Submission

Want to promote school curricula devoted to your favorite pathology? All you have to do is label any healthy, normal aversion to it as a "phobia."

Take "homophobia." What once was seen as a healthy revulsion towards other peoples' shit-holes is now called an irrational fear.

The Germans are determined to set young minds right about this. A German regional education ministry has joined with LGBT activists to promote "anal sex practices," for middle school-aged children.

Parents in Stuttgart and Hamburg have protested, and thousands more have signed petitions against promoting such "sexual diversity." But how long will the authorities allow such expressions? Advocates for perversity are also using "hate speech" laws to deter opposition.

What about other "phobias?"  The San Diego Unified School District has voted unanimously to create a "plan to address Islamophobia and bullying of Muslim students."

This plan will certainly cost several hundred thousand dollars to devise and implement.  They should simply enact a district-wide, zero-tolerance policy for abuse and harassment.

But they can't, because what they really want to do is carve out special protections for Muslim students. The Council on American-Islamic Relations is a stakeholder, and CAIR will insert language that holds that any criticism of their religion amounts to a personal insult against Mohammed.

This is creeping Sharia, in which any criticism of Mohammed is deemed punishable, in this case with suspensions and expulsions.

In the meantime, accommodations will be made for Muslim students, such as prayer rooms on school grounds. The only religion that merits "separation of church and state" is Christianity.

Also, non-Muslim students are going to need a certain level of exposure to Islam. We will be told that this will lessen "bullying" of Muslim students. Never mind that what a school administrator labels "bullying" is often just teasing. All they have to do is assert the interest of "protecting the children."

Sometimes the Islamic exposure sounds relatively innocuous, like the Virginia high school assignment on why "calligraphy was religiously significant to Muslims."   But this lesson included having students write the Arabic verse, "There is no god but God, and Mohammed is his messenger."

In Georgia, the Five Pillars of Islam are "benchmarks in the state curriculum," according to Dr. Michael Blasewitz.   They distribute textbooks with Islamic prayers that students are required to learn.

I wonder if middle-schoolers will be taught that the meaning of the word, "Islam," is "submission." Because if there is one thing that teenagers like to do, it's submit to authority.

In any case, this diversity and sensitivity training is doomed to fail.   Those students forced to attend invariably develop resentment toward the very group they are being taught to accept.

The Godless Environmentalist

It's a lot easier to find an atheist who is a climate skeptic, that it is to find a Christian who is a radical environmentalist. Environmentalism has become a religion unto itself.

In 2003, author Michael Crichton gave the best explanation of the way that environmentalism has replaced religion in urban aristocrats.

"I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion."

Crichton goes to elaborate some of the ways that environmentalism has mapped itself onto the area of our brains that desire meaning for our lives.

"There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment."

Keep this in mind every time you read about climate change, which our ruling class treats as the great moral crusade of our time. You will see the signals of religious fervor every single time.

Today's confirmation comes from the glamorous world of international super models. Cameron Russell is a twenty-nine-year old woman who prances around in her panties for Victoria's Secret. She has a degree from Columbia University, home of the Marxist educational Brahmin class. And she doesn't want anyone to hate her for being beautiful.

"I am one of the biggest beneficiaries, " she says in her TED Talk, of "the legacy of gender and racial oppression." The world having a preference for fair women does not oppress women of dark skin. It's just a preference! If it bothers you so much, start your own fashion house and hire only Somalis.

Cameron Russell was invited to speak to the Democratic National Convention about climate change. She did an interview with W Magazine about her activism. Her homily repeated the "sustainability" dogma, but also something else interesting. Three times she used the word "abundance."

When people are constantly told they should give up their air conditioner, SUV, or far-off vacation, they don't instantly think, "abundance." They think, "sacrifice," as in, they want me to give up all the things that make my life better.

She has been well-coached. Abundance is an honored theme in the Christian bible. There are hundreds of verses that speak of plenitude. The Twenty-Third Psalm says, "my cup runneth over."

