Tag: politics

‘The Death of Expertise’: Tom Nichols offers great read for understanding our slow-motion cultural implosion

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A book called The Death of Expertise came out not too long ago. The best way to describe it for regular readers of this blog is as follows: It’s as if author Tom Nichols read my mind and then put all my disparate thoughts on Western civilization’s slow-motion car crash into a nice package. His understanding of how modern technology, social media, and left-wing academics exacerbate the problem is, unfortunately for future generations, on point.

I spend a lot of time on social media for work, and over the years I have seen a disturbing trend take place on the internet and college campuses. A toxic brew of left-wing “social justice” indoctrination on American campuses mixed with digital echo chambers, available to men and women of all political stripes, slowly boiled. (We’ve seen the effects of this during the U.S. presidential inauguration protests, the Berkeley riots, and the insanity at Evergreen State College in Washington state.)

Mr. Nichols, however, is one of the few people I’ve seen who has a firm grasp of the dangerous social dynamics at play beneath the surface. Like your friendly neighborhood blogger, he seems to think a miracle is needed to stave off an ugly future.

“I fear we are witnessing the death of the ideal of expertise itself, a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laypeople, students and teachers, knowers and wonderers — in other words, between those of any achievement in an area and those with none at all.

Attacks on established knowledge and the subsequent rash of poor information in the general public are sometimes amusing. Sometimes they’re even hilarious.  Late-night comedians have made a cottage industry of asking people questions that reveal their ignorance about their own strongly held ideas, their attachment to fads, and their unwillingness to admit their own cluelessness about current events. […] When life and death are involved, however, it’s a lot less funny. […]

The overall trend is one of ideological segregation enabled by the ability to end a friendship with a click instead of a face-to-face discussion. …

Underlying much of this ill temper is a false sense of equality and the illusion of egalitarianism created by the immediacy of social media. I have a Twitter account and a Facebook page, and so do you, so we’re peers, aren’t we? After all, if a top reporter at a major newspaper, a diplomat at the Kennedy School, a scientist at a research hospital, and your Aunt Rose from Reno all have an online presence, then all of their viewers are just so many messages speeding past your eyes. Every opinion is only as good as the last posting on a home page.

In the age of social media, people using the Internet assume that everyone is equally intelligent or informed merely by virtue of being online. — Tom Nichols,The Death of Expertise (Oxford University Press, 2017). Pages 3, 129.

Boom.

Across every personal and professional level of my life I have witnessed the proliferation of this mentality. Google gives people a false sense superiority. A five-second search that allows a man to throw out a random factoids convinces him that he’s an expert when, in reality, his depth of breadth of knowledge is a mile wide and an inch deep.

Social media offers a one-two punch of perniciousness: It encourages people to dehumanize the guy on the other side of the screen while simultaneously fostering false pride and moral superiority. That, dear reader, is a recipe for violence.

Mr. Nichols’ book is by no means perfect (he sometimes shows off his own ideological blind spots by unfairly framing certain political issues), but it is still highly worth your time. It’s the perfect book to sit down with for a few hours by the pool or at the beach. Check it out if you want to better understand our widening political divide, or if you just like slightly terrifying reading material.

‘Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging’: Junger’s must-read explains why America is tearing itself apart

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Roughly 17 years ago I exited the military after a stint as a mechanized infantryman in the U.S. Army. Even though the September 11, 2001, terror attacks and the nation’s “long war” had not yet begun, I found myself having a difficult time with the transition to civilian life. Understanding why I missed my old platoon — and why I felt a growing fear and sadness for the country I loved — took years (and a blog like this) to figure out, but author and former war reporter Sebastian Junger articulates it all in his must-read book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging.

Americans who have not lived under a rock for the past 20 years have witnessed the slow-motion implosion of our culture.

  • Cable news pundits obsessively talk of “red states” and “blue states.”
  • The politics of personal destruction reigns supreme.
  • Saying “all lives matter” is interpreted in a Twilight Zone-ish twist by millions of people as somehow racist.
  • Americans watch carefully constructed social-media feeds that tell them all Republicans are the equivalent of Darth Vader, or that all Democrats have shrines to Fidel Castro in their bedroom.

In short, the modern world is deficient in something that is causing tens-of-millions of people to feel isolated, alone, and empty. The void is filled with confusion, and that in turn fuels the kind of anger and hate that was the hallmark of the 2016 election cycle.

Why is it that many soldiers and civilians who have lived through war sometimes get nostalgic for it?

What are the consequences for society when a person “living in a modern city or suburb can, for the first time in history, go through an entire day — or an entire life — mostly encountering complete strangers”?

Why are we often surrounded by others, yet “feel deeply, dangerously alone”?

One of the answers can be found in tribal societies. And no, your friendly neighborhood blogger is not saying Native Americans should have won the clash of civilizations at our nation’s inception. I am merely saying, like Mr. Junger, that we can learn from their ability to provide “the three pillars of self-determination — autonomy, competence, and community.”

