the opinion of conservative blogger Liz Shield after I wrote this. She said,
My position on sh!ithole-gate is this: It’s not appropriate for the President of the United States use this kind of language. Now, this was a private meeting and perhaps Trump did not think the Democrats would sabotage the DACA negotiations and, in this regard, Trump is terribly naive. There will be no good faith discussions on any policy because the policy of the Democrats is that Trump must FAIL, even at the expense of the Democrat constituencies they claim to be fighting so hard for. That is their position and I hope the president gets hip to this soon. Instead, the conversation we are having is not about policy but rather that Trump is a RACIST. Which is, coincidentally, the sole platform held by his political enemies.
Pretty much. The last sentence is unfair, though: their platform is that the President is a racist, senile, crazy, stupid, a Nazi, a traitor, a liar, a sexual predator and not really President.
3. What, no fava beans? I saw this story a while ago, and it almost slipped by. That would have been a tragedy.
UK doctor Simon Bramhall had burning his initials onto two patients’ livers after operating on them. It was kind of a signature thing, you see. He made the markings with an argon beam, and they will eventually disappear. The SBs were discovered after one of the patients had another surgery performed by a second doctor, who said something like, “Uh, are you aware that somebody signed your liver?” Both of the operations Bramhall signed off on were long and difficult, and the doctor said he was tired , stressed, and used bad judgment. Diane Feinstein would understand!
A judge was less sympathetic. Bramhall pleaded guilty in December to assault by beating. He was sentenced to perform 12-months of community service and to pay a £10,000 ($13,732.90) fine. He will perform 120 hours of work without pay. The judge added, in handing down the sentence, “This was conduct born of professional arrogance of such magnitude that it strayed into criminal.”
Ya think?
Bramhall was suspended from his position at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, then later resigned during an internal investigation into the matter. He currently works for the National Health Service. The General Medical Council, which regulates doctors in the United Kingdom, issued him a formal warning last February.
That’s right. He’s still a doctor. Even though he signed patients’ livers.
Yes, this is the national health care system that the U.S. is urged to emulate. Where surgeons can prove they are completely nuts, have no respect for their patients, take outrageous liberties, and then get sent back to work. “Next time, just sign the organs you’ve removed, OK?”
Ethics Alarms 
I’m not so sure about this.
Seems to me Trump has been angling all along to force a deal, and say what you like about him, he does have some talent when it comes to deal making.
The deal in his mind, I’m thinking, has always been The Wall for DACA. He’s said as much, and he has no hesitation about playing hardball.
It is as cynical a ploy as they come, and I give him even money on making it work. Especially if people like you are in effect blaming the Dems for threatening not to give in to him on it.
The last time we had a shutdown it was over the deficit, as I recall (remember when the GOP was anti-deficit?). The human fate of a million people who’ve lived here for decades, up against the Stupid Wall, is nowhere near a moral equivalence.
I hate the idea of a shutdown, but I do think that choice is being cynically manipulated by a master manipulator. (Who is not John Lewis, to be clear).
1. The deficit/debt is a potentially existential problem, but of course the shutdown was hypocritical grandstanding, just like this is.
2. Oh, I agree that Trump may be pulling strings here. This kind of proffered deal is exactly the kind of thing I kept wishing Obama would do, the kind of think FDR did, and what effective Presidents do.
3. The human fate of people who have lived here for decades, breaking the law for every second of it.
3. They were children, and they broke the law through no fault of their own.
Let’s say there’s a situation where a toddler is brought to a jewelry store and left unattended on a counter, and a clerk stupidly leaves a tray out within reach of the tray, it sees shiny and crams a $1000 ring into it’s diaper.
Well, it’s obvious that it’s not the kid’s fault, it doesn’t have the faculties to understand things like property or theft.
They don’t get to keep the ring.
I like it, but the ring needs to have some kind of dependency trait to it like heroin.
….or maybe the ring is Sauron’s One Ring to rule them all!
I think the better analogy is that the parent steals the ring and then gives the ring to their child 18 years later as a gift.
The ring should still be given back by the individual, as it is not theirs.
The argument to claim this is a weak analogy is that using a ring, as an analogy, overinflates the claimed damage of one child receiving the “stolen” benefits of American citizenship from 320,000,000 legally made citizens. The reversal, however, is that whether or not the damages are diluted across the board to insignificance is that it’s a rationalization of “its not that bad”.
Chris wrote, “They were children, and they broke the law through no fault of their own.”
Unethical rationalization.
These people are no longer children, they’ve known for years that they were and are illegally in the United States and they’ve done nothing to change that status and now they expect the USA to bastardize our immigration laws to make an exception for a bunch of whiny unethical illegal immigrants; this is crap! I have absolutely no sympathy for any of the “dreamers” that haven’t take the appropriate steps to become citizens; they can just shut up, get out, and take their illegal parents with them. Deport them all one family at a time.
If these people want to be in the United States legally then they need to take the appropriate steps to become legal immigrants. These idiots that have been brainwashed by the political left into thinking that they are special and entitled, they aren’t entitled to a damn thing – get out!
It’s not the responsibility of the United States and its citizens to change, ignore, our bastardize immigration laws so that those that are breaking those immigration laws can stay in OUR country legally, it is the responsibility of those that are breaking those immigration laws to take the steps to become legal immigrants.
I will not agree to bastardizing our immigration laws to fit the wants of those that are abusing existing laws.
Ovet two decades ago a friend of mine applied for a green card, was an illegal, with the known intent of joining the Marine Corps which he did. He is now a citizen, from what I have read Trump has made this path even easier. If they want to be citizens there has been a path for some time.
The Trump campaign platformn was heavy on stopping illegal immigration, he has support on this, dreamers do as well, Democrats could us a legislative win, especially on dreamers. They will blow it and immigration including dreamers will get done by Republicans. This will help to further sink democrats chances of coming back.
Yes, It’s the wrong aggrieved party. It’s not OUR fault they were brought here.
I’ve always wondered why they don’t even try to get citizenship, but demand it. It’s not how it works anywhere else.
If you rob a bank, your kids don’t get to keep the money because “it wasn’t their fault.”
“The human fate of people who have lived here for decades, breaking the law for every second of it.”
The left and the right have very different hot buttons. One of the right’s hottest buttons, it seems to me (and I’ll admit my bias up front), is the passionate belief that Somebody, Somewhere, Sometime, must have gotten away with Something, and by god, heaven and earth will not be right until the balance is redressed.
In other words, the belief that the pursuit of the letter of the law is itself an honorable Cause above nearly all others.
The fact that HT’s “toddler in a jewelry store” example could be considered, by him and others, even remotely morally equivalent to DACA is a case in point.
There are virtues other than abiding by the law, though the likes of Nixon, Arpaio, Moore, and other extreme-right avatars have always touted “law and order” over justice. On this MLK day it’s enlightening to go back and read his Letter from Birmingham Jail about the difference.
Click to access Letter_Birmingham_Jail.pdf
The facts about many of the DACA kids (and the Salvadorans) do not begin and end with the illegality of their coming here, nor even with their complicity in the government benignly ignoring their presence. They also include facts on the ground about tax-paying, service in the military, and contributions to the work force.
Neither do the ethical issues raised by their presence begin and end with “breaking the law.” They also have to do with compassion, taking into account “time served,” and considering the implications for humans’ lives under one choice or another.
The law itself generally contemplates statutes of limitations, and situational considerations for sentencing (we live to regret exceptions to this, like the “3 strikes and you’re out” drug laws). Our moral code, as expressed in judgment on issue like those raised by DACA, ought at least to be as forgiving as the law.
We don’t have to always give up all of our humanity just because a law got broken somewhere, sometime, by someone.
IMHO.
The fact that HT’s “toddler in a jewelry store” example could be considered, by him and others, even remotely morally equivalent to DACA is a case in point.
Yes, the idea that “you don’t get to keep the ring” is equivalent to “you don’t get to stay in the country you’ve lived in the majority of your life since you were a child” astounds me too, Charles.
It’s not morally equivalent, and he didn’t say it was. But it is similar in important ways.
A child isn’t capable of mens rea in the situation HT described. Hence, he couldn’t legally meet the elements of the crime, since theft is not a strict liability defense. Returning the stolen property is, of course, a requirement, as HT explained.
Being brought into the country illegally as a child is similar in that the child illegal lacked mens rea. But the penalty for illegal entry is generally not prison, it is deportation — giving back the ring. A child here illegally can only be made whole by a) leaving the country or b) some kind of legislation permitting him to stay. It is not a “moral” matter, it’s a legal one.
Robert Bork once wrote, in a book I read, something like, “It has been said you cannot legislate morality. In fact, we legislate little else.” Our morality is bound up in immigration law. It may not be your morality, but it is collectively ours.
You’re omitting one other fact; the theft of a piece of jewelry has a victim – the previous owner of the jewelry.
The presence of a child, if one assumes a productive life (true in many though assuredly not all cases) means there is not even a “social” victim, much less a harmed individual.
Again, the Borkian equation of morality with the law is typical of the Right’s viewpoint: NOTHING, not even morality, is above the law.
As a generally left-minded person, I am very much aware of the history of how the law departs from morality. Generally the law lags changes in morality (not a bad thing, it’s the way of the world), and gets corrected in the breach. (See, for example, slavery, voting rights).
The victim of illegal immigration is all of us. No matter how productive they are here, as a group, they are known to be a net financial drain on society, a drain that the citizens of this country specifically sought to avoid with laws against illegal immigration.