Russell seems unaware that a primary driver of our prosperity is cheap, abundant energy. But there are other reasons as well, such as our degree of economic freedom and low regulations relative to other nations.

"Did you neglect to sequester your carbon, or are you just glad to see me?"

She initially supported Bernie Sanders, because he used "a rhetoric of abundance and inclusivity, about free college and universal health care." Bernie Sanders would eventually turn us into Venezuela, the absolute last nation on earth that I would associate with abundance.

The Accretion Disk of a Republic

A Canadian comedian named Mike Ward has been ordered by the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal to pay $42,000 to Jérémy Gabriel and his mother, as compensation for being insulted.

Jérémy Gabriel has Treacher Collins syndrome, which causes disfigurement. Mike Ward joked that he thought he was just "ugly."

I don't think Ward's joke was funny, or tasteful. But is it the purpose of government to sanction a man for saying something offensive? Can't the government just let the market decide? Look at what happened to Michael Richards' career after shouting down hecklers at the Laugh Factory ten years ago. Civil society has informal mechanisms that check rude behavior.

Quebec thinks differently. Section 10 of their Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms declares that,

Every person has a right to full and equal recognition and exercise of his human rights and freedoms,without distinction, exclusion or preference based on race, colour, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, civil status, age except as provided by law, religion, political convictions, language, ethnic or national origin, social condition, a handicap or the use of any means to palliate a handicap.

Discrimination exists where such a distinction, exclusion or preference has the effect of nullifying or impairing such right.

The Tribunal ruled that Gabriel was harmed by the joke, because Gabriel asserted that he had become subject to bullying at school and had attempted suicide.

Why should I concern myself whether Canada places a higher value on a subjective "right to equality" than the right to free speech?

Restrictions on offensive speech have already become commonplace in the United Kingdom, too, which saw an arrest of a Scottish man for making a Facebook post critical of Muslim immigration.

This is a crystal clear distillation of American exceptionalism. This country is like a star. We demonstrate freedom, and innovation that benefit the rest of the world. If free speech is attenuated in the United States, it's all over.

Hillary Clinton has promised to introduce a Constitutional Amendment to overturn Citizens United within the first thirty days of her Presidency. That would mean restrictions on political speech.

Hillary Clinton is the singularity which will collapse the star of American exceptionalism. No light will ever escape the event horizon.

Ban The Banners

The San Diego City Council has approved a plastic bag ban. San Diego becomes the 150th California municipality to eliminate single-use bags, notes enviro-weenie Joshua Emerson Smith.

Just how many of those municipalities went to the voters for their opinion? Just one. Fairfax, which is a tiny (pop. 7,607) community in Marin County.

The Union-Tribune article features a scary-looking photograph of a dumpster overflowing with trash. Well, what would you expect on the morning after July 4th weekend at Belmont Park?

Smith notes grimly that plastic checkout bags "often end up in landfills." Isn't that why we have landfills?

But, Smith writes, the bags also wind up as "litter in storm drains, rivers, canyons and beaches." They sure do! But the bags aren't being tossed carelessly by Fairfax residents. There seem to be certain populations who show an above-average tendency to litter.

Which populations? Let's interrogate The Los Angeles Times, and their article titled, L.A. fights plague of garbage in central city neighborhoods. Los Angeles is spending millions of dollars to improve "the attitudes of people who dump."

Who are these people, with their blithe attitudes about shitting where they live? "Much of the focus is on the immigrant-heavy neighborhoods of Westlake and Pico-Union just west of downtown."

Oh, "immigrants," huh? They just need time to assimilate, then.

Curious that the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce supported the bag ban. Wonder why? The ordinance isn't on the City of San Diego's Council website. But try to guess where the mandatory $0.10 per paper bag substitution charge goes.

Paper bags generally cost about $0.04 each. Safe to say that the retailer is going to pocket the difference. If only ten percent of the 700 million plastic bags become single-use paper bags, that would be $40 million in profit going to retailers.