Mr. Junger writes:

“After World War II, many Londoners claimed to miss the exciting and perilous days of the Blitz. (“I wouldn’t mind having an evening like it, say, once a week — ordinarily there’s no excitement,” one man commented to Mass-Observation about the air raids), and the war that is missed doesn’t even have to be a shooting war: “I am a survivor of the AIDS epidemic,” an American man wrote in 2014 on the comment board of an online lecture about war. “Now that AIDS is no longer a death sentence, I must admit that I miss those days of extreme brotherhood…which led to deep emotions and understandings that are above anything I have felt since the plague years.”

What people miss presumably isn’t danger or loss but the unity that these things often engender. There are obvious stresses on a person in a group, but there may be even greater stresses on a person in isolation, so during disasters there is a net gain in well-being. Most primates, including humans, are intensely social, and there are very few instances of lone primates surviving in the wild. …

Whatever the technological advances of modern society — and they’re near miraculous — the individualized lifestyles that those technologies spawn seem to be deeply brutalizing to the human spirit.” — (Sebastian Junger, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging (New York: Hachette Book Group, Inc., 2016), 92-93.

Tribe covers issues like PTSD, depression, and anxiety among combat veterans, but it would be a big mistake to solely think of it as a book for the military community. It is much more than that, because it is a blueprint for getting the nation on a path to cultural healing.

The author continues:

“The eternal argument over so-called entitlement programs — and, more broadly, over liberal and conservative thought — will never be resolved because each side represents an ancient and absolutely essential component of our evolutionary past.

So how do you unify a secure, wealthy country that has sunk into a zero-sum political game with itself? How do you make veterans feel that they are returning to a cohesive society that was worth fighting for in the first place? […] I put the question to Rachel Yehuda of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. …

“if you want to make a society work, then you don’t keep underscoring the places where you’re different — you underscore your shared humanity,” she told me. “I’m appalled by how much people focus on differences. Why are you focusing on how different you are from one another, and not on the things that unite us?” […]

Reviling people you share a combat outpost with is an incredibly stupid thing to do, and public figures who imagine their nation isn’t, potentially, one huge combat outpost are deluding themselves. (127-128).

Tribe is by no means “the” answer to the nation’s deep-seated cultural problems, but it is a significant piece of the puzzle. To get a good look at the big picture, I suggest pairing Mr. Junger’s quick-read with George Weigel’s Letters to a Young Catholic. Each book provides a template for transcending dead-end partisan bickering, and in turn getting America efficiently focused on  becoming a more-perfect union.

Orwellian ‘Fake News’ claims on D.C. sex-trafficking story exposes true liars and deceivers

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“PizzaGate” is now being picked up by major media outlets. There is no denying it now that The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, and Fox News affiliates in the nation’s capital have filed reports. That is the good news. The bad news is that they are liars and deceivers of the highest magnitude.

For those who are new to the story surrounding Comet Ping Pong, WikiLeaks, Washington’s 49th “Most Powerful” man and the Podesta brothers, here is the quick run-down:

  • WikiLeaks revealed roughly 50,000 stolen emails belonging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta. Some of those emails revealed that he had very bizarre friends and often seemed to really, really, really like “pizza.”
  • Individuals on Reddit, 4chan, YouTube, and other websites started looking into John and Tony Podesta’s connections (Tony is one of the biggest lobbyists in D.C. and has an art collection that features nude teenagers). One of those indiviuals was No. 49 on the GQ’s “Most Powerful” individuals, James Alefantis.
  • Mr. Alefantis (former boyfriend of Correct the Record’s David Brock) owns Comet Ping Pong in Washington, D.C. The establishment next to his business is another pizza place called Besta Pizza, which until the past few weeks had a pizza logo that was a dead-ringer for a symbol that law-enforcement agencies warn is favored by pedophiles. The guy who owns Besta Pizza worked under Bill Clinton in the Department of Justice investigating human trafficking, sex crimes, etc.
  • Mr. Alefantis’ Comet Pizza Instagram account and the accounts of his employees featured highly troubling images for a “kid-friendly” and “family friendly” establishment. (That is how the company bills itself. That is not my opinion.)
  • Comet Ping Pong features entertainers who are weirdly obsessed with sex. It has commissioned promotional work to a woman whose portfolio includes blatant imagery of sex abuse of children.
  • Those investigating this on the internet say this is clear evidence that warrants an investigation. They have been accused of creating “Fake News” by every major media outlet that has covered the story.

Read the following articles and then ask yourself why all of them either completely avoided linking to publicly available images, or weirdly tried to make it sound like this was all a partisan thing started by Donald Trump fans.

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This is not about Donald Trump. This is about innocent children. This is about teenagers who are lured into an establishment with grown men who make it crystal clear what kind of “pizza” is on the menu.

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Honest reporters do not shout “Fake! Fake! Fake! Fake! Fake!” That is not how it’s done.

