Friday, September 20, 2024

Inadvertently Spilling the Truth: What Is the Democratic Party If Not the Party of Sophomoric Teens, Intrepid Cosplayers, and Would-Be Heroes?


Kamala Harris' cackling brings up a question I have often asked in the past 20 years.

What if Democrats — along with leftists the world over — turned out to be nothing but sophomoric individuals snorting with laughter as they stick it to the man, as they fool the grown-ups (ain't that what the 13 Rules for Radicals are all about?!), and, with the true teen-age mentality they possess, as they love to cosplay as senators, presidents, governors (remember the glee of Katie Hobbs at the Arizona inaugural after "defeating" Kari Lake?!), diplomats, filmmakers (on both sides of the camera), and — last but not least — esteemed debaters and professional journalists?

What if all that leftists love to do is cosplay as heroic individuals and knights in shining armor — fighting, among other things, to protect various minorities, to save democracy, and to defeat the West's inhumane monsters, i.e., racists, sexists, Nazis, fascists, and other Adolf Hitlers? (Thanks for the Instalink, Sarah.)

This is why leftists have dystopian fantasies (we must display our intelligence!) and are crisis creators (we must display our bravery!), and it is why those virtue-signallers can't debate and regularly refuse invitations from the right to do so (unless, perhaps, they use "neutral" moderators (sic) to assist them while said moderators attempt to demonize their opponents): the Drama Queens know that their fairy tales would be eviscerated in no time. Regularly, Dennis Prager and Larry Elder recount how they have often, over the years, suggested a debate to various leftists, famous or unknown — even one in which they are outnumbered 5 or 6 to 1 — and the leftists do not dare take them up on it. (Indeed, this is how Larry Elder "turned" Dave Rubin…)

As Jonah Goldberg wrote in Liberal Fascism,

That is how the liberal Gleichschaltung works; contrary voices are regulated, barred, banned when possible, mocked and marginalized when not. Progressive voices are encouraged, lionized, amplified — in the name of "diversity," or "liberation," or "unity," and, most of all, "progress."

No matter how sincere their tears and anger seem to be, for instance, over the melodrama of the poor members of  the gay and transgender minorities, along with their pronouns, the whole LGBTQ+ gig (not least including that ridiculous name) seems to be a joke or a prank against the bourgeois, something which all leftists seem to recognize somewhere deep inside (and I don't doubt that Dave Rubin, Brandon Straka, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Richard Grenell would agree).

Needless to say, the cosplay imagery has been used before, slightly differently, notably by Iowahawk for years now, with his oft-Instapundit-linked lefties manual on how to take over "a respected institution" and thus all of society ("while demanding respect" is a synonym for "while requesting you to shut up"), with David Burge's phrase wearing the "carcass as a skin suit" equivalent to my description of a cosplayer:
 

From London, a jokester enjoying “the wisdom of calling Donald Trump weird” writes with mirth that

When running for the Senate, [Lyndon Baines] Johnson let it be known that one of his opponents enjoyed the carnal pleasure of one of his farmyard sows. “That isn’t true,” one of LBJ’s aides said. “I know,” LBJ replied, “but I’m going to make the bastard deny it.”

I don't deny that this sounds funny or that it is worth a chuckle. At the same time, all of us — especially those raving endlessly about defending democracy — should ask, is calling your opponent a pig-humper (or, for that matter, the rapist of an unbalanced woman in a department store's changing room) truly the way to engage in debate? But Democrats and leftists don't ask that sort of questions; after all, the virtue-signallers are engaged in demonizing opponents, i.e., fighting the "bastards" that said opponents truly are… 

Margaret Thatcher once said “I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.” (Truth to tell, many of them had no political arguments — beyond fairy tales — to begin with.) I wish that during his debate with Kamala Harris, Donald Trump had responded to her every personal attack with calm words such as these: "I want to thank Kamala Harris for her personal attack, because that means she has no policies to offer — beyond those far left policies, of course, that she wants to hide from the American people."

The LBJ story is somewhat reminiscent of Harry Reid telling tall tales in 2012 about the Republican candidate not paying taxes and then rebuffing criticism in interviews with the words, Mitt "Romney didn't win, did he?" This is acceptable, indeed desirable, in a simplistic (i.e., in a sophomoric) worldview consisting of Deserving Dreamers Vs. Despicable Deplorables.

This explains in turn Donald Trump's mean tweets, along with his (alleged) "petty insults and his dark obsessions" — they are only mean in that they describe exactly the kind of people that he sees on the Left. Just like the boy at the end of The Emperor's New Clothes. After the boy's outburst, according to what Hans Christian Andersen seems to have expected, the boy and all the bystanders in the streets ought to have referred to the tailors as scam artists and to their ruler the emperor (in the original Danish, he is a king) as some variant of a fool. 