Not to worry about low income residents being forced to pay this tax. They are exempt, naturally. The people who are affected the most by government interference are always subsidized at everyone else's expense.

"San Diego’s ban requires that paper bags be provided for free to customers who are receiving government food assistance."

There is such a thing as a biodegradable plastic-type bag. Why doesn't the government try a carrot approach, and let the market decide? And is a hundred billion plastic bags discarded into landfills really any worse than twenty-five billion disposable, non-biodegradable diapers?

It's not really about waste, it's about creeping, penetrative, incremental intrusion. Government is just another word for the things we do together.

Weaponized Stupidity

Progressives will always tell you what they are afraid of. Jessica Valenti is afraid of guns. She's really afraid of women and guns. This is a rational fear, since firearms are an electoral wedge issue, and unmarried women comprise such a huge electoral bloc.

This NRA ad invoking women's "empowerment" & guns as protection from rape & domestic violence is absurd https://t.co/qIFmN9b5Pb

— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) July 13, 2016

Dana Loesch begins her video by saying, "Here's a message to every rapist, domestic abuser, violent criminal thug, and every other monster who preys upon women." Loesch enunciates each word like a round coming from her .38.

Loesch is being emotionally evocative, and that should resonate with women. I would also like to see a video of a woman talking calmly and rationally about how having a firearm saved her life. There is a commenter in Valenti's thread who simply states, "I had a male, military- trained stalker: my gun literally saved my life. Sorry to destroy your narrative."

What does Valenti think is so absurd? "Domestic violence victims are much, much more likely to be killed if there is a gun in the house - no matter who it belongs to."

This is virtually impossible to fact-check. What about women who are trained in the use of firearms in the first place? Not too much overlap between that population and the cohort of women who are domestic violence victims.

Ok, Jessica, what else? "Given the way rape victims are blamed for even coming forward, do we really think culture would be fine and dandy with them SHOOTING DUDES."

Really? Rape victims are blamed for coming forward? I guess attorneys should not be allowed to cross-examine female rape complainants.

"Marissa Alexander fired a warning shot at her abuser and was sent to jail. Where was the NRA then?"

Really, Jessica? Marissa Alexander went to Rico Gray's house, where they had an argument. She deescalated the argument by going to the garage. She then brought her gun into the house, confronted Gray, and discharged her firearm in the direction of Gray's head and their two children. That's not a warning shot. It's assault. If Alexander's sentence was excessive, blame mandatory minimums.

The most powerful message in Loesch's video is the co-opting of the "pro-choice" language of the abortion activists. Loesch warns that anyone who wants to victimize a woman be prepared, because it's increasing likely that she is "ready to exercise her right to choose her life over yours."

"This is what real empowerment looks like."

Groundhog Day

Another day, another Salafist jihadi rampage. We are being conditioned to accept and rationalize the occasional outburst of violence in the name of pluralism. Unless the violence is committed with a firearm, that is. Then, we are lectured about how evil guns are.

Well, a Tunisian named Mohamed has used a large truck to murder people in Nice, France, who were gathering to watch Bastille Day fireworks. Since there is no gun to obsess over, the media narrative has to be modified. Now, we have to be cautioned that the desire to retaliate against Muslims is just what they want!

Sally Kohn posted a link to an article in The Intercept, titled Islamic State’s Goal: "Eliminating the Grayzone" of Coexistence Between Muslims and the West. The author, Murtaza Hussain, cites a February 2015 article in Dabiq, the Islamic State's online magazine, which followed the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

The Islamic State endorsed the Charlie Hebdo attack because it "eliminated the grayzone," which represented coexistence between religious groups. Thus, Muslims living in the West would no longer be welcome in their own societies, and this would lead to a spiral of violence. The ultimate goal of the Islamic State is to generate "hostility between domestic Muslim populations and the broader societies that they live in."

Hussain asks Western countries to "reaffirm unity for their own Muslim populations." They should also "recommit to the military effort against Islamic State enclaves in Iraq and Syria, making clear that there is no contradiction to embracing Muslims at home while fighting terrorists abroad."