James Alefantis and his employees do not get to post sexually explicit material all over the internet and then play the victim when people start talking about it, sharing the images, and wondering what the heck goes on at these late-night events featuring “Sex Stains.”

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Americans who are revolted by YouTube videos of Comet Ping Pong performers making comments about pedophilia (i.e., “We all have … preferences.”) are not “fevered.” Their outrage is healthy because normal people don’t take little kids to that kind of “performance.”

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What is going on between the media and those who are taking down publicly available material is insidious. This needs to be clearly explained so there is no mistaking what is happening.

  • There is a systematic effort to cast anyone who is upset about this as a weirdo or a “conspiracy theorist.”
  • By making it impossible or near-impossible to actually find the evidence, the media shrinks the pool of people who know the truth. When that happens, righteous anger sounds like the ranting and raving of lunatics.
  • When the rest of the population cannot see the evidence, they are inclined to believe the media because to do otherwise would require confronting evil.
  • The practical effect of all this is that anyone with integrity within the media is discouraged from doing the right thing because they do not want to lose their jobs, be seen as kooks, audited by the IRS, confronted by corrupt law enforcement officials, or wind up dead.

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You are being manipulated, and the manipulation is not being done by your fellow Americans on Reddit. It is being done by powerful people in the nation’s capital and their friends in places like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg News, and Fortune magazine.

The mainstream media is corrupt.

Do not take anything they tell you at face value.

“Fact Checkers” are partisan hacks and “Fake News” is a euphemism for “Opinions or Facts We In The Mainstream Media Do Not Like or Want to Cover.

If you do not realize and accept this, then you will continue to live in a world where “kid-friendly” pizza places can promote “Shut up N F*ck Men” without repercussions. That is not just unacceptable — it is evil.

Exit Question: Would you bring your child to a “Sex Stains” show? The reporters at The New York Times and The Washington Times apparently would, since this is all one big “Fake News” story.

Podesta’s ‘Spirit Cooking’ ignored by mainstream media while pundits still bring up Nancy Reagan’s astrology

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Your friendly neighborhood blogger has heard people in political conversations — for years — bring up how “weird” it was that Nancy Reagan believed in astrology and what implications it might have for the country since her husband was the commander in chief. This week, however, the mainstream media ran as fast as possible away from a WikiLeaks reveal that Hillary Clinton’s right-hand man, John Podesta — and his Clinton-bundler D.C. lobbyist brother Tony — are good friends with Marina Abramovic. She is the “performance artist” who has a passion for getting naked, cutting herself, and doing all sorts of bizarre things with sperm and blood.

Translation: Republican wife who thinks there may be something to astrology = Scandalous. Liberal elite rings who think “Spirit Cooking” and blood mixtures painted on golems (clay figures used during religious ceremonies) is normal = non-story.

Earlier this week I was sifting through WikiLeaks files when I ran across an invitation from Tony Podesta to his brother John to attend a “Spirit Cooking” dinner with Ms. Abramovic (i.e., the lady who gets upset on Twitter when she’s accused of being into satanic rituals despite creating an @AbramovicM666 account).

“Are you in NYC Thursday July 9 Marina wants you to come to dinner Mary?” — Tony Podesta, June 28, 2015.

“Dear Tony, I am so looking forward to the Spirit Cooking dinner at my place. Do you think you will be able to let me know if your brother is joining? All my love, Marina.”  — Marina Abramovic, June 25, 2015.

These people are obviously good friends. This is how you speak with your inner circle. Therefore, it is newsworthy that someone who will literally be able to whisper in the ear of the commander in chief if Hillary Clinton is elected president hangs out with freaks.

Here is what the New York Times said of Ms. Abramovic on Nov. 1:

“You will need to be able to withstand a great deal of conversation about clairvoyants and tarot cards and didgeridoos and kundalini life forces and monks and gurus and ‘how the soul can leave the body through the center of the fontanel of the head’ to make it very far in this memoir. …

Ms. Abramovic reports in ‘Walk Through Walls’ that under the right circumstances, she can foresee world events,” the newspaper wrote. “‘I dreamed of an earthquake in Italy: 48 hours later, there was an earthquake in southern Italy. I had a vision of someone shooting the Pope: 48 hours later, someone tried to shoot Pope John Paul II.’”

Ask yourself this question: Who are your friends and what do you guys do on the weekend? Do you fill tubs with blood-like goo and naked women and then eat from their bodies, or do you go to a steakhouse and have fun over a few beers?

Ask yourself this question: Why does Hillary Clinton’s inner circle include Anthony Weiner — a man who is under FBI investigation for sexual messages to a teenage girl; Bill Clinton (need I say more?); and people who think Marina Abramovic’s naked self-mutilation and occult “art” is normal?

