Ten Years In
Two Fridays ago was the tenth anniversary of this little blog o' mine. I didn't post anything to commemorate the date because it was also Parker's seventh birthday, which was obviously way more important. And also because I'm not a fan of self-congratulation and self-hype.
But I still thought it would be interesting to throw up a link to my first ever post, so here is what I published back on 6/22/08. The topic was Zimbabwe; specifically, the turmoil and strife going on under dictator Robert Mugabe while Morgan Tsvangirai was trying to bring some semblance of liberty and justice to that nation.
Three months before my post, Tsvangirai had defeated Mugabe in an election for the Zimbabwean presidency -- a position the latter had wielded to orchestrate violence and larceny for 21 years -- but because neither of them received a full 50 percent of the vote, a runoff election was planned. Before the runoff came to pass, Mugabe predictably had his military and other goons embark on a campaign of butchery and murder against his opponents. It was designed to make people fearful of voting against him, and it worked.
Maybe one of these days I will do a full update on what has happened since then in Zimbabwe. Tonight I just want to mention a few things in a Reader's Digest sort of way. Tsvangirai is now dead, having succumbed to cancer this Valentine's Day at the age of 65, while Mugabe is 94, still alive, and remained in power until just seven months ago. Mugabe's recent exit from power resulted from the Zimbabwean army placing him under house arrest (if only they hadn't waited until he was in his nineties!) and describing the arrest as part of an action against criminals who were close to him (but not describing him as a criminal, no no no, and also not describing the arrest as being an action against him).
Despite that arrest and removal from office, Mugabe received a deal under which he and his family are exempt from prosecution; his business interests were declared untouchable; and he was awarded $10 million, a house, 23 staff members, numerous cars, and a newspaper.
Meanwhile, the citizens of Zimbabwe continue to live in squalor and hardship that are unimaginable to us First Worlders. And, statistically speaking, none of us notice and none of us care. We bitch about having to pay for cable TV and about incidentally seeing political shares on Facebook that we don't like. Ugh.
Meanwhile, the citizens of Zimbabwe continue to live in squalor and hardship that are unimaginable to us First Worlders. And, statistically speaking, none of us notice and none of us care. We bitch about having to pay for cable TV and about incidentally seeing political shares on Facebook that we don't like. Ugh.
RIP
Charles Krauthammer died 10 days ago. He was one of my favorite writers, and reminiscing about my inaugural post reminds me of one of my favorite Krauthammer columns -- one you can read here and which, it turns out, was published less than three weeks after that first post of mine.
I remember the column partly because it mentioned Zimbabwe, but mostly because of a comment that referenced the ethnic cleansing then occurring (and maybe still occurring) in Darfur. Krauthammer wrote: "And then there is Darfur, a perennial for which myriad diplomats and foreign policy experts have devoted uncountable hours at the finest five-star hotels to deplore the genocide and urgently urge relief. What is done to free these people? Nothing."
He then continued: "Everyone knows it will take the hardest of hard power to remove the oppressors of Zimbabwe, Burma, Sudan and other godforsaken places where the bad guys have the guns and use them. Indeed, as the Zimbabwean opposition leader suggested (before quickly retracting) from his hideout in the Dutch embassy -- Europe specializing in providing haven for those fleeing the evil that Europe does nothing about -- the only solution is foreign intervention."
The "Zimbabwean opposition leader" of whom he wrote was of course Morgan Tsvangirai, and his ridicule of slothful super-rich bureaucrats pretending to agonize about human travails while consuming pricey meals in luxurious hotels was classically Krauthammerian. Hemingway said "the most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector," and man oh man did Krauthammer have one. No matter how many bubbles were effervescing around something, he always blew right through them to the heart of the matter.
As a well-known pundit whose columns were syndicated nationwide and often appeared on TV, he probably earned a good sum of money over the years. But like those commercials from the 1970's and 1980's said about Smith Barney, he got money the old-fashioned way: He earned it. Krauthammer was schooled in medicine, not punditry, and while a student at Harvard Medical School he became quadriplegic when a diving accident severed his spine at the fifth cervical nerve. After spending 14 months recovering in the hospital, he returned to school, graduated, and became a psychiatrist who helped devise the third edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Obviously he turned to punditry, in which role he took to diagnosing problems in the collective mentality of the body politic, not "merely" in the mentality of individual humans. If you demand evidence that he eventually came to hold mostly conservative views as a result of thinking things through and weighing evidence, not as a result of reflexively believing what people suggested, you need look no further than the evolution of his own politics: Krauthammer worked in the Jimmy Carter administration and was a speechwriter for Carter's veep, Walter Mondale, during the 1980 presidential election; and as you may recall, Mondale ran against Reagan in 1984.
The above jobs are not right-wing resume boosters, but as the Democratic Party shifted leftward, Krauthammer's own analyses shifted rightward, especially where foreign policy was concerned. He became a major advocate of Reagan's peace through strength philosophy, and in fact it was Krauthammer who coined the phrase "Reagan Doctrine" to define that philosophy. He will be missed and so will his type, i.e., those who truly are independent thinkers.
The Great Crack Up
Lefties (I'm talking not about southpaws, but about Sandanista-loving pinkos) are surely experiencing molten mental meltdowns (more than they usually do, I mean) over some recent news items (if they're aware of them, that is).
As reported in this piece by Michael Goodwin, Hispanic support for Donald Trump has increased by 10 percentage points compared to one month ago. I hasten to add that this dramatic increase has occurred during the same month that lefties have been hysterically calling Trump an anti-Hispanic racist due to child-adult separations among illegal aliens.
Also, Trump's support among Democrats has increased by 4 percentage points since one month ago.