No, that’s not what he was saying, but I understand why you’d draw that conclusion (Mention the name “Bork” and left-leaners everywhere blanch). He was saying that morality is necessarily the driving force behind laws. Would you not say that morality is behind the impetus to pass a law favoring the DACA recipients? I certainly would.
Being left or right has nothing to do with it, despite your certitude. I have no disagreement other than that to offer with your paragraph, but that doesn’t change anything. We shouldn’t ignore the law because it becomes dated or creates an inequity. Rather, we should resolve it in a way that both addresses the inequity, (in this case the innocent DACA recipients) and the root cause (illegal immigration.) We didn’t ignore Jim Crow did we, despite the time it took?
Uh, did you cite the wrong source in that comment, Glenn? The CATO article you linked to does not say that illegal immigrants are a net drain on society. Quite the opposite, in fact.
You’re quite right, Chris, I linked the wrong place. I meant to link this CBO report that estimates a cost of the DREAM act (DACA legalized) around 26 billion dollars over ten years.
But I think the other report makes a nice counterpoint to it. CATO obviously has a dog in this fight, and their methodology is highly suspect — they use the H-1B visa program to estimate the impact of a population of an entirely different composition.
But leaving that aside, the CATO study completely ignores the fact that were the DACA recipients not in the United States, the jobs they have would go to American citizens. It seems unlikely to me that DACA recipients are better educated that most Americans who would replace them.
In short, CATO’s study doesn’t answer the question it purports to. If we simply eliminated the DACA recipients’ jobs outright, and calculated that cost, it would be as they suggest. But the reality is that if the DACA recipients were kicked out today, Americans would have those jobs tomorrow — Americans who need them.
Let me take a bit of a sidetrack – the issue of American jobs vs. Immigrants.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the US is now near or very close to zero-population growth. If we’re going to maintain growth, if we’re going to have young people to fund our increasingly aged society, we’re going to have to look aggressively at immigration.
A cautionary tale is Japan: a country that has almost xenophobically resisted immigration, and is facing slowed growth, massive debt for the few young people they have…
There are some pluses to the Japan situation, but a lot of negatives too. It’s incumbent on us to figure out some positive way to invite immigration.
You’re quite right, Chris, I linked the wrong place. I meant to link this CBO report that estimates a cost of the DREAM act (DACA legalized) around 26 billion dollars over ten years.
That still doesn’t prove they are a “net drain on society.” You’d have to look at the economic benefits as well as the costs in order to do that.
Not looking at the benefits is also why you assume the jobs they have would go to native-born Americans; you’re ignoring their effect on job creation.
Illegals go to school with MY money, go to college FREE paid for with MY money… such that I cannot even send MY children to college.
No victims my ASS
What an ignorant, hostile comment. Illegal immigrants are not eligible for FAFSA. Some states do allow illegal immigrants to obtain grants, but if you’re seriously arguing that whatever you pay in taxes toward these grants is so grand that it’s causing you to be unable to send your children to college, I’d love to see your math on that.
Or you can keep treating illegal immigrants as scapegoats for your own problems.
Bite me, Chris. When you have gained a little real life experience with providing for your family, your kids, then you can comment.
Over HALF of my income is stolen from me every day, given to people who do nothing but SIT on their asses, making more babies who learn to do the same. Illegals go to school on my dime, all the way through college. ENOUGH.
The overwhelming burden of taxation IS a major reason my kids cannot just go to college. We do not take vacations, or drive new cars, or have luxury houses. We do not have Apple Watches, Alexa, or eat out.
We earn our money, and use it to keep the modest roof over our heads, keep our old cars in repair, and food on the table. This leaves precious little for saving for college, or retirement.
Yet progressives always want more, while denigrating me for being born white, male, and choosing to be a Christian.
The Deplorables just got you a tax break. Please, Chris, put your money where your mouth is. Donate that to your god, the socialist government, so they can use it better than you know how to. Quit advocating for more of MY money, and put up your own. Progressives rarely do.
Otherwise, shut up.
Bias is making you very, very stupid here, slick.
Bite me, Chris. When you have gained a little real life experience with providing for your family, your kids, then you can comment.
I’ll take this as an admission that you cannot do the math and show me evidence of your original claim that the reason you cannot send your children to college is because of taxpayer-funded financial aid to illegal immigrants.
Over HALF of my income is stolen from me every day, given to people who do nothing but SIT on their asses, making more babies who learn to do the same. Illegals go to school on my dime, all the way through college. ENOUGH.
The overwhelming burden of taxation IS a major reason my kids cannot just go to college.
You are majorly moving the goalposts, but you already knew that. You originally claimed that your kids can’t go to college because some of your taxes go to help illegal immigrants go to college. Now you seem to be indicting the entire tax system, as well as welfare programs for citizens, and saying that that is why you cannot send your children to college. This new argument is far more plausible and perhaps more supportable than your original one, though it still lacks evidence.
We do not take vacations, or drive new cars, or have luxury houses. We do not have Apple Watches, Alexa, or eat out.
We earn our money, and use it to keep the modest roof over our heads, keep our old cars in repair, and food on the table. This leaves precious little for saving for college, or retirement.
As someone who grew up in a poor working household that received government aid (including financial aid for college), I sympathize with you. As someone who grew up in a poor working households that received government aid (including financial aid for college), I implore you to stop blaming people even poorer than you are for the problems in this country.
The Deplorables just got you a tax break. Please, Chris, put your money where your mouth is. Donate that to your god, the socialist government, so they can use it better than you know how to. Quit advocating for more of MY money, and put up your own. Progressives rarely do.
Otherwise, shut up.
I’ve advocated no such thing here or anywhere else on this site. Your partisan hysteria is now causing you to see things. Calm down.
Ethically, it is probably justified to take back a ring that has been illegally gifted to a child, even if said child has had that ring for years or even decades.
Ethically, it is much more harder to justify deporting someone who has illegally lived in the country since they were a child. One’s empathy for someone being drive from the only home they have ever known, even if their home was given to them via illicit means, obviously extends further than one’s empathy for someone losing a ring that was given to them via illicit means.
Empathy is not the only ethical value at stake here, but it *is* an ethical value, and that value matters a lot more here than it would in the ring analogy.
I agree that that is a fine ethical value, and it is definitely operative in this case.
But we also have fairness, citizenship, responsibility, respect, and trustworthiness to deal with.
If I, through no fault of my own, built my house on another person’s property, would I be within my rights to demand he/she cede that property to me? I can’t see how.
These children have known for a long time they built their house on another person’s property, but now they feel comfortable demanding that property as theirs. That’s not ethical at all. It violates the ethical values of honesty in conduct, integrity, courtesy, decency, accountability, self-restraint, equity, and empathy toward the American people, upon whom they are trespassing.
The courageous thing to do would be for them to accept their fate, return to their country, and apply for citizenship if that’s what they want. It would also embrace the enabling values of fortitude, honor, and humility.
On the other side, we have to accept that they did not intend trespass, and acknowledge the hardships they face in the remedy. But the remedy would be incomplete of both the result and cause of the problem were not addressed.
It may seem that way, but it isn’t. We know that laws are imperfect, and that it matters how DACA recipients got to be outlaws.
Having said that, the correct response is what’s really being debated here. What is the right way to deal with people who are on the wrong side of the law absent mens rea even though that’s not an applicable standard in a strict liability situation like this?
Normally, this is addressed by way of the trial system, but we can’t put an estimated 800,000 on trial individually. So we’re going to have to come up with something else, and people like me think that has to start with making sure it doesn’t happen again. The DACA situation is the perfect (and totally just) lever to move the Democrats on border security, because it was the lack of border security that necessitates correcting the problem.
So if Trump were to just allow a clean DACA bill without borders security implications, and the Democrats do what they’ve sworn to do and resist his border security demands, in a decade or so we’ll have to do DACA all over again. In other words, the definition of insanity made manifest.
I think there’s room to agree between your viewpoint and mine. The critical thing is whether Trump believes that “border security” is incomplete with The Wall. Remember, he was offered several billions in border security, but somehow felt it was inadequate.
Sorry, I mean to say “incomplete without The Wall.”
Well, I think a physical barrier is very important, myself, and I think Trump and others can be forgiven for feeling the same way. Normally, when we want to prevent entry, we build some kind of barrier.
I think he and others have said it’s not necessary to build a continuous wall all along the border, and I agree with that. But some element of a physical barrier would seem to be necessary.
Certainly you’re aware that there are already physical barriers along the border? They aren’t everywhere, of course, but most experts think they’re a woefully expensive and ineffective method of border security anyway.
They are still necessary. No border is ever going to be perfect, and what you and others wish to do is make the perfect the enemy of the good, because it suits your purposes.
But a high % of the illegal immigration is NOT over the land non-barrier that people are shouting for- it’s ON PLANES. It’s people who come here legally to visit and overstay. I am at work and can’t find proof, but this is an acknowledged truth by both sides I’ve heard in the last few years. No amount of money spent on a WALL will fix that problem. Many of the DACA adults didn’t come over here by being carried through the desert, and we’re talking a LOT of years ago for them. The wall idea is woefully inadequate for what is actually happening NOW.
One of the cleverer ripostes in support of your viewpoint, Becky, is
Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), a former CIA officer and generally a White House ally, saying, “People that are dealing with this issue know that a third-century solution to a 21st-century problem is not going to fix this long-term.”
I suppose 40% is a relatively high percentage, which is the number I see bandied about as the ones who come by air.. Still, 60% that would be affected by the wall argues for it.