I wrote a story on this subject for work, but not a single mainstream media outlet covered it. They ignored it. They shunned it, ironically, like the devil. Meanwhile, Twitter and YouTube and other social media platforms exploded with “Spirit Cooking” trends. The traffic for the story was through the roof — and yet, silence.

People like Katie Pavlich over at Townhall, one of the few writers who addressed it, tried to torpedo the story entirely using giant straw-man arguments. Because Ms. Pavlich felt Infowars likened Mr. Podesta to a “blood sucking, hair eating devil worshipper,” then ipso facto there was nothing to cover.

Wrong.

You can tell a lot about a man by who his close friends are, and it speaks volumes that the Podestas receive “all my love” messages from a woman who thinks it’s normal to get naked in front of strangers and cut herself, or to create “aphrodisiac” recipes that require “fresh urine” and “fresh sperm milk” for “earthquake nights.”

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For Townhall writers like Ms. Pavlich, it apparently means nothing that Ms. Abramovic a.) sees herself as a mystic, b.) says that performing her rituals at home makes “magic” possible, and c.) told artist James Franco that she hates the studio and loves to “perform” at home.

“If you are doing the occult magic in the context of art or in a gallery, then it is art. If you are doing it in a different context, in spiritual circles or private house or on TV shows, it is not art.” — Marina Abramovic on question about magic via Reddit interview.

Move along. Move along. Nothing to see here.

Oh, and did I mention that the artist now says she called the “Spirit” dinner that because “we just call things funny names”?

What are all the chances that out of all the “funny” names she could have picked, she used “Spirit Cooking dinner”?

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And here is what she told Mr. Franco:

“I hate studio, to start with. Studio is a trap. Studio is the worst place — the artist should never be [there]. The art comes from life — not from studio.” — Marina Abramovic to James Franco via Wall Street Journal interview, December 2009.

The mainstream media is filled with a bunch of people who are obsessed about losing their place within “The Inner Ring” that C.S. Lewis spoke about years ago.

The mainstream media are terrified about what will happen if they cover an explosive story about Hillary Clinton’s inner circle and then she is elected president. That is why CNN and others had to be dragged kicking and screaming to cover WikiLeaks, FBI investigations into the former secretary of state, and the “pay-for-play” corruption of The Clinton Foundation.

But hey, maybe I’m wrong and the Podesta brothers’ buddy-buddy relationship with Marina “Eat the Pain” Abramovic is not worth your time.

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Exit Question: What are the chances that late-night comedians and SNL would have a field day if Donald Trump’s inner circle included an “artist” whose works required her to sit on mountains of bloody bones, stab her fingers, and “eat the pain”?

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Just “art.”

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‘Letters to a Young Catholic’: George Weigel hits a literary home run

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George Weigel’s Letters to a Young Catholic is a wonderful book, but oddly enough I must begin this review by griping about the title — it’s something that Catholics of any age should read. In fact, the publisher does not lie by billing the book as “a modern spiritual classic,” which is why I recommend it to anyone who is interested in such issues.

Like many Catholic kids, my parents took me to Mass every Sunday growing up. And, like many Catholic kids, I was not exposed to the writings of G.K. Chesterton, George Weigel or other intellectual heavyweights. What I did have access to were kind adults who lacked the ability to articulate the faith in a way that “clicked” for me. I drifted from the Church as a young man and did not come back until I learned many painful lessons. If I were exposed to a book like this as a teenager then it probably would have saved me a lot of lost time, although I admit to having a largely impenetrable chip on my shoulder in those days. (And yes, I know that some of you would argue that it’s still there!)

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Letters to a Young Catholic is that in many ways it doubles as a must-read for those who are wondering why America’s political institutions are crumbling before our eyes. The way in which the author travels the globe, goes back in time, covers essential questions about the Catholic faith that all young people ask, and then ties it into our contemporary political landscape is like watching a gymnast who puts everything out on the floor before the judges — and nails it.

Mr. Weigel writes:

If American popular and high culture could ever agree on a theme song that captured the idea of freedom driving much of contemporary life, it would almost certainly be Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” I did it my way seems to sum up the widespread notion that freedom is a matter of asserting myself and my will — that freedom is really about choice, not about what we choose and why. Suggest that certain choices are just incompatible with human dignity and with growth in goodness, and you’ll get some very strange looks these days, whether on campus or in the workplace.