Alas, as Winston Churchill wrote, "Men [and women] occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."

In real life, according to modern-day Western mores and thanks to the eggings-on, overt and other, of the tailors themselves and the scam artists' (willing or not) allies and sympathizers, the boy was probably vilified as a "tailorphobe" and canceled for daring to have the gall of engaging in hate speech and other types of hate-filled rhetoric. UPDATE: It turns out that I have used the Hans Christian Andersen analogy in the past, as did Mark Steyn during a September 2015 visit to Copenhagen…

The Economist's Lexington column writes, with unhidden glee, that after 

Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and now Ms Harris’s running-mate, started calling him [Trump] “weird”, and as she and other Democrats joined in, the former president foolishly took the bait.

"Foolishly took the bait"? Is that supposed to be part of a debate in "defending democracy"? (Maybe "debate" for the Left in fact means "the bait" pronounced Italian-style?!)

In last week's editorial — the very one bemoaning Trump's "petty insults and his dark obsessions" — The Economist went on to say that 

It may seem unfair to criticise Ms Harris for being sparing about her policies. Her overriding task is to defeat Mr Trump, and it is a vital one in which guile and cunning are permitted.

A "vital [task] in which guile and cunning are permitted." In the wake of a(n in)famous Bernie Sanders quote ("No, I don't think she's abandoning her ideals. I think she is trying to be pragmatic and do what she thinks is right in order to win the election"), leave it to a "respected" MSM outlet to spill the beans and tell the truth about the basic psychology ruling the members of the Democrat Party and other leftists — not excluding (as we can see) the mainstream media outlets themselves — the world over.

Renaming Countries and Cities Across the Planet: "There is no neutral, non-political way to refer to almost any square of the globe; Most names annoy somebody"


Already many years ago, I used to joke that the Germans are so belligerant and start so many wars because nobody calls the nation by its proper name. Even worse: every language seems to have a totally different name for the country. Thus, Deutschland in German becomes Allemagne in French, Tyskland in Danish, Germany in English, Germania in Italian which indeed sounds exactly like the English except that the word for the Germans (for the German people) is… gli Tedeschi. 

In that perspective, The Economist asks: Will India change its name to Bharat?

During the G20 summit in Delhi, on September 9th and 10th [2023], Narendra Modi, the prime minister, sat behind a nameplate inscribed with “Bharat”, the Hindi name for India.

 … Why might the BJP [the Bharatiya Janata Party] want to rebrand India?

Bharat is already a widely used synonym for India, at least within the country. The constitution begins with the phrase “India, that is Bharat”. The national anthem uses the name too. The word’s etymological roots are in Sanskrit, an ancient language from which most modern Indian tongues have emerged. Consequently, the country is referred to as Bharat in most local vernaculars. 

 … But although the name India may be associated with British rule, its use far predates that period. The ancient Greeks are believed to have called the subcontinent “Indus”, in reference to the river that flows through it. “Indus” itself comes from a Sanskrit word for the river, sindhu.


The Economist's Banyan adds that

The constitution of India begins: “India, that is Bharat, shall be a union of states.” Unable to agree on whether to use the English or Sanskrit name for the country, its authors included both. On the surface, the difference is no greater than that between Germany and Deutschland. But from the debates in the constituent assembly 75 years ago until today, India’s alternative names have been loaded with distinct meanings. One was imposed by a colonial power and is increasingly associated in India with an out-of-touch anglicised elite. The other is increasingly considered a true reflection of a proud, ancient civilisation.

As this is happening around the globe — notably in 2021 when Turkey's "Erdogan decreed that his country would henceforth be known to the rest of the world as Türkiye, as it is in Turkish" — The Economist's Johnson decided to issue A guide to renamed cities

Almost any place’s true name can be a matter for discussion. Three of Turkey’s neighbours officially call themselves Hellas, Sakartvelo and Hayastan—better known as Greece, Georgia and Armenia in English. Meanwhile Hindistan, the name for India in Turkish, can also mean “the country of turkeys”. There is no neutral, non-political way to refer to almost any square of the globe. Most names annoy somebody.

This is most obvious when a territory goes from belonging to one state to another. Westerners were accustomed to referring to cities in Ukraine as Kiev, Kharkov and Lvov. Some grumble at having to learn new names for them—Kyiv, Kharkiv and Lviv. But the old ones were not neutral. They were Russian, and after the country became independent many of its people wanted the Ukrainian versions to be used even in English. Outsiders’ decision to use Ukrainian place-names is now a political declaration of support for Ukraine’s very right to exist.