The reason to begin now to limit immigration is to *save*, if you will, the original demographic of the United States. That is one aspect of ‘all this’.
The point is to reverse the immigration trends set in motion during the Sixties. This phenomenon has ideological roots. It was done for ideological reasons. That ideology must be recognized, seen, understood, rejected and replaced by another.
Obviously, this is a social-political issue, and obviously the sides will be taken. The Domocrats, if I understand things right, are taking the ‘immigrants’ side. Joe Biden spoke of this when he prognosticated the changing demographics. Here it is:
It is imperative that white people become aware of this issue, recognize what it will mean (and what it is meaning right now, because the social tensions are now rising because of the rising power of POC) and to become active in advocating politically against this.
There is absolutely nothing morally or ethically wrong in that. But, it does require clear thinking, clear appreciation of circumstances, and must be supported by other sorts of ideas. And that is why it is so hard for Whites to cross over into the territory of self-affirmation: they have been morally and emotionally beated down for 50-60 years.
There is no doubt that many of the immigrant’s children are good people, hard-working, ‘productive’ as the American pragmatists like to say (there principle value is ‘production’!) But that is not the real essence here.
The reason to begin now to limit immigration is to *save*, if you will, the original demographic of the United States. That is one aspect of ‘all this’.
Doesn’t it kind of hurt the argument of the conservatives here, who insist that opposition to illegal immigration has nothing to do with racism, for this actual racist to constantly chime in with “Actually, let’s limit immigration because I’m a racist?”
My purpose has become sharpened relatively recently: I resolve, even when it makes me uncomfortable and even when I fear reprecussions —- negative animus directed to me by angry others, and then of course the guillotine (banning) which Chris advocates for and perhaps even others desire also—- to see the truth and to state the truth. My whole purpose on this blog, which discusses ethical questions but is also a political events talk-forum, is to take full advantage of my time here.
The two years+ I have been here has been spent in reading and study, and this is on-going.
Conservatives, if they are white people who value their culture and civilization, need to change their mind-frame. That is what I say, that is what I suggest. There is nothing wrong in suggesting this. Nothing illegal, nothing unethical nor immoral. In fact, the very opposite is the case: it is immoral and unethical to relinquish concerns for oneself, ones’s country, one’s civilization, the future of one’s children, and much else.
That is the core of my argument. If my argument is bad correct me. Demonstrate how I am wrong. Convince me with good and strong arguments. If this is done, my opinion must change, otherwise it would not be ethical.
Alizia,
Until now, I don’t think you have been as clear about your beliefs as you have here. This is a very clear statement. You believe the essence of a country is its Volk, its people, it’s “civilization,” overtly focused on “White People,” etc.
Your ideas as stated above sound remarkably familiar, given that I’m halfway through reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and that I’m overdosing on Bannon, Trump et al.
You must also know that way of thinking is inimical to the basis on which the USA was founded. To quote only the most recent patriot, Lindsay Graham, “I’ve always believed that America is an idea, not defined by its people but by its ideals.” Note I’m intentionally quoting a conservative Republican from a Southern State.
There’s nothing wrong with having thoughtful immigration laws. But basing them on ethnicity is repugnant to a great many of us in this country, and in fact counter to our history.
True, I have been making more direct statements, yet I have been quite clear about my beliefs. Otherwise (I would argue) my friends Chris would not have taken issue so readily.
You are wrong about ‘the basis on which our country was founded’. Factually wrong. However, I will admit that the matter is debated and debatable. I think the development of the ‘propositional nation’ (as Sam Francis called it) was a later development. I accept that it was a later development, and I also recognize that it is a position with a certain ‘logic’ if you will. But as far as the original Republics are concerned, I think you are very wrong ideed.
You do not control the notion of ‘what is inimical’, and yet I think that you imagine that you do. In this sense you are naturally aligned with Chris’ and the ‘progressive’ perspective generally. And this I understand and respect. I feel I know and undertand this view through-and-through. I have felt it, thought it, and lived it. Now, I turn against it. It is a wrong view.
Therefor, the task is to recover and redefine ‘ooriginal principles’ such as those the Founders would have had. Clearly, they are far closer to my, and *our*, perspective than to yours. If you argued different I must say that I would find this argument disingenuous. Yet I respect you position and the predicates that support it.
I understand where you are going with the Hitler argument. You will likely go further into that line of argument because it is the bulwork that has been established. I cannot stop you. Yet the ideas that can be and will be and are used in defense of reversing present immigration trends do not require National Socialism to make sense. They simply require an understanding of the Repblic before certain damaging and eben devastating choices were made (in the Sixties).
I also recognize that in the aftermath of the WW2 that whole –
*idea structures* were set in motion as a sort of reaction to the War. One part of that has entailed the rise of the Marxian Left and a great deal of Marxian ideation: the co-called Cultural Marxism of our age. I have determined that these ideas house and ensconse ideas that are literally and openly destructive to white people. Therefor, I define strategies of self-defense.
The arguments in support of my views I am working to assemble. My object is to assemble and also to perfect them.
Charles,
To understand *our* view you might find this instructive.
[https://youtu.be/aPm0NKcBZcY]
I am very interested in hearing your thoughts.
My thoughts?
This is hate-talk. Paranoid, divisive, angry, resentful, reeking of past xenophobic historical examples. The exact opposite of “angels of our better nature,” and basically inimical to American democratic ideals.
I won’t claim that American ideals ought to apply to other countries; that’s up to each country to decide (though I continue to believe that American ideals, even if they are practiced not nearly enough by we Americans ourselves, have an exemplary role to play in the world). But it darn sure doesn’t have any place in this country.
Those are my thoughts.
I could not imagine you to have else but those sorts of thoughts. You and many millions like you deal in emotionalized thoughts that in my view is the stuff of the post-Sixties world. My generation is the generation that has to live in the outcomes of the bad choices you have made because you allowed sentimental idealism to infect, and distort, solid, responsible, idea-based and well-argued thinking such as that presented By Lana in the videos I shared.
So, you can do little else but to react against it. You will resort to the ‘Nazi’ argument, you will describe it as based in ‘hate’ and attach to it all the list of ready-made labels that you have easily at your disposal. Your method actually works. Most people, once they see that someone establishes these terms in a discussion, know exactly what will happen to them if they disagree with the policy-position that you hold. They will suffer the emotional assualt of the blame & shame ritual. They will be told they are bad people. Hateful. Resenting. Mean. Paranoid!
You say that you represent American democratic ideals. You claim this ground, you set up your base on that ground, and this really fits, doesn’t it? insofar as it is now the Democrat Party that is the political party organizing the POC Party in order to wage a demographic and emotional war against the original population of the country. You therefor are a part of a larger mechanism that involves media, the State, the ‘deep state’, intelligence agencies, public relations industry, and a psychological war waged against what you say is ‘hate’. There, in that word, is your vile sophistry contained. There you wield the main armament you have. ‘Nazi!’ ‘Hater!’ That is really all there is to that.
OK, all well and good. But it is you and people like you (according to those on my side of the argument) that are involved in a destruction-process, not a creation process. You are allowing, and you have allowed, a destructive immigration-policy to dilute the country and to weaken the original population through overpowering the demographics. You have put in motion, through social engineering, the entire ‘multi-cultural project’ which has as its ideology the blending of many races into one mass that can then be governed by your Party: the party of the State really. Or in any case it is beginning to look that way. The progressive-democrat in a certain sense corresponds to your hated National Socialist. But I admit that it is largely under different predicates, with different ends in mind.
In order to get to the consent that you require/demand you must use, and you will use (this is a general plural *you*) all tools at your disposal. You start with the Nazi reference and now slide toward the ‘hate’ reference. But then come the calls for the limiting of free speech, the deplatforming and demonetising, the doxxing, the social vilification. All under the banner, that you have artificuially established, and sophistically established, that you represent the True Demos and the true ideals of American Democracy.
It is a false-argument as it pertains to facts, and it requires deconstruction to see what is there at the core of it and how these henid-like ideas function.
And that is where my generation comes in! I have given you a general sense of *who we are* and the idea-set that we work with. What you demand of me, and what I will very certainly give to you in time, is a full, articulated, idea-rich response to you, the lazy Sixties-values emoter. This is a total project and it is very demanding intellectually. One has to study the philosophers of the Frankfurt School and then notice how their Marxian ideas, disguised in multi-colored sentimentalism, infected the Acadamy and then the culture at large. We have to understand how this influence the political structure and thus infected government. How the collusion between capital (industry, corporations) and government has brought about a general present that is an indoctrinated present.
This is what your generation did. This is where you put your energy. This is what you worked toward. The result is *this present* in all its perverse glory. And you have left *us* the task of 1) seeing these things and describing them, 2) organizing a conter-movement, and 3) working to restore solid intellectual, philosophical and existential values.
And this:
[https://youtu.be/nYag1lOZpLw]
Representative Lindsay Graham was a conservative person. Once he hit the Senate, he no longer remained a conservative. He’s in the gang of eight, he’s voted for amnesty.
Using Lindsay Graham as an example of a conservative is about the same as using Joseph Liberman as an example of a liberal.
No, because she speaks for no one but herself.
“Doesn’t it kind of hurt the argument of the conservatives here”
No. Because she isn’t a conservative.
It’s not about racism, even then. The culture of the United States takes naturalization and assimilation. That’s why you limit immigration, in order to ensure that the people who are allowed in have time to naturalize and assimilate into our culture, rather than forming enclaves of their own culture.