Catholicism has a different idea of freedom. In the Catholic idea of freedom, freedom and goodness go together. A great contemporary moral theologian, Father Servais Pinckaers, OP, explained all this. […] Learning to play the piano, he reminded us, is a tedious, even dreary business at first: well do I remember my own distaste for a book of technique-strengthening tortures entitled Scales, Chords, and Arpeggios. But after doing one’s exercises for a while, what originally seemed like a burden comes into clearer focus — learning to do the right thing in the right way is actually liberating. You can play anything you like, even the most difficult pieces. You can make new music on your own. Sure, Father Pinckaers writes, anybody can pound away on a piano. But that’s a rudimentary, savage sort of freedom,” not a truly human freedom. …

I did it my way teaches us an idea of freedom that Father Pinckaers calls “the freedom of indifference.” Doing things “my way,” just because it’s my way, is like banging idiotically on the piano or talking gibberish. The richer, nobler idea of freedom the Catholic Church proposes is what Father Pinckaers calls freedom for excellence — the freedom to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons, as a matter of habit. That’s the truly human way. Because that’s the kind of freedom that satisfies our natural desire for happiness, which itself reflects our desire for God, who is all Good, all the way.  […] What’s all this got to do with democracy? Everything. Freedom untethered from moral truth will eventually become freedom’s worst enemy. — Weigel, George. Letters to a Young Catholic. Basic Books, 2015. 305-306.

A friend of mine texted me on Monday and said she hoped that I would cover the first U.S. presidential debate on the blog. In many ways, the text from Mr. Weigel’s book shown here tells us everything we need to know.

Why is America forced to choose between a woman who should be wearing an orange jumpsuit in a federal prison, and an egomaniac with occasionally orange skin?

Answer: Because America long ago decided it wanted to untether freedom from moral truth.

There really is no way to read Letters to a Young Catholic and not have a crystal clear understanding as to why civil society in the U.S. is unraveling. Our cultural influencers embrace a kind of nihilism “that enjoys itself on the way to oblivion, convinced that all of this — the world, us, relationships, sex, beauty, history — is really just a cosmic joke,” and we are now paying the price.

Mr. Weigel counters that “against the nihilist claim that nothing is really of consequence, Catholicism insists that everything is of consequence, because everything has been redeemed by Christ. And if you believe that, it changes the way you see things. It changes the way everything looks.”

If for no other reason, wayward Catholics should read this book to realize that what they thought was Catholicism growing up was in all likelihood a grossly watered down version of the Faith that denied them knowledge of its true richness and beauty. There are numerous reasons for this, and the author does a masterful job spelling it all out. I found myself thinking, “Finally! Someone who gets it,” and I am sure you will too.

Nick Spencer calls Republicans ‘evil,’ Marvel, industry ‘journalists’ yawn as customers walk

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Imagine you are a Marvel editor on Steve Rogers: Captain America, which comes out Wednesday. You’re hoping the book sells well despite the new costume looking like something from Marvel’s NFL Superpro in the 1990s. Everything is ready to go, and then you glance at the writer’s Twitter feed and realize that he constantly advertises his own hatred towards [insert large group of potential customers here] and calls them “evil” instead of promoting the book. What would you do?

The answer — at least when it comes to having 20/20 hate-vision for Republicans — is nothing.

Yes, that’s right, Captain America writer Nick Spencer can tell the world he has an Orwellian “2 Minutes Hate”-thing for Republicans and there are apparently zero repercussions.

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It is glaringly obvious that readers who are independent voters are even turned off by his rhetoric, and yet Marvel and so-called industry journalists do nothing. They sit back and watch as sales suffer because writers like Mr. Spencer tell potential customers they are evil — merely for disagreeing on public policy.

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Take this in: The man who writes Captain America — a hero who should transcend petty politics — is a partisan hack of the highest order. He speaks of the “myth” of the “good Republican” because … they might disagree with liberal family members on complex issues.

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Mr. Spencer says conservatives turn “so evil” when discussing cultural issues. Let us now take a moment to examine the refugee crisis in Europe, for example.

CNN reported Jan 6:

Germany has been shocked by the apparently coordinated crime wave, in which Cologne police received more than 100 criminal complaints from women who said they had been sexually assaulted or robbed by gangs of men of Arab or North African appearance in the city center during New Year’s Eve festivities. Cologne police would not elaborate Wednesday on the total number of crimes reported, as the figure continued to rise.

Police have said that about a quarter of the complaints related to sexual assaults, including a rape, and that they believed the assaults were probably intended to distract the victims, allowing attackers to steal mobile phones and other devices.

Say you’re a young man who reads Mr. Spencer’s Twitter feed. You’re not particularly political, but you know that your brother is a conservative guy. You ask your brother about the refugee crisis and the conversation goes as follows:

Comic Kid: What do you think of the refugee crisis in Germany?

Conservative Brother: Did you hear about the waves of sexual assaults on New Year’s Eve?

Comic Kid: Yeah. What’s up with that?

Conservative Brother: Germany took in 1.1 million refugees from the Middle East and North Africa in 2015. They flooded cities with Muslims, and it’s going to have a huge cultural impact in the years to come. Many of these individuals have no respect for western values. They came from countries where women could be beaten for leaving the house without a related male escort, they could be executed in “honor killings,” etc.

Comic Kid: Hmmm.

Conservative Brother: There was one city, Sumte, which had a population of just over 100 people. They were ordered to take in 1,000 refugees. The German government culturally upended the city of Sumte with one stroke of the pen.

Comic Kid: It’s kind of hard to argue with that.