Those "terrorists abroad" are still Muslim and their blood will be spilled by "crusaders."

We should acknowledge that the goal of the jihadi is just to kill. Think of it this way. If Islamic State could get their hands on a nuclear weapon or a radiological device, they would use it to kill as many people as possible. Then, when they celebrate their "victory," would they be celebrating the inevitable backlash against the moderate Muslims living in the West, or would they be celebrating the death toll? Certainly the latter.

Acts of violence are not meant to sow xenophobia. That notion is straight out of the faculty lounge at Columbia University.

That's why the professor in the White House lectured us today not to "let ourselves be divided by religion because that's exactly what terrorists want."

The "grayzone," as an area of coexistence, is despised by the Islamic State. They divide the world into the Caliphate and the West. The Islamic State wants all Muslims to decide where they stand. They called for the murders of Muslim leaders who marched in the anti-terror rally in Paris.

Dabiq wrote that there is great reward awaiting the Muslim in the Hereafter if he kills these apostate imām.

Maybe there is a better way. Either go all in and declare war, and wipe them out, or stay completely out.

Hillary Clinton And The Sorcerer's Stone

If you ever saw the movie Pulp Fiction, then you are aware of the MacGuffin. You see it when Jules and Vincent badinage their way to apartment 49, where they have been sent to retrieve a briefcase.

"Vincent flips the two locks, opening the case. We can't see what's inside, but a small glow emits from the case. Vincent just stares at it, transfixed."

We aren't shown what's inside the briefcase because it doesn't matter. It's a MacGuffin. It's something the hero wants. It just has to seem important, so that, in the words of Ace, the audience understands the hero isn't engaged in some trivial matter, but that the Stakes Are High.

This concept has been deployed by filmmakers going back at least to Hitchcock, and explains what is happening right now in American electoral politics. Hillary Clinton is our Hero, and her MacGuffin is the presidency. Our villain is Donald Trump, and he is standing in her way, creating conflict. We aren't witnessing electoral history unfold so much as we are passively watching a movie being played out on our televisions and annotated by our legacy media.

Today we watched Act Two, Scene Seventeen in the Clinton Chronicles: Our Hero Endures Questioning From The F.B.I.

Hillary being questioned by the F.B.I. is portrayed as a minor obstacle for Our Hero. Like how in Pulp Fiction, Vincent goes on a date with Mia Wallace, then has to save her life after she overdoses ON HIS SMACK. There is no point in the story where we are asked to confront Vincent's moral corruption. He's a scumbag drug addict murderer? Whatever! He dances well and knows what a quarter-pounder is called in Holland.

The New York Times ran a story this morning about Hillary's F.B.I. interview. In the second paragraph, they quote Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill, who said Clinton was "pleased to have had the opportunity to assist the Department of Justice in bringing this review to a conclusion."

Message discipline is kind of like a movie script. Everybody knows their lines. Clinton gave a telephone interview to Chuck Todd after her meeting at F.B.I. headquarters, and said the exact same thing. "I was pleased to have the opportunity to assist the department in bringing its review to a conclusion."

Hillary was so pleased to have the opportunity that she brought five lawyers with her. Also, Hillary, it's not exactly a "review." According to the Director of the F.B.I., it's what they call an investigation.

The New York Times never bothers to reconcile the conflicting narratives. All they are interested in, is how does Hillary "feel?" She feels "pleased" because she felt "eager" to assist the Department in any way.

The Times will never ask its readers to confront the moral corruption of their Hero. Indeed, they are willing to blind the reader to the truth like the Taliban is willing to throw acid into the faces of heretics ("none of the emails on Mrs. Clinton’s private server were marked classified").

Did the American Secretary of State pass along classified information about how German leadership viewed the prospects for a Greek bailout to benefit her son-in-law?

That's not in the script. And anyway, Greek-Americans don't comprise either a voting bloc or a donor bloc. The Beaners, now, there's a voting bloc!