RATS; bad closing tag after quoting Alizia, it should have looked like this…
Alizia wrote, “The reason to begin now to limit immigration is to *save*, if you will, the original demographic of the United States.”
Bull Shit Alizia, that’s just more of your “purest” society racist trolling crap.
We are a nation of laws; illegal is illegal. You are again trying deflect the conversation towards your purest society bull shit. You’re obsessed. There are meds available, get help.
To the rest of EA congregation; don’t allow this deflection from Alizia to drag this thread down a hole.
Good on you Zoltar, that needed saying.
Alizia,
I’d like to publicly apologize to you for the comment I posted January 15, 2018 at 8:16 pm, it crossed the line. I’m sorry.
Zoltar
Zoltar, I wondered what happened to that comment. IMHO you spoke the truth, and I’m not clear why you’re now reversing yourself.
Here, in a signature significance quote from Alizia, is what you’re now apologizing for having criticized:
“You are allowing, and you have allowed, a destructive immigration-policy to dilute the country and to weaken the original population through overpowering the demographics. You have put in motion, through social engineering, the entire ‘multi-cultural project’ which has as its ideology the blending of many races into one mass that can then be governed by your Party: the party of the State really.”
What more clear statement of “blood and soil” ethno-based racism have you seen in these pages? “Dilute the country…weaken the population…blending of races…party of the State…”
Make no mistake, Alizia is articulating EXACTLY the party line of the National Socialists in the Germany of the 1930s: a race-based rant against the mongrelization of the races by a corrupt democratic coalition. Go read Mein Kampf.
I agree with most commenters here that one should be very careful to throw around references to Hitler and the Nazis. But OMG what if it’s thrown in your face!
Your original comment, which I praised you for, called her out for this line of thought. I thought you were eloquent in your call for other EA commentators to avoid stepping in this racist quagmire.
I don’t think you crossed the line – I think you helped articulate it. I do not know why you are now apologizing for it. Can you explain?
Charles wrote, “I don’t think you crossed the line – I think you helped articulate it. I do not know why you are now apologizing for it. Can you explain?”
Charles,
Thanks Charles but my post was reactionary anger, that’s not who I choose to be. I choose to be a commenter that posts using thought, sternness yes, but not anger and when I cross my own line I say so and apologize. This is who I am.
I posted the equivalent of a psychological diagnosis, I’m not qualified to do that, and even if I were qualified it’s not reasonable to render such a diagnosis without an in-person examination. I was wrong.
I also took it upon myself to tell other commenters at Ethics Alarms what they shouldn’t do in the thread in regards to a fellow commenter, it is not my place do do that. I crossed the line with that too. Jack has already received his personal apology.
In my opinion, I was wrong.
charlesgreen wrote, “Zoltar, I wondered what happened to that comment. IMHO you spoke the truth, and I’m not clear why you’re now reversing yourself.
Here, in a signature significance quote from Alizia, is what you’re now apologizing for having criticized…”
You misunderstood the purpose of my apology. I do not condone anything Alizia said, period!
charlesgreen wrote, “Go read Mein Kampf.”
For historical perspective I read Mein Kampf a couple of years ago after an old Army buddy suggested I do so.
Zoltar, thank you for clarifying. I respect your reasoning, now that I understand it. You were apologizing for your tone, and for what one might call normative “cross-talk” – not for criticizing the views Alizia expressed.
I applaud your inclination to self-criticize regarding tone and civility (though I think you may have been a bit hard on yourself); and I applaud your clarification about the condemnation about those ideas.
Thank you.
Esteemed Zoltar, I did not see any such comment. But I am used more or less to the emotional rants. They are like water off the duck’s back as the saying goes. Still if it is still up (did you have it erased?) I would happily read it. I read everything that is written here, by everyone.
I came to this Blog over two years ago now and I revealed exactly what I was about. I am aligned, intellectually and sociologically, with a European New Right movement-in-ideas. I said then and I repeat it now: these ideas have a connection to the Interwar period in Europe. That is a time period in which different philosophers, writers and thinkers attempted to come to grips with encroaching Communism with the Marxist ideology, which was powerful and threatening, and to come to grips as well with what might be described as an early ‘globalization’ phase (directed by Capital).
What is happening, today and now, in our present can be said to be an ‘octave’ of the Interwar period. Civil strife is evident. There is a reactive mood aginast ‘globalization’ and certainly ‘multiculturalism’, and Capital has a great stake in all of this in that it is Capital that has directed and constructed the Postwar Era: our very modernity.
One must come to see, appreciate, and understand the meta-political forces that are operating. ‘Meta’ means that which stand outside and beyond of our immediate focus of vision and attention. The larger ‘meta-political struggles’ are what concern me and those who think like me. Like it or not we exist, we live and breath, and we think.
Charles, in a typic gambit, is doing what the classic progressive does when his knee is tapped with the rubber hammer: he reacts, and with a kick yells ‘Nazism! You do this, Chris does this, all others do it, and Jack also does it. The reason you do this is (I politely suggest) because you have been trained to react in this way! All of this reaction rises out of the WW2 propaganda war-rooms.
OK, but my point here is to see with greater clarity what this reactive, knee-jerk reaction hides and shadows. Thus, the reference to the Interwar Period. I began speaking about this (when I first came on). You can look up ‘Interwar Period’. Wiki is a place to start but Wiki is also ideologically contaminated. You are a smart individual, and all the readers here are smart people. The reference to the Interwar opens up the intellectual space to understand what people were thinking and writing during a chaotic and tumultuous period of time. You and anyone else can research this and, if you desire to, better understand how and why our present is (or can be likened to, as in a simile) to the Iterwar period of 1918-1939. I suggest as a reference ‘The French Right Between the Wars: Political and Intellectual Movements from Conservatism to Fascism’.
Consider this blurb only in the sense of opening up a way to see and understand an ideological aspect of ‘what is going on in America (and Europe) right now’. I have said that I come here to reveal, to herald, to prognosticate, and to clarify. I am here to help, though I am branded as The Enemy. When I say ‘help’ I only mean ‘help people to better see and understand certain forms of reactive idealism. I am just this reactive idealist. I say that the renovation of Europe depends on a renovation-project within the individual, and through identitarianism.
Here is the blurb:
This article demonstrates that American historiography has ignored the concept of Fascism as a category of analysis to help explain and understand the American interwar period. It makes the case that incorporating this concept can help us understand American history in transnational and comparative terms, as part of a larger global history of interwar politics. It is a propaedeutic analysis of existing scholarship – one that does not survey a recent trend in American historiography so much as suggest a new one. Through a textual reading of historical scholarship on American political extremism, and a parallel reading of comparative fascism scholarship from non-American contexts, the article sheds light on the usefulness of a comparative approach. It concludes that Fascism as a category of analysis, when applied to a national-historical context that has long overlooked it (except as a symptom of particularist German-American or Italian-American immigrant identities), will help us recognize that there was a discernibly ‘native’, ‘all American’ fascism in the United States between the wars – one that clearly failed, but was still a real force in American politics and society.
[From ‘Star-spangled Fascism: American Interwar Political Extremism in Comparative Perspective’. This is a random selection and not a source that supports my ideology, rather one that militates against it. I include it because it situates the socio-political reality and thus serves my general drift: we are on the verge of important, far-reaching changes.]
You have noticed, and all notice, that my ideas are 1) radical and 2) vanguardist. I fully understand your-plural reactions, your upsets, your screeching, your working in packs against ideas you fear and the people who hold them, and all other reactions that emanate from your very souls when I articulate ideas that run counter to your informing (what has informed you). I am trying to help you to see that in the next 5 years, and then in the next 10-20 years, you are going to have to deal with *us*. We are a young set and we are a young movement. We turn against what you have allowed to become corrupted (as I explained, carefully, in clear prose, to Charles). I tell you exactly what we do, why, what you can expect, and I have not ever —- not once! —- been rude or disrespecting to you or anyone else, nor ever have I ‘hated’. That is your department.
Joe Arpaio will remove your fingernails, one by one, when you arrive to the Joe Arpaio AStar-Spangled Reconditioning Center down in the desert, and thus you can ‘make amends’ to me for your rageful comment (which I still desire to see!) 😉
Alizia Tyler wrote, “Esteemed Zoltar, I did not see any such comment.”
Alizia,
It’s really not relevant to me one way or the other whether you read the comment in question or not, the apology is there for you to either accept or reject; it’s your choice and I won’t hold it against you regardless of what you choose.
I do not know where the coment is Mr Zoltar.
It’s gone.
I reject your apology! This is an outrage! I cannot and like will not be able to find the words to express to you the depth of the anger-anguish to which you have subjected me!
I <i.demand to see the post! I demand to know what was emoted there!
Can you write it, or one just like it, agains? Please? Please? 😉
Alizia wrote, “The reason to begin now to limit immigration is to *save*, if you will, the original demographic of the United States.”
Bull Shit Alizia, that’s just more of your “purest” society trolling. We do not need to limit immigration any more than we have done for hundreds of years; we need to limit or eliminate to the best of our ability illegal immigration. The original demographic of the United States is irrelevant.
We are a nation of laws; illegal is illegal. You are again trying deflect the conversation towards your purest society garbage. The fact is that we the people of the world are much better off together than we are apart (apart from the brainwashed extremist that just want to kill others) and your line of thinking is intentional division is primarily along ethnic lines, it’s racist and morally wrong. You can plug in your token society lines of division if you want to try but it cannot hide your blatant ethnic racism.