In the mind of Nick Spencer, pointing out irrefutable facts that make his preferred public policies less desirable is “evil.” Instead of simply acknowledging that reasonable people can disagree, he takes to Twitter to tell anyone who will listen that their conservative family members are “evil.” Mr. Spencer is a sick man.

If Marvel has any responsible editors left within the building, then someone will rein in Mr. Spencer’s behavior. We all know that if he said people need to “stop believing in the myth of the good Muslim” then he would be fired, but perhaps there is someone with a shred of integrity who will address the situation.

Congratulations, Marvel Comics. Your Captain America writer spends his time on social media telling about half your potential customers that they are “evil.” Good luck with that business model.

‘Dilbert’ creator Scott Adams nailed it on Trump’s strategy

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A friend of mine asked me earlier this week whether I thought Donald Trump would be the next president of the United States. We had a lengthy discussion on the matter, and then the next day an old Washington Post piece showed up in my Facebook feed that covered much of the same ground. I was amused to find out that “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams and I have many of the same observations about the billionaire. We agree on Trump’s general strategy, but differ in terms of how successful his tactics will be in the general election.

In short, Adams believes Trump will be the next president of the United States. I … don’t know.

The Washington Post reported March 21:

The Manhattan mogul is so deft at the powers of persuasion, Adams believes, that the candidate could have run as a Democrat and, by picking different hot-button issues, still won this presidency. In other words: Trump is such a master linguistic strategist that he could have turned the political chessboard around and still embarrassed the field. …

1. Trump knows people are basically irrational.

“If you see voters as rational you’ll be a terrible politician,” Adams writes on his blog. “People are not wired to be rational. Our brains simply evolved to keep us alive. Brains did not evolve to give us truth. Brains merely give us movies in our minds that keeps us sane and motivated. But none of it is rational or true, except maybe sometimes by coincidence.”

2. Knowing that people are irrational, Trump aims to appeal on an emotional level.

“The evidence is that Trump completely ignores reality and rational thinking in favor of emotional appeal,” Adams writes. “Sure, much of what Trump says makes sense to his supporters, but I assure you that is coincidence. Trump says whatever gets him the result he wants. He understands humans as 90-percent irrational and acts accordingly.”

Adams adds: “People vote based on emotion. Period.”

3. By running on emotion, facts don’t matter.

“While his opponents are losing sleep trying to memorize the names of foreign leaders – in case someone asks – Trump knows that is a waste of time … ,” Adams writes. “There are plenty of important facts Trump does not know. But the reason he doesn’t know those facts is – in part – because he knows facts don’t matter. They never have and they never will. So he ignores them.

“Right in front of you.”

And stating numbers that might not quite be facts nevertheless can anchor those numbers, and facts, in your mind.

4. If facts don’t matter, you can’t really be “wrong.”

Trump “doesn’t apologize or correct himself. If you are not trained in persuasion, Trump looks stupid, evil, and maybe crazy,” Adams writes. “If you understand persuasion, Trump is pitch-perfect most of the time. He ignores unnecessary rational thought and objective data and incessantly hammers on what matters (emotions).”

I highly suggest reading the entire piece. Adams’ analysis will be invaluable in the months ahead.

Back in February I concurred with The Federalist’s James Poulos, who likened Trump to the Marvel character “Deadpool.” I said, “It appears, unfortunately, as though the Republican Party will not listen to Poulos’ advice, but instead will continue to ‘agonize’ over Trump.”

Now, Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. That means that we are only left to wonder if Hillary Clinton or Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders will be able to successfully counter Trump’s strategy — unless there is an X Factor.

I believe the X Factor that Adams did not discuss is the percentage of people who Trump inadvertently filled with irreversible negative emotions while wooing Republican primary voters.

Translation: The billionaire might not be able to make more people irrationally support him than those who now irrationally hate him.

To this day I still believe Marco Rubio would have been the only Republican candidate who would have beat Hillary Clinton in a “normal” election (e.g., no one accuses an opponent’s family member of being linked to the JFK assassination). Mr. Trump, however, is not a normal candidate.

As of now I am not prepared to make any predictions, but I will put on an intellectual poncho. There is no doubt that things will soon get dirtier than the front row of a Blue Man Group performance.

Trump vs. Hillary: America reaches its own video game ‘kill screen’

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Pac Man Kill Screen

A funny thing happens in old video games when players reach a point that exceeds the cartridge’s available memory: the “kill screen.” The character may die, although sometimes users can continue playing a jumbled mess that ostensibly makes no sense. The reality that Donald Trump will square off against Hillary Clinton to be the next U.S. commander in chief is a clear indicator America has reached its own kill screen.

Hillary Clinton

Kill screens may be fun to watch — there is no doubt that cable news networks are thrilled with the 2016 election season — but on another level (no pun intended), they are sad affairs. If you do not believe the U.S. is at its own kill screen, then ask  yourself the following two questions:

  • What led to the rise in popularity of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (a self-described socialist), and Donald Trump?
  • Will the election of Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Trump mitigate or exacerbate the nation’s underlying problems?