 … Some calls for change involve colonial names or spellings that were imposed by outsiders. India-watchers have had to adjust to Mumbai (once Bombay), Kolkata (Calcutta) and Chennai (Madras), while remembering that institutions like the Bombay Stock Exchange and the University of Madras continue to use their old monikers. Such renamings often purport to hark back to an unsullied past, but are really exercises in nationalist myth-making. Sometimes they are inarguable. Citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo (once Zaire) understandably wanted to rename their capital, Leopoldville, which recalled a Belgian ruler whose name was a byword for the worst in colonial brutality. It is now Kinshasa.

 … The Czech Republic has a one-word name in Czech (Česko), and so the Czechs have asked for their country to be called Czechia in English. This has yet to catch on.

Populists and autocrats may think they can dictate place-names, but no amount of decrees can force people to say Türkiye instead of Turkey.

Thursday, September 19, 2024

"After America?" Radio Courtoisie's Évelyne Joslain Is Joined by Guy Millière and Erik Svane

Erik Svane, Évelyne Joslain, et Guy Millière avec son livre
à la conférence dans la mairie du 16ème arrondissment

Libre journal du nouveau monde du 18 septembre 2024 : “Après l’Amérique ? ; La campagne électorale et l’actualité brûlante aux Etats-Unis”

Patron d'émission le 18 septembre 2024

Evelyne Joslain reçoit :
  • Guy Millière, essayiste
  • Erik Svane, journaliste

Thème : “Après l’Amérique ? ; La campagne électorale et l’actualité brûlante aux Etats-Unis

Référence : 

APRES L'AMERIQUE
  • Millière, Guy (Auteur)

Guy Millière a quitté le Nevada pour se rendre à Paris pour une semaine dans le cadre de la parution de son nouveau livre, APRÈS L'AMERIQUE? Sa charmante épouse, Keltoum, est aussi du voyage… 

Il a par ailleurs écrit un compte-rendu sur le livre de Evelyne Joslain, La Guerre Culturelle dans les 4 Vérités, intitulé Un livre essentiel sur la guerre qui nous est livrée :

Évelyne Joslain dit au début de son livre qu’il est le résultat de nombreuses années de recherche. Les références historiques et intellectuelles, page après page, sont innombrables, et montrent une érudition et une connaissance de l’histoire intellectuelle du monde absolument remarquables. Lire le livre permet aux lecteurs d’apprendre, de comprendre, de connaître, de se doter de repères précis et fondés qui leur permettent d’être plus lucides sur le monde dans lequel ils vivent.

 … C’est un livre essentiel, lucide, sans illusions. Je le recommande vivement à ceux qui veulent regarder la réalité en face. C’est un livre d’une immense richesse intellectuelle, à lire, à relire, et à conserver précieusement dans sa bibliothèque.


Wednesday, September 18, 2024

"The Demonization of Donald Trump Has Repercussions," Notes Karsenty, "and It Is Time for America's MSM to Put an End to This Demonization"


«The demonization of Donald Trump has repercussions»
, charges one of the spokespersons of Republicans In France. And

"it is time for America's leading media put an end to this demonization of Donald Trump, that Kamala Harris put an end to it, that Joe Biden, or that the people speaking for Joe Biden, put an end to it. 

On a lighter note, Philippe Karsenty adds that 

"If I want to mix in a smidgen of humor, in the same time frame Kamala Harris has done one interview and a half. So: two assassination attempts [for one candidate], one interview and a half [for the other]. What I mean is this: there is somebody who is really putting their life at stake for American democracy — they took a bullet for democracy —"

and it ain't Kamala Harris.

«La diabolisation de Donald Trump a des conséquences», a dénoncé ce lundi sur CNEWS le porte-parole du parti républicain américain en France Philippe Karsenty.


Monday, September 16, 2024

Wrecked by socialism, Latin America is overrun by “moochers and looters” who are gaining ground in the USA


Interviewed by John Stossel's Stossel TV, Viral Influencer Gloria Alvarez Fights Socialism throughout Latin America and the Spanish-speaking world. 

Socialism always fails! But for some reason people still want it.

They should listen to Gloria Alvarez.

She’s a viral influencer from Guatemala who watched parts of Latin America get wrecked by socialism.

Now she says the “moochers and looters” are gaining ground in the USA.

I’m encouraged people like Gloria get it.

I interviewed her last year when she was running for President of Guatemala.

One thing Gloria Álvarez, who I believe was the first person to make a PragerU video in two languages (in both English and Spanish), shares with this blog is the photo of Che Guevara wearing Mickey Mouse ears… I would like to think that the Guatemalan beauty was influenced by an internet trip to No Pasarán, but that can hardly be proven…