Alizia, In the midst of all your blurring, muddying and deflections of topics (trolling) by piling on generalities, tangents, cosmic puzzles, dancing angels and navel-gazing exercises your ethnic racism is absolutely transparent.
1) It is common fare that you assert ‘trolling’ when you do not like the ideas brought up.
2) I am only speaking of immigration policy. For example, that defined before the 1965 act. It is a question of rational choice. And influencing people to choose based on their own interests. Therefor, the advocacy I engage in is perfectly legal and also ethical.
3) I disagree, and many otheres disagree, about ‘the original demographic’. The reason you do not think about the original demographic (IMO) is because you have internalized certain ideological constructs and have made them ‘part of yourself’. *You* must be influenced to a) consider that your informing is wrong and negative (I suggest to all concerned, not just Whites), and b) be presented with additional materials that can help you to see the issue from a different and larger perspective.
4) You say it is racist and you say it is morally wrong, and I say that you are wrong. You are simply declaring something and expect it to stand. Behind the ideas I express there is a great deal of ideation. The sources can be explored. You may not but otheres can, and many are. I suggest that your labeling is in fact unethical and also devious. That must be resisted, understood, rejected.
The rest of your charming nonsense I leave as *charming nonsense*. 😉
Alizia Tyler wrote, ” It is common fare that you assert ‘trolling’ when you do not like the ideas brought up.”
False.
When the commenting falls within the definition I call it what it is.
Troll: Those that post inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion, often for their own amusement.
Now, I will help you, poor man! to use discriminating intelligence:
Most of my ideas are inflammatory because they are radical and vanguardist.
All of my ideas are ‘part of a whole’. My ideas are connected to larger idea-sets of which you are simply ignorant. Were you to have had a more rounded education you would not find my ideas extraneous.
Since my objest is to participate in an environment that enables me to learn, and to see my ideas contested (or supported as the case may be), I have to articulate my ideas.
If any other person has an emotional reaction or any level of upset, that is the reposibility of that person. It is up to each person to be strong, resiliant, responsible, polite, forebearing if they are to participate ‘in the world of ideas’.
If someone goes into spasmatic convulsions because of something some other writes, the one to whom to direct your critique, is that immature, dramatic soul going into convulsions. You need to jelpt them to recover their equanimity and to understand that disagreement is part-and-parcel of life.
I deliberately challenge people to think more intellectually and to avoid silly emotionalistic displays. I am on the verge of advocating, in a National Referendum, the illegalization of bold type on a Blog or Forum.
#nomorebold!
“The point is to reverse the immigration trends set in motion during the Sixties. This phenomenon has ideological roots. It was done for ideological reasons. That ideology must be recognized, seen, understood, rejected and replaced by another.”
“It is imperative that white people become aware of this issue, recognize what it will mean (and what it is meaning right now, because the social tensions are now rising because of the rising power of POC) and to become active in advocating politically against this.”
“Conservatives, if they are white people who value their culture and civilization, need to change their mind-frame.”
The perennial flaw in your reasoning is that race and culture are conflated.
They are not.
The fact that a huge swath of “white” people espouse culture-and-individual-destroying statist worldviews like Leftism and another huge swath of “white” people espouse a culture that is more liberty and equality oriented is immediate proof that culture and ideology is not genetically inherited.
Yes, for the most part we inherit our worldview, culture, and ideology from our parents, and insofar as that happens, there seems to be a correlation between genetic populations and culture, it is not concrete. That worldviews are constantly proselytizing is proof of this.
I share the concern over “multi-culturalism” as a value, when “melting-pot” has been America’s successful method of assimilation. But that’s a culture thing, not a race thing.
You constantly err by conflating the two.
You’d probably gain a lot more agreement if you’d stop making the race error and focus purely on the Left’s goal of protecting and encouraging the maintenance of completely unique and separate cultural identities within the greater American culture.
TexAgg, on this we agree, strongly. Thanks for articulating.
You tell me I err, and this I accept and respect, but when I think things through I conclude that I am not irn error. I would not and do not speak in ‘genetic’ terms. Yet I do refer to white as a category as the cultural containers of Europeanism. The renovation that I envision is an ideological one. It occurs within people who come to recognize how certain elites, with certain intentions, have socially engineered this culture and other cultures, and that this is not now working out well for ‘us’ (white people in our own demographic, in our own country) nor in Europe which is being flooded.
We inherit our ideas and our worldview from the literature and ideation that you have assembled on another page. This has come to be through the work, the astounding work, of previous generations who have given us ‘our very selves’. What the ‘self’ is, is not an easy thing to define, and what the ‘European self’ is, not also easy. But within that definition, within that ‘project’ of definition and identitarianism, is to be found the path that I think is 1) valid 2) ethica and moral, and 3) necessary. I am speaking in meta-political terms to meta-political issues.
Please do share any additional thoughts. I am pretty sure you are a Libertarian (I think you mentioned this once?) I will mention that within *my movement* there are many who were at one time that. The predicates that inform it have been generally rejected. And I think I share that rejection.
I won’t accept this is a one sided trait:
One of the right’s hottest buttons, it seems to me (and I’ll admit my bias up front), is the passionate belief that Somebody, Somewhere, Sometime, must have gotten away with Something, and by god, heaven and earth will not be right until the balance is redressed.
I can think of several examples where the left thinks that way. Let’s start with gun control. There are more guns than people in this country, and the overwhelming owners of guns do absolutely nothing to harm anyone else.
Before you go down the road of “they could cause harm and some do”, I’m going to make the argument applies to illegal immigration. There are externalities, from more crime to impacts upon social spending to job losses.
“We don’t have to always give up all of our humanity just because a law got broken somewhere, sometime, by someone.” Well said Charles. And thanks for the wonderful MLK letter from Birmingham jail.
Good to know at least some of the ‘Inspector Javerts’ (Les Miserables) end up having to throw themselves in the Seine.
Charles, the DACA recipients deserve nothing. If anything, they deserve the boot, because they aren’t here legally.
Because we are a compassionate nation, however, they will not get the boot. But Trump trading increased security for not kicking them out is, in my view, the least he can do. The whole reason they are even in this plight is because of lax border security.
Is Trump being cynical? Sure, but that’s who he is, and frankly, the Democrats have given him absolutely no reason to be anything less. How is he supposed to overlook what Durbin did? No human being could, regardless of how presidential, and Trump clearly doesn’t qualify for that term.
So if you gotta be the asshole, be the best asshole you can be and get all you can from your enemies.
“the DACA recipients deserve nothing. If anything, they deserve the boot, because they aren’t here legally.”
You’re kind of proving my point, because you’re simply re-stating the thing that I suggested is wrong in the first place. In your worldview, they “dserve the boot” BECAUSE they aren’t here legally. In other words, that’s it, that’s the whole deal, no extenuating circumstances, no sense of time served, no sense of statute of limitations, and no sense of mercy.
Again, you’re just restating the point I argued was wrong in the first place. Saying it again more forcefully doesn’t make it any more right.
Well, that’s not true at all, Charles. Did the next paragraph I wrote not come through somehow? Here, let me help:
I don’t want to see them deported any more than you do. The problem is, the reason they are here is a lack of border security, so it makes sense from both an ethical and legal viewpoint to tie their mercy to the requirement that the illegal immigration flow be stopped, so we don’t have to do DACA again in a decade or three.
I have a question. A federal judge has blocked Trump from ending DACA. DACA is not a law, but an executive order. I can see how a federal judge might block an executive order from being enforced because it might be illegal (“Kill everyone in Philadelphia” or something). How does a federal judge block a President from RESCINDING an executive order? Wouldn’t that suggest that it is unconstitutional to NOT have the order? Has the government’s immigration laws and policies been illegal for all the years except for the years this was in effect? Since when does a single federal judge get to block things like this? I am at the point that I want Trump to ignore the judge. I want him to rescind DACA immediately, just to make the point that there is a separation of powers he is the President.
I believe it is a temporary injunction while the challenge to the rescission is heard.
The judge either believed that the DACA rescission might fail on its merits (some resolution from congress implicitly accepting it, etc), or that the lawsuit may become moot before it is adjudicated, and the injunction protects those who would otherwise fall through the cracks before the DACA replacement comes into effect.
I disagree, Rich. I think the arrogant judge thinks the plaintiffs will prevail. It’s an incredibly biased, verging on preposterous, ruling that should be appealed immediately. Of course it will just be heard by a Ninth Circuit panel. So it won’t get rectified until it gets before the Supremes.
Discussion of the ruling: https://amgreatness.com/2018/01/11/deferring-democracy-daca-ruling-means/
It sounded to me like it was ONLY to get it to the Supremes. Because the faster it gets there, the faster it’s DONE and no one can do anything anymore. Except Congress, which has proven woefully unable to DO much of anything but whine and point fingers. As a BODY, not party or even chamber. Humph. Throw ’em all out and start over? If only we could. The injunction didn’t sound to me (not a lawyer and not especially paying close legal attention to the case) like it was especially supported in law or anything, but like a quick, lame punt to move the ball down the field.
“Throw them all out” sound good to me, Becky
It’s especially outrageous because the judgement is on behalf of illegals who would be deported by the law. It’s as if a bank robber sued the police to stop them from enforcing robbery laws, on the grounds that enforcing the law would cause them to go to jail. Unreal. It’s a total reversal of the entire concept of law, morality, ethics, and justice.
The judge who order this also bizarrely ordered the Trump administration to turn over all communications with details about WHY they were going to rescind DACA, to examine it for crimethink of course. As if the president can’t carry out his constitutionally mandated duties if somewhere someone thinks it’s racist. It just boggles the mind.