Donald Trump

Hillary Clinton has vowed to continue doing exactly what President Obama has done for eight years, which was a catalyst for Sanders’ groundswell of Democrat support.

Donald Trump’s popularity is based on the illusion that he is a political outsider who will “make America great again” via giant walls along U.S. border with Mexico and “great” deals with Congress. Ironically, the same people who have deified Mr. Trump regularly go apoplectic when “deals” are made in Congress. Unless Trump plans on becoming a dictator, his own supporters are in for a rude awakening if he wins in November.

Here is what the 45th president of the United States will encounter on Day One:

  • The U.S. is $19 trillion in debt, but there is no political will to get spending under control. This is due to economic illiteracy (thanks public education and academia), greed (it’s easy to rob from future generations when you know you’ll be old or dead when the bill comes due), lying politicians, and a whole host of other issues. There will be a day of reckoning.
  • The U.S. is culturally lost. Multiple generations have simmered in a stew of cultural relativism. Tens of millions of people have no idea why they believe what they believe — they just do. They have been taught to loathe the principles that made America the freest nation in the history. They have been conditioned to yearn for tyranny and not to care about it as long mindless viral videos, Facebook “likes,” and free pornography flows on their computers.
  • American media outlets are corrupt. The news long ago ceased to be about informing people and turned into a never-ending quest for “clicks” and “shares” and “tweets” and ratings. Journalists are usually more interested in showing they’re as witty and cool as John Stewart in his heyday than objectively reporting facts. Cable news shows are inspired by WWE wrestling matches and reality television shows, which is why the more appealing option is to just watch Food Network or turn off the TV all together.

In short, unless someone rewrites the U.S. “code” in the near future, we will soon disappear in the “integer overflow.”

Welcome to the kill screen. I look forward to seeing you after the “reset” button is pushed.

Imagine if Donald Trump read Francis de Sales: Man deported 5 times admits to Kate Steinle murder

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Francisco SanchezOnly days after Donald Trump essentially painted the vast majority of Mexican illegal immigrants as rapists and murderers, Kate Steinle, 32, was gunned down by one in broad daylight. The federal government had deported the man five times. San Francisco is a sanctuary city and refused to hand over the suspect when it had the chance.

Kate SteinleReporter Cornell Barnard was able to interview apprehended suspect Francisco Sanchez on Sunday.

A local ABC Affiliate reported:

[Francisco Sanchez] says he was wandering on Pier 14 after taking sleeping pills he found in a dumpster.

He claims he kicked the gun into the San Francisco Bay, lit up a cigarette, and walked off, not knowing he shot someone until he was arrested by police hours later. Sanchez reportedly first told police he was shooting at sea lions.

He appeared frail and nervous when he talked about returning to the U.S. after being deported back to his native Mexico five times.

Barnard: “Why did you keep coming back to the U.S., why did you come back to San Francisco?”
Sanchez: “Because I was looking for jobs in the restaurant or roofing, landscaping, or construction.”

Sanchez said he knew San Francisco was a sanctuary city where he would not be pursued by immigration officials.

Mr. Trump was one of only a few high-profile individuals to bring attention to this story when he tweeted it Friday night. Sadly, it doesn’t matter how much truth there is to a man’s message if his delivery convinces others that he is a bad person.

Trump TWTConsider what Francis de Sales said in “Treatise on the Love of God”:

“We dislike imitating those we hate even in their good qualities. The Lacedaemonians would not follow the good counsel of an evil man unless some good man stated it after him.

On the contrary, we cannot help conforming ourselves to those we love. It is in this sense, I think, that the great apostle says that ‘the law is not made for the just.’ In fact, the just man is not just unless he has holy love. If he has love, there is no need to urge him on with the rigor of the law, since love is a more cogent teacher and solicitor to persuade a heart possessing it to obey the will and intentions of its beloved. Love is a magistrate who exercises his authority without noise, without bailiffs or sergeants-at-arms, but merely by that mutual complacence whereby, just as we find pleasure in God, so also we reciprocally desire to please Him.” — Francis de Sales.

Yes, it is possible to learn a thing or two from men who lived in the late 1500s and early 1600s.

If you have an important message to deliver to a skeptical audience, then it is crucial that the vehicle for that message not come across as a bully, a jerk, a racist or an evil man.

I am not saying that Mr. Trump is any of those things, but the way he carries himself in front of a microphone makes it incredibly easy for his detractors to make such a case.

Large scale illegal immigration brings with it a whole host of (often deadly) problems. When you have “sanctuary cities,” criminals will gladly take politicians up on the offer. Innocent people pay the price for officials who do not take the rule of law seriously. That is why we need serious and articulate men and women to explain what is going on to the American people.