Oh, and there's this (per Pew): Nearly two-thirds of Trump supporters are either non-white and/or female and/or college-educated, while less than one-third fall into the category of "white men without college degrees" that we are always told carried him to victory.
In the wake of this, will lefties reflect on why their stale, illegitimate, anti-intellectual reliance on race-baiting emotional manipulation is no longer working? Will they look at economic gains and foreign policy advances and admit that maybe they don't know as much as they claim, or that maybe those who disagree with them might actually know what they're talking about?
Or will lefties respond by shrieking even louder in rage and doubling down on their calcifying assertion that everybody except for themselves is either irredeemably bigoted or too stupid/uneducated to know what's good for them?
Yeah, I think it's the latter too.
But I will still try to help them out by giving them this piece of advice: Stop talking about "white men without college degrees" as if that phrase is a synonym for "ignorant morons," and while you're at it, you might want to consider that non-white men without college degrees might also take umbrage at the way you navel gaze at diplomas and worship at the vulvar altar.
I have a college degree, and I'm glad you do too, but that does not make us any smarter or more capable than somebody who got their education via real world experiences rather than classroom lectures.
One of the smartest and most successful people I know is a business owner who never spent one second in a college classroom. And Steve Jobs never graduated from college, nor did Michael Dell or Paul Allen or Richard Branson or Ted Turner or Dave Thomas or David Geffen or even John D. Freakin' Rockefeller.
Basically, get over your damn selves and stop insulting everyone else's character and intelligence. Believe it or not, that attitude might drive people to vote the opposite of you. Your perpetual condescension is a very big part of the reason that Donald J. Trump now sits in the Oval Office.
And with that...
...I am going to go ahead and sign off. See you next time.
The "Zimbabwean opposition leader" of whom he wrote was of course Morgan Tsvangirai, and his ridicule of slothful super-rich bureaucrats pretending to agonize about human travails while consuming pricey meals in luxurious hotels was classically Krauthammerian. Hemingway said "the most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector," and man oh man did Krauthammer have one. No matter how many bubbles were effervescing around something, he always blew right through them to the heart of the matter.
As a well-known pundit whose columns were syndicated nationwide and often appeared on TV, he probably earned a good sum of money over the years. But like those commercials from the 1970's and 1980's said about Smith Barney, he got money the old-fashioned way: He earned it. Krauthammer was schooled in medicine, not punditry, and while a student at Harvard Medical School he became quadriplegic when a diving accident severed his spine at the fifth cervical nerve. After spending 14 months recovering in the hospital, he returned to school, graduated, and became a psychiatrist who helped devise the third edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Obviously he turned to punditry, in which role he took to diagnosing problems in the collective mentality of the body politic, not "merely" in the mentality of individual humans. If you demand evidence that he eventually came to hold mostly conservative views as a result of thinking things through and weighing evidence, not as a result of reflexively believing what people suggested, you need look no further than the evolution of his own politics: Krauthammer worked in the Jimmy Carter administration and was a speechwriter for Carter's veep, Walter Mondale, during the 1980 presidential election; and as you may recall, Mondale ran against Reagan in 1984.
The above jobs are not right-wing resume boosters, but as the Democratic Party shifted leftward, Krauthammer's own analyses shifted rightward, especially where foreign policy was concerned. He became a major advocate of Reagan's peace through strength philosophy, and in fact it was Krauthammer who coined the phrase "Reagan Doctrine" to define that philosophy. He will be missed and so will his type, i.e., those who truly are independent thinkers.
The Great Crack Up
Lefties (I'm talking not about southpaws, but about Sandanista-loving pinkos) are surely experiencing molten mental meltdowns (more than they usually do, I mean) over some recent news items (if they're aware of them, that is).
As reported in this piece by Michael Goodwin, Hispanic support for Donald Trump has increased by 10 percentage points compared to one month ago. I hasten to add that this dramatic increase has occurred during the same month that lefties have been hysterically calling Trump an anti-Hispanic racist due to child-adult separations among illegal aliens.
Also, Trump's support among Democrats has increased by 4 percentage points since one month ago.
Oh, and there's this (per Pew): Nearly two-thirds of Trump supporters are either non-white and/or female and/or college-educated, while less than one-third fall into the category of "white men without college degrees" that we are always told carried him to victory.
In the wake of this, will lefties reflect on why their stale, illegitimate, anti-intellectual reliance on race-baiting emotional manipulation is no longer working? Will they look at economic gains and foreign policy advances and admit that maybe they don't know as much as they claim, or that maybe those who disagree with them might actually know what they're talking about?
Or will lefties respond by shrieking even louder in rage and doubling down on their calcifying assertion that everybody except for themselves is either irredeemably bigoted or too stupid/uneducated to know what's good for them?
Yeah, I think it's the latter too.
But I will still try to help them out by giving them this piece of advice: Stop talking about "white men without college degrees" as if that phrase is a synonym for "ignorant morons," and while you're at it, you might want to consider that non-white men without college degrees might also take umbrage at the way you navel gaze at diplomas and worship at the vulvar altar.
I have a college degree, and I'm glad you do too, but that does not make us any smarter or more capable than somebody who got their education via real world experiences rather than classroom lectures.
One of the smartest and most successful people I know is a business owner who never spent one second in a college classroom. And Steve Jobs never graduated from college, nor did Michael Dell or Paul Allen or Richard Branson or Ted Turner or Dave Thomas or David Geffen or even John D. Freakin' Rockefeller.
Basically, get over your damn selves and stop insulting everyone else's character and intelligence. Believe it or not, that attitude might drive people to vote the opposite of you. Your perpetual condescension is a very big part of the reason that Donald J. Trump now sits in the Oval Office.
And with that...
...I am going to go ahead and sign off. See you next time.
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