Judges can do almost anything, temporarily. The opinion to which you refer to is transparently unconstitutional, and of course the judge who wrote it knows that. He’s already been slapped down once by the Supremes, and if the administration appeals, this one will be overturned as well.
Imagine the outcry if a conservative judge ruled President Obama could not institute DACA in the first place because he was hoping illegal immigrants might find a way to vote. This is exactly the same kind of reasoning applied against the rescission of DACA, and is invalid on its face. But that 9th circuit judge doesn’t care because #resist.
Imagine the outcry if a conservative judge ruled President Obama could not institute DACA in the first place because he was hoping illegal immigrants might find a way to vote.
You’d get no outcry from me.
The judge is deserving of impeachment for his conduct in this case. He’s drastically over-stepping his authority, and this isn’t the first time for this judge.
Your interpretation is correct, there is no chance this ruling will stand.
This begs the question of what this ideology is.
Trump’s reported racial comments go far beyond “shitholegate.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-s-history-breaking-decorum-remarks-race-ethnicity-n837181
I’m surprised the allegations that he paid off a porn star to keep quiet about an affair haven’t gotten more attention. That would sink any other president.
On the porn star issue. My understanding is that the allegation has been denied by ALL persons named.
Because people are starting to not care about allegations since the Left has spiked itself incessantly over ever last allegation…?
Maybe?
Spiked?
That would my iPhone autocorrecting “soiled”.
‘Spiked’ worked better… it brings bloody wounds to mind
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/porn-star-was-paid-130000-to-keep-quiet-about-a-relationship-with-trump-wall-street-journal-reports/2018/01/12/fde75e72-f7ef-11e7-91af-31ac729add94_story.html?utm_term=.160139289b18
Here it says Daniels (porn star), Trump, and the lawyer denies the claim and the WP could not verify money exchanged places.
“Rumors that I have received hush money from Donald Trump are completely false,” reads the statement, signed by Stormy Daniels. “If indeed I did have a relationship with Donald Trump, trust me, you wouldn’t be reading about it in the news, you would be reading about it in my book.””
You and other liberals keep wanting to put the president on trial for speaking blasphemies or heresies against your religion; you understand that’s not the way it works right?
Yeah, all those unimpeachable anonymous sources really make me want to believe that story. The best source in there is Dick Durbin, and, well…
What about Lindsay Graham’s tacit confirmation of Durbin’s comments?
You mean the statement that deliberately refused to acknowledge exactly what was said? And it doesn’t matter that other people present say he didn’t use that verbiage?
I guess we all get to pick what we want to believe in this one, don’t we?
“I guess we all get to pick what we want to believe in this one, don’t we?”
Sigh…you’re probably right about that.
Lyndsay Graham has his own agenda and would sell his mother for a better political position. Are you calling Senator Tom Cotton, a decorated combat veteran, a liar who states he did not hear the statement and he was just as close to Trump as Durbin?
Durbin has a history – Jay Carney refuted a Durbin claim that a Republican Congressman had said he “could not even stand looking at Obama during a meeting”.
Charles, let’s assume Durbin is telling the truth. Why come out and repeat statements that, up to now are private and not offending anyone except a few in the room, unless you are trying to:
(A) purposely cause harm to our global relationships and the people that hear the remarks.
(B) You are trying to cause harm to the president for the purpose of political gain by harming global relationships and offending people with comments that they would not have otherwise heard.
If someone called your spouse a homely swine would you run home and tell your spouse or would you challenge the idea right then and there?
“If someone called your spouse a homely swine would you run home and tell your spouse or would you challenge the idea right then and there?”
I’m guessing that you and I both believe the right answer is b, challenge the idea right then and there. Which is what Lindsay Graham is saying he did, while trying to not commit answer a. I give him credit for that on both counts.
I give him credit, except that, again, it was a private meeting, and what happens in private meetings should be kept private by ethical professionals. He’s grandstanding and virtue signalling. He also doesn’t have the guts to specifically confirm the words that were used, while a Democrat is saying one thing and a Republican at the meeting and the President are calling him a liar.
Also what he says he said was lazy blather:
“America is an idea, not a race.”
The president didn’t reference race. But more important, America is a country, meaning that it needs policies based on reality, not poetry. This is appeal to emotion. Mr. Graham said, according to three people familiar with the exchange on Thursday.
“Diversity is a strength not a weakness.”
So Norwegians don’t count? Diversity is a strength when it adds quality, and not a strebth when it doesn’t. Or do we need more terrorists, drug addicts, illiterates and sadists for the sake of “diversity”? Diversity is a buzzword, not an inherent virtue.
“I was a descendant of immigrants who came to the United States from “shithole countries with no skills.”
Well that proves that it makes sense to take in as many Haitians as possible, then!
So how many people would have been offended if all remarks were kept private.
Durbin has his agenda. He wants to create harm for political gain.
It’s another version of the “Trump said a horrible thing to the Gold Star widow!” stunt. No tactic too low. A Nation of assholes, though Durbin had a head start.
Plenty of them might have been offended in the ROOM, but the rest of us would be blissfully ignorant. I, for one, don’t doubt for a hot second he said exactly that, because come on, the guy’s speech has been exactly that since the ’80s when he came into the public eye. He hasn’t changed. Or learned, or grown a conscience, or become politically astute. He is quintessentially himself, and he’s not changing if G-d G-d’s own self were standing there trying to make him. I simply suspect everyone but Durbin decided they couldn’t afford the blowback of confirming it. This Prez is nothing if not vindictive- he’s also been proving that since before he became a public figure. Ask anyone who he’s ruined. I wonder if Durbin regrets even his tepid confirmation.
This falls under the rubric of “too good not to be true,” or even better, “fake but accurate.”
He should regret it, just as anyone who breaches a tacit or explicit agreement that what happens in a meeting or encounter is to stay between the original parties. “Ratting” on someone when a crime has been committed is an societal obligation. Breaking a.vow of confidentiality when no one has been harmed at all is just betrayal and a breach of trust. And Trump’s tweet on this absolutely correct: without trust, no deals or compromises are possible.
“America is an idea, not a race.”
America, as a daughter of the French Revolution, certainly has a great deal to do with Ideas, and Enlightenment ideals, but to say that these ideas and the matrix in which they occurred had not to do with ‘race’ is non-intelligent. To say that America (as it was established) had not to do with race,a nd the white race specifically, and then even certain preferences within that designation (Ben Franklin had issues with Pennsylvania Germans), is an anti-historical and obfuscating view.
The idea that America is solely ‘an idea’ is a sophistical idea that is employed by sophists with a particular ideological position. It has become blended with certain ideals of the ‘American civil religion’ and monumentalized as if it is an incontestable truth.
“Diversity is a strength not a weakness.”
This is another example of ‘thinking’ that is structured in a simple. Binary formula. In order to understand this ideological term ‘diversity’ one has to have a lexicon-definition at hand. But this definition would require an essay! ‘Diversity’ is a propaganda-term, a public relations and social engineering manipulation-term and should be seen as such.
In fact, within the American white deomgraphic, there is amazing diversity. White people and European countries are naturally diverse. Just run your mind from Ireland to Sicily, from Sweden to southern Spain. From Russia to England.
‘Diversity’ is a Sixties code-word for Marxian undermining of the white demographic that terrified the Frankfurt Schoolers. See for example The Authoritarian Personality. Diversity as a social-engineering project has standing behind it a whole social doctrine which is anti-American (in fact and in truth).
That diversity leads to a tremendous weakening in fact. It requires literally a doublethink to see against and counter to what one sees and knows that the chaos of cultural multiculturalism is a strength. Yes and “2 + 2 = 5 Winston, won’t you get that into your head!” This is part of a mind***k that is perpetrated on people’s perception through deliberate public relations programming.
It is I think part of a business-language, a business-ideology. Sure, diversity is a ‘strength’ insofar as if you have a passive population with no will who follows orders and buys the products, laps up the slop of indoctrination, goes home and turns of the TeeVee loud.
Oh brave new world that has such people in ‘!
“I was a descendant of immigrants who came to the United States from “shithole countries with no skills.”
Here, one notices once again the result of simplistic thinking, of only being able to think within crude black & white categories. This must be the result of a ‘soundbite culture’. It is simply bad thinking though. Incomplete. The issue is musch larger but he cannot refer to it all.
Right now, coming out of the woodwork, seeping up from ‘under the floorboards’ in the Dostoyevskian sense, there is now coming out a movement which has as one element the recognition of race difference. This is very much a naughtie group of thoughts, very much against sloppy, dreamy, drug-infused Sixties, folk-song thinking. It is a movement that —- duh! —- begins to notice what happens when the POC begin to take over, as is natural when they are deliberately imported! That was what the whole project was about! That was some part of the stated purpose!
The politician is a real fishmonger (in the Elizabethan sense of course) and they will turn with the tide. One cannot count on them for having, or holding to, strong formative idea.
That is what we must do. See clearly. Offer redefinitions against their sloppy ‘definitions’, see through Marxist propaganda, the false-Americanism, and begin starting with the articulation of clear and sensible ideas to recover the country.
Oh brave new world that has such people in ‘t!
“America, as a daughter of the French Revolution”
I think your math is off.
Sister is more what I had in mind. They are related revolutionary events.
Sort of related.