It is not good enough to simply be correct when speaking on public policy issues like illegal immigration; one must also be able to show empathy. Sadly, too many people who are right on the issue seem to have little to zero empathy for the millions who are trying to flee dysfunctional and oppressive hell holes.

People will often vote for a man with horrendous public policy ideas if he seems like he cares about his constituents. People will often not vote for the man with great public policy ideas if he seems cold, detached or weird. Wouldn’t it be nice if the Republican Party could run a candidate who actually had good ideas and he or she exuded the kind of empathy skills that could win over Independents and Democrats?

Perhaps if Donald Trump read the works of Saint Francis de Sales years ago, then he could have been that man.

‘The Inner Ring,’ by C.S. Lewis explains Washington, D.C. perfectly

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Twitter recently suspended my account for daring to question its decision not to penalize the man who sent me a death threat. I was then contacted privately by a friend who asked why certain conservatives weren’t coming to my defense. This person knows that I once worked for a large think tank in Washington, D.C., and that I currently work for a newspaper.

The answer is simple: I willingly left a specific “Ring” years ago, and those who leave the Ring are not afforded its support.

C.S. Lewis explains this phenomenon well in his classic speech to young university students:

“I believe that in all men’s lives at certain periods, and in many men’s lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside. This desire, in one of its forms, has indeed had ample justice done to it in literature. I mean, in the form of snobbery. Victorian fiction is full of characters who are hagridden by the desire to get inside that particular Ring which is, or was, called Society. But it must be clearly understood that “Society,” in that sense of the word, is merely one of a hundred Rings and snobbery, therefore, only one form of the longing to be inside.

People who believe themselves to be free, and indeed are free, from snobbery, and who read satires on snobbery with tranquil superiority, may be devoured by the desire in another form. It may be the very intensity of their desire to enter some quite different Ring which renders them immune from the allurements of high life. An invitation from a duchess would be very cold comfort to a man smarting under the sense of exclusion from some artistic or communist côterie. Poor man — it is not large, lighted rooms, or champagne, or even scandals about peers and Cabinet Ministers that he wants; it is the sacred little attic or studio, the heads bent together, the fog of tobacco smoke, and the delicious knowledge that we — we four or five all huddled beside this stove — are the people who know. …

The lust for the esoteric, the longing to be inside, take many forms which are not easily recognizable as Ambition. We hope, no doubt, for tangible profits from every Inner Ring we penetrate: power, money, liberty to break rules, avoidance of routine duties, evasion of discipline. But all these would not satisfy us if we did not get in addition the delicious sense of secret intimacy. …

Of all passions the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things. …

The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it.”  — C.S. Lewis, The Inner Ring.

Regular readers know that I do not name drop. I think it’s tawdry and weird and something people use as a crutch when they’re incapable of formulating sound arguments. However, I will say this: Once I left the employment of a well-known think tank, there were individuals who treated me like a ghost overnight.

The kind of people who populate Washington, D.C. are very much like a well-connected man I once got into an argument with while working near the Capitol. He said to me: “Do you know who I am? I’m the maître d’ of the conservative movement.” My skin crawled. I didn’t care who he was — he was wrong — and I’d rather choose the hard right than the easy wrong.

The kind of man who calls himself the “maître d’ of the conservative movement” is very much the kind of man who cares about the Inner Ring that C.S. Lewis covers in great detail. He may be conservative, but he cares much more about himself and his career than he does about the principles he espouses in front of large crowds or on cable news shows.

Perhaps the most recent example of a larger Ring that actually gained traction on social media was Valerie Jarrett’s appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” President Obama’s top adviser went around the table giving pundits hugs and kisses, with Joe Scarborough saying “Valerie, come give me a hug!” before cutting to a commercial break.

Morning Joe Valerie JarrettWashington D.C. is an incestuous place, where reporters, pundits, politicians, academics and bureaucrats all go to the same parties over … and over … and over … and over. It’s the kind of place where you can go to dinner with someone and the person sitting across the table can say with a straight face that they’re “kind of a big deal.” I know because it happened to me.

As C.S. Lewis notes, no one is immune from the desire to be a part of some Inner Ring. The difference between Washington, D.C. and other places, however, is that the capital’s rings lure people who seek power and influence. Very smart, very shrewd individuals are attracted to Washington, which means that they are capable of advanced levels of evil.

Who is more evil: the dumb fool who punches you in the face and steals your wallet because he knows of no other way to vent frustration over his shortcomings, or the intelligent man who methodically finds ways to trample your soul and deny your god-given rights — all while convincing you that he’s really your best friend?

All men are capable of great good or great evil, but my point is that the concentration of highly-educated individuals in the nation’s capital, who are obsessed with power, also means that the city possesses a unique kind of evil.

If you get a chance, then I highly suggest reading “The Inner Ring,” by C.S. Lewis. If I had read it years ago, then I would have hopped on a happier path ahead of schedule. No matter what city or town you live in, it’s worth your time.