I think they both have in common: “Something wrong with the monarchy”
I think they diverge where America said “Something is wrong with the current British monarchic system, let’s return to what we considered an ideal balance in Rule of Law” and France said “Something is wrong with literally everything about our society, let’s completely change every facet of the society and completely start over”.
One established a stable Republic, the other sank into a blood bath that eventually consumed Europe in a century-early premonition of the effects of mass warfare of a *fully* mobilized community.
That is a fair point. Therefore, related but not the same. Coming out of Enlightenment idealism but different in enactment. Tendentious sisters then.
http://www.articlemyriad.com/comparison-french-american-revolution/
For an argument that suggests the differences between the two were much greater than the similarities, both in fact and in philosophical inspiration, see:
https://owlcation.com/humanities/american-revolution-french-revolution
Great article. I enjoyed that. Can’t say I agree with everything, but I agree with much of it.
Exactly my reaction too.
And in fairness, on the surface I probably agree with 99% of the essay, I merely toss the caveat in there because I may find disagreement if I pursued some of the claims in further depth.
Thanks for the article, enjoyable read, but I think Charles’ was a bit closer to the truth.
I don’t think the American and French Revolutions were much more different than they were similar.
ARG.
That should say:
“I think the American and French Revolutions were much more different than they were similar.”
I suggest, therefor, that the goals and objectives of the original revolutionists had a tremendous amount to do with the ideal of independence for Colonial Englishmen. It did not at that time include the notion of rights nor equality of the sort that (in my view) infects our present. The Founders were conservative in their aproach and quite common-sense-oriented. They expressly stated who they felt was commensurate and suitable to the Republic and this is material accessible to all and part of the common record.
I would suggest that the Progressive-Democrat of today, and the Progressive-Marxist operative of today (I consider this not only a real thing but a very real thing) has been and is animated with sentiments and objectives that are counter to the original sense of principles and ideals. I would further suggest that after the Civil War a newer doctrine of Americanism came to be defined, and that the Civil War in this sense worked to crush the original republican values and ideals. With the Lincolnian ‘’propositional nation’ was born, and at that point the notion of the ‘idea-nation’ came to be emphasized.
Whereas before one was a citizen of one’s state and one’s county and region —- one’s soil Mr Charles —- and understood oneself through identification with one’s soil, one’s family, one’s State and one’s Representative Government, there then began a shift away from this common-sense identitarianism. That is, this natural idea was displaced by some more abstract ‘national’ ideal.
When the Nation opted, as indeed it did opt, to destroy its links with its Repblicanism and to launch on imperial conquests for the benefit of its plutocratic class, it naturally became necessary to create ‘propaganda-narratives’ to support that destructive perversion. Thus even more the notion of a people, bound to their land and their region, was undermined. But such an ideal —- this means quite literally Blood & Soil —- is destructive to the elite plutocratic project of mainpulation of people to serve your interests and not their own interests. The ‘interests’ of the original demographic should be obvious to anyone who still has some part of their brain free of Marian intrusion: to protect one’s folk, one’s familay, ones region and one’s soil.
Duh! It is amazing to me how distorted and how lying you have become! But you do not lie consciously, you lie because you are indoctrinated and you are a Marxian operative disguised as a ‘good citizen’.
In our present, those people who give themselves the label of ‘progressive’ seem therefor to be more linked to the abstractions that animated the French Revolutionaries. They are certainly not motivated by ‘original principles’ within an understood cultural and social context. They are more like radicals who operate with abstract predicates of some twisted form of ‘universalism’ and multiculturalism and globalism. And if they have a doctrine it is a doctrine also shared by Capital and the National Government, and which has been incorporated by business, cultural elites, the intelligence community, as well as the military establishment.
The operatives of the present, therefor, are operating against America in the original sense(s) for some sort of New America.
The object is to recover and reanimate original principles and also to wake up the original demographic so that they can see, militate against, and reverse the loss of their country —- and their very existence —- in a planned, revealed, enunicated Marxian-inspired project.
And there you have it Charles! You commie! (That is a joke of course but I was on a roll!) 😉
An anonymous interpretation of a meeting held with Trump. Who’s to say Trump was’t actually impressed with her briefing and discussion that he really did think she ought to be in a more impactful role?
Immediate pivot to the profanity regarding certain nations as though the two episodes can even be linked. We see what the ‘journalist’ did there.
He wouldn’t be the first president, or person, to use profanity in *private* conversations. This has already been addressed by Jack.
The White House doesn’t need to immediately respond either, but mentioning this is useful to add another layer of suspicion onto the shakey accusation being put forward, which has yet to be substantiated.
The accusation. Oh, and we’ll merely report that he’s being accused of it so we won’t look like we’re accusing him of it…yeah…see what we did there?
And that’s all it is. Followed by a litany of “proofs”:
Is that racist?
Not racist and discussed in depth on this blog.
HOLY CRAP! TRUMP HAD A CONVERSATION….HE’S A RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACIST!
Sounds potentially insensitive, but it’s awfully devoid of context to make a call.
Nice.
As cruel and mean and insensitive as it is to to soil the noble heritage of Native Americans by associating Elizabeth Warren with them, it is NOT racist to mock *her* for her silly claims. It was inappropriate in that setting to do so. But not racist.
Here the pseudo-journalist is associating something odious sounding with the overall article to make it seem like it somehow might have something remotely to do with the thesis.
It does not and is not further support of “racism”.
Sadiq Khan’s protestations don’t make Trump racist either.
How do you fall for this stuff, Chris…what is wrong with your filters?
OH NO! Haiti is going to question our diplomat like they have a right to do??? OH NO!!!! Trump is such a racist!
And….the UN? Accusing someone of being shocking and shameful? Yeah.
Chris….
This was embarrassing to link to this article as some sort of support for your own arguments regarding Trump.
You should hang your head.
Tex
I just finished my own analysis of that article and was going to post it until I saw you did the same.
A career intelligence analyst who is an expert in hostage policy stood before President Donald Trump in the Oval Office last fall to brief him on the impending release of a family long held in Pakistan under uncertain circumstances.
It was her first time meeting the president, and when she was done briefing, he had a question for her.
“Where are you from?” the president asked, according to two officials with direct knowledge of the exchange.
New York, she replied.
Trump was unsatisfied and asked again, the officials said. Referring to the president’s hometown, she offered that she, too, was from Manhattan. But that’s not what the president was after.
He wanted to know where “your people” are from, according to the officials, who spoke under condition of anonymity due to the nature of the internal discussions.
After the analyst revealed that her parents are Korean, Trump turned to an adviser in the room and seemed to suggest her ethnicity should determine her career path, asking why the “pretty Korean lady” isn’t negotiating with North Korea on his administration’s behalf, the officials said.
Seems to me, this is not disparaging at all. Wouldn’t you want someone that understands the Korean culture rather than “five white guys” on the negotiating team? Would this not be an upward career move? Or is lack of diversity on the team only beneficial when you can point to it as prima facie racism.
The exchange was disclosed to NBC News amid backlash from reports that Trump used the phrase “shithole countries” in referring to African nations and questioned why the U.S. should allow in more people from Haiti — reviving charges he’s racist.
Although the White House did not initially deny the remark, Trump on Friday claimed he had not made the disparaging comments during a Thursday meeting on immigration with lawmakers. The president tweeted that he did not say anything derogatory about Haitians and never said “take them out.”
However, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, a Democrat who was present at the meeting, confirmed the “vile” phrase was used “repeatedly” when Trump was referring to Africa.
Omitted from report: Two Republican Senators, also at the meeting, disputed Senator Durbin’s claims. Tom Cotton, (R) went further to say that Senator Durbin has a history of making false claims about statements made in private meetings.
A source close to the president told NBC News “he frequently uses that kind of language,” and added that those around Trump frequently tell him he should not.
Prove it:
The officials who told NBC News of the fall exchange between Trump and the intelligence briefer in the Oval Office said the president likely meant no harm with his inquiry, but it raised concern of a lack of cultural sensitivity and decorum.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about it.
NBC News did not interview the briefer for this story. This article withholds her name and agency to protect her privacy.
What officials?
Trump has long been accused by his political rivals of promoting racist attitudes that fueled clashes at some of his campaign rallies in 2016 and emboldened white supremacist groups that viewed Trump’s general election win as an opportunity for empowerment.
Of course he has been accused by his political rivals of promoting racist attitudes. They have nothing else to offer policy wise.
Didn’t Barak Obama embolden BLM with his comments about the stupidity of the Cambridge PD, or that if he had a son he would look like Trayvon. He stood by and watched Ferguson erupt in flames and looked on as the carnage in West Baltimore took place because a racially motivated prosecutor wanted to give the black community vengeance but could not even get the conviction even with a well-respected black judge.
For years, he suggested that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. During the campaign, he suggested that SOME Mexican immigrants are “rapists” and “bringing crime” across the border and vowed to deport “bad hombres” from the U.S.
How is this different than the Left’s continual demand for Trump’s tax returns. I never bought into the birther BS but why are tax returns which are not a qualifier more important than proof of natural born citizenship which is a qualifer.
It is a fact that SOME illegals are rapists, murderers kidnappers but it was originally maintained in the media that he said that All the illegals were rapists and bringing crime to the U.S.
At a March meeting with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Trump asked the elected officials if they personally knew just one member of his incoming cabinet — Ben Carson — according to two people in the room.
SO WHAT. I ask people all the time if they know any of my colleagues.
Carson, the only black member of Trump’s Cabinet, had never served in Congress and spent his career as a surgeon. Trump found that surprising that no one said they knew him, the attendees said.
Is this to suggest that Trump believes all African Americans know one another? C’mon.
During that same meeting, a member relayed to Trump that potential welfare cuts would harm her constituents, “not all of whom are black.” The president replied: “Really? Then what are they?”
What member? Why are they afraid to go on record with the allegation when they are not afraid to bash him whenever the cameras are rolling?
The participants spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to share details about the private meetings.
Yet they disclosed information anyway. Why should we trust them as factual sources when they lack the integrity to abide by rules on who is authorized to share details of private meetings.
More recently, at a White House event honoring Navajo code talkers, the heroic Native Americans who helped the U.S. Marines send coded messages in the Pacific Theater, Trump took a swipe at Sen. Elizabeth Warren, referencing his designated nickname for the Massachusetts Democrat, “Pocahontas.”
See Story on Korean Intelligence Officer – Why were the Navajo code talkers selected in the first place? Because their native language was a complete departure from cryptologic standards and the Japanese could not decipher them. Thus, culture can be a positive attribute and not a slur. His reference to Warren is about her appropriation of a culture for her own benefit. It in no way slurs the contributions of REAL native Americans.
Trump’s supporters have celebrated his departure from the politically correct approach of modern politicians and relish in what they see as his audacious “America First” rhetoric, even as it risks relationships with some of America’s closest foreign allies.
Yet unnamed others and Durbin run to tell the nasty comments Trump supposedly made in a private meeting – That no one would have heard except for the unamed sources.
Trump declared on Twitter late Thursday that he called off his trip to London because “I am not a big fan of the Obama Administration having sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for ‘peanuts,’ only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2 billion dollars. Bad deal. Wanted me to cut ribbon-NO!”
How is this racist?
London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who has engaged in a public war of words with Trump over his divisive remarks against Muslims, responded that Trump’s decision to cancel his trip to the United Kingdom shows he “got the message” from Londoners who “find his policies and actions the polar opposite of our city’s values.”
Sadiq Kahn has made it perfectly clear that he does not want Trump in London. What a bigot.
Trump’s tweets and comments in presumably private meetings are increasingly coming back to haunt him and shaking up an administration fraught with controversy.
Already, the top U.S. diplomat in Haiti has been summoned to explain Trump’s remarks in Thursday’s meeting to Haiti’s president. The U.N. human rights office has also lashed out at Trump’s comments on Africa, calling them “shocking and shameful,” if confirmed.
Perhaps the UN should wait to comment before they are confirmed.
CORRECTION (Jan. 12, 2018, 6 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this article imprecisely rendered a question President Trump posed to members of the Congressional Black Caucus. The question was whether they knew Ben Carson personally, not whether they knew of him.
“Seems to me, this is not disparaging at all. Wouldn’t you want someone that understands the Korean culture rather than “five white guys” on the negotiating team? Would this not be an upward career move? Or is lack of diversity on the team only beneficial when you can point to it as prima facie racism.”
That was my first guess also.
“Of course he has been accused by his political rivals of promoting racist attitudes. They have nothing else to offer policy wise.”
Bingo.
1. Rep. John Lewis is an unethical political hack. Dr. King should be rolling in his grave every time these unethical hacks use his name to push their unethical bull shit.
On a separate but related note; have you seen that some Democrats are already coming out saying that they aren’t going to attend the State of the Union address. I’d absolutely love to see every single Democrat boycott the State of the Union address, that would be quite an anti-Trump spectacle, but I’m going to guess that’s not going to happen. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Trump has verbal anti-Trump hecklers (like that unprofessional “liar” outburst from Rep. Joe Wilson’s) and boo’ers in the crowd. It’s probably not going to be a good night for the history books.
It’ll be the Lefty dream come true, Zman: Congress will be just like Parliament. PBS will finally have converted America into a parliamentary government. Trump will be ousted by a no confidence vote and there will have to be another election. Presto chango! Plan Q!
No, that’s way too much to hope for. They’ll be there with their #MeToo victims in tow.
Trump should invite Paula Jones.
Should he invite his own accusers as well?
Seriously? Should the Democrats invite Linda Tripp?
1 Priorities
This take is exactly the right one, and the progressive left has no rebuttal. No matter how unfortunate the plight of the DACA beneficiaries, the fact remains that not one of them are citizens of the United States.
Of course, the media will ignore this and laud the progs’ “compassion”, and we’ll here story after story of “good” illegal immigrants subject to DACA as if that justifies the lawlessness of their presence here. Nobody is saying they should be punished, but to simply roll over and give them amnesty shouldn’t even be a consideration. They are a bargaining chip, nothing more and nothing less. They don’t “deserve” anything from America, except possibly the boot, but they are going to get much better than they deserve no matter what it is.
Meanwhile, if the progs shut the government down, the Democrats’ second-largest constituency by contribution will be sans paychecks for the duration. How droll.
2 Fake news
Indeed, and totally apropos to the state of the federal Democrats. They are so infused with Trump hate that every word from his mouth may be used to justify some kind of opposition to DACA other than complete capitulation to the left.
Honestly, if I were Trump, I’d double down. At this point, there’s no real reason to hope he will be anything but the bumbling buffoon he is anyway. Watching the Democrats and progressive left turn puce over his every utterance is at least fun to watch. We are way past the point of hoping for some kind of statesmanlike solution to all this until the Dems have had their little orgy of outrage.
Good lord, you left out so many: Russian Trojan horse, obstructor of justice, abuser of women, homophobe, Anglophile, and destroyer of the American ideal. I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few as well.
3 Fava beans
Yeah, this is pretty much a “chickens coming home to roost” story. Socialism begets liver-signing. Bernie Sanders, your office on line 1.
I’ve been a silent lurker for awhile now and this is one of the few sites that I must visit daily. Your site has taught me a great deal and I now look at things a lot more critically. I also try to take in various sources of information and look at them from an ethical point of view.
With regards to 3. I’m not quite sure what socialized medicine has to do with the hubris and ethical implications of a single doctor doing something that most any other doctor would find to be unethical. Would this doctor not behave this way if he was in a user pay system? I believe it is just a very egotistical doctor with a few other issues I wouldn’t begin to guess at. But I don’t think this behaviour is the result of socialized medicine. With regards to the fact he is still practicing medicine . A quick search found me this older aarticle about how easy it is to remain in practice even after multiple malpractice payouts and some clearly incompetent doctors under a user pay system.
I have spent my life living under a socialized system in Canada. If given the choice I would prefer to keep a large portion of my personal income that my government takes from me to pay for my “Free” healthcare and be allowed to purchase my own insurance to cover my families needs. I’ve lived with long lines and months long waits just to see a specialist. So I’m not a proponent of socialized care. Having said that. I think it’s unfair to equate this doctors behaviour with the over taxed and underfunded UK system.
I am missing the connection between the two. And I know the link points to mostly incompetent behaviour and not related to this doctors unethical behaviour. But it does show a user pay system doesn’t preclude poor standards and doctors who shouldn’t be practicing.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/20/doctors-licenses-medical-boards/2655513/
Oh, I don’t think socialized medicine has a thing to do with the whack job doctor. I do think that a health care system that immediately jettison any doctor who would do that to a single patient even once—signature significance—is desperate for doctors and has lowered its standards and quality so much that it has disqualified it self as a model for itself, much less any other country’s health care system.
I should have been more clear, but the story made my head explode.
Please keep commenting, and thanks for dropping in.
Had to do some internet research to get the Chianti and fava beans reference. hah. Pretty damned obscure. Was the good doctor searing the livers preparatory to eating them a la Hannibal?
Obscure? The single most famous quote from “Silence of the Lambs”!
It puts the lotion on the skin or else it gets the hose again.
Ew. Any quotes by THAT character were automatically erased.
But I think THAT is the most recognized quote of the movie.
Pretty sure the most recognized quote was the chianti/fava beans quote that Jack led with. At least, that’s what sticks in my mind, and I think what has tended to show up in promos.
Maybe. I see the Buffalo Bill quote pop up in people’s joking around if they want to add a little psychopathy to their humor or in conversations that veer into topics about insane people. I almost never hear anyone reference the fava bean quote.
scratch “insane people” and insert “creepsters”.
I remember seeing the movie. And Jodie Foster being a big deal. Sometime in the ’80s. Guess I just thought the movie was super creepy. I couldn’t quote a line from it to save my life. I guess I should worry about Hannibal Lechter?
And here I thought “Other Bill” was meant to differentiate you from “Buffalo Bill.”
I must know more cannibals than you do.
Speaking of, I just saw the 1993 movie “Alive”. Wow. What a story (not a particularly great movie, but man…sent me on a internet research frenzy to get the real story…the movie is pretty dang accurate).
Just checked on AFIs top 100 Movie Quotes, and this…
A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.
is #21! Just behind “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
No other quote from “Lambs” made the cut.
No doubt. But the standard there was a jury of 1500 film artists, critics, and historians.
My observation of course is purely anecdotal based on listening to people joke around and converse and though both quotes are very rare indeed in random conversation, I hear the Buffalo Bill quote more. But that’s like the old statistical argument “yeah I hear it 4 TIMES as much”…(never mind when I say 4 times as much I really mean I hear it 4 out of a million times whereas I hear the other one 1 out of a million times).
Oh, I have a lot of problems with the list. The first 50, though, are pretty hard to dispute.
Gone with the Wind swept the list.
You are a tolerant bunch, all told. The ideas I work with are pretty radical. I am going to leave you fine people in peace for at least 2 months. It seems silly I know that I make an announcement but … it helps my resolve!