Back To Pure Blogging: Getting Together/Coming Apart

What else is TMR supposed to do with this?

"The single greatest task for conservatives is to fix their own leadership problems. In so doing they must avoid the single greatest mistake Obama has made, which is to rely on fantasy. The facts, however unpalatable. The truth, no matter how bitter.”

 So they're back to slapping themselves in the face - like it's instinct - admitting they can't stay rooted in reality.

"Fully considered, it becomes obvious that Rand’s views congeal into a fatally flawed philosophy. Even when stripped of its atheistic elements, Objectivism’s focus on radical individualism cuts it off from reality and causes it to wither under scrutiny. And as much as we might admire Rand’s deep-rooted hatred of collectivism, her philosophy is still just another utopian dream, a transvalued Marxism.

Ultimately, Rand’s egoism is irreconcilable with both Christianity and capitalism. In fact, since the system fails to have any true explanatory value, it’s difficult to find any reason to adopt Objectivism at all. Fortunately, we don’t have to buy into Rand’s philosophical errors in order to appreciate her fiction. We just have to keep in mind that instead of reading a 'novel of ideas', we are reading a work of fantasy."

 But they still can't admit they're doing it again. And this time, because they've lied to everybody - including themselves - so many times before.

"Rob Ford drug use leaves Conservatives uneasy, MP suggests

Immigration Minister Chris Alexander says federal Conservatives 'not fans' of hard drug users"

 Spoiler Alert: 

I think the betrayal of Benghazi line is done now.

"The French position on race is that you can come from anywhere and become French, as long as you speak French, adopt French customs, and act French.

That’s great, but they have a hard time with difference, people who maintain customs, dress, or religion that makes them appear different. And, in the case of black people, we are conspicuously different no matter how French we feel."

 "The facts, however unpalatable. The truth, no matter how bitter” is, conservatives have reduced the enterprise of governing to soap opera, displaying all the signs of bad actors (pun intended) who - like the French - are fun to watch, but still deserving of contempt and comeuppance.

  “People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”

 History shows the answers devised, for even the country's obvious flaws, were always long in coming, and most only after a long fight - why, that has to be so, is the question.

  “These Negroes, they’re getting uppity these days. That’s a problem for us, since they got something now they never had before. The political pull to back up their upityness. Now, we’ve got to do something about this. We’ve got to give them a little something. Just enough to quiet them down, but not enough to make a difference. If we don’t move at all, their allies will line up against us. And there’ll be no way to stop them. It’ll be Reconstruction all over again.”

 I've always voted for nailing things down with facts.

  “I’m thinking about making a new cult for some extra cash on the side. What sort of preparations should I make?”

 That conservatives are back to adopting my position makes the question, of whether they are highly deliberative or of low I.Q., very real.

  "I love his premise that because Oprah is African American and successful, that means racism doesn’t exist.  If you want to talk about ignorance, that is absolute ignorance.  Seriously, racism doesn’t exist because there are successful African Americans?

During segregation there were successful African Americans.  Does that mean during segregation racism wasn’t an issue? This is the simple-minded ignorance that’s rampant throughout the entire Republican party.  It’s the kind of shallow talk that gets conservatives to stand and applaud because it sounds right—when in fact it doesn’t make any damn sense whatsoever."

I assumed they'd know how to pop a clutch, you know what I mean?

 

Look Out World: We've Got Another One!!!

"Word of advice to gays and lesbians: enjoy your comfort zone while you can.

Leftists claim to be die-hard humanitarians, yet they are the continual robbers and stiflers of free expression - always for the greater good - a compulsion that has nothing whatsoever to do with altruism, spirituality, or even with thought. The reality is they loathe people one on one, and prefer the safety of Utopian ideas.

Six months ago, to crib from Martha Dobie, I started to feel so damn sick and dirty I couldn’t stand it anymore. So I declared myself an apostate right here - because, as the New Age slogan goes, you’re only as sick as your secrets. If conservative really is the new gay, then the time for all closet cases to come out, loud and proud, is now.

My phone’s been ringing a lot less since then - a generous tactic better known as the silent treatment. Silence is supposed to be golden. When it’s a personal choice, it can be sacred. But petty tyrants walk among us - at the supermarket, in the gym, at the office, the stoplight - and some of them are your friends.

Once you’re out, some of them may choose to remember you the way you were before you woke up. And I suppose there’s something touching, maybe even flattering, about a loved one who clings to a fond memory of the past.

But make no mistake: there’s nothing considerate, or peace-loving, about silence when it’s used as a muzzle. And for the Left, past and present, the ultimate goal is to keep the lies current, no matter how much denial, fear-mongering - or voodoo - it takes."

-- Charles Winecoff, a gay American - emphasis on the word "American" - finally declaring himself a conservative, while living in Big Hollywood.

Read the whole piece. Just as I've always made clear, Charles Winecoff states that Shirley MacLaine is a NewAge liar, and shows the devastating effect her lies have had on the lives of others. It's TMR's opinion that, at the very least, she should be shunned by all right thinking individuals.

BTW - I'm black and he's gay: Don't think for a minute conservatism is just a bunch of white guys,...that's just another liberal NewAge lie.

Worthy Of A Punch In The Nose

"In my imagined utopian future where foul language has lost its sting, people will have to be more creative if they wish to offend. David Tredinnick, the Tory MP for Bosworth, recently showed us how it's done when it emerged that he'd spent £510 of public money on astrology software and attendant tuition - a purchase so foolish it makes a duck island seem like a vital heart operation for the child of a constituent.

He claims he needed them for a debate on alternative medicine (perhaps to see whether Capricorns like him believed in homeopathy) but I think he was looking for a way, without swearing, of telling the entire country to go f**** itself. No scream of scorn could have been more eloquent. No word he used could have caused me more offence."

-- David Mitchell, standing by this blogger in thinking swearing isn't offensive - but NewAge is - on UTV News.

In Other Words, It's Nutty As A Fruitcake

"While utopianism has a bright side – it is a way of imagining a better world – it also has a dark side characterized by escapism and a disengagement from reality,..."

-- Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, on "Why environmentalism keeps imploding", when they're trying to build The New Republic.

In Need Of A Man (For Unwarranted Attacks)

"Constant bitchiness, surging hormones, unchecked emotion, attention-seeking and fashion rivalry,...everyone would coo appreciatively to their face - then harshly criticise them as soon as they were out of earshot. This happened without exception,...If I'd have been more cynical, I would have been more successful,...it was as though,...staff were unable to keep their defined roles.

The effect a lack of testosterone was having in our office was even more apparent when I temporarily hired two male directors to work,...the team suddenly became quieter, more hard-working and less bitchy - partly because they were too busy flirting."

-- Samantha Brick, on what she got with her "utopian dream - a female- only company", in The Daily Mail.

Read the comments.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara, France, And The Bomb

"Steven Soderbergh has made a 257-minute film, in two parts, about the life of Che Guevara, an undertaking that's baffling in a number of ways.

To be specific, it's possible to watch all four hours and 17 minutes of this picture and still not be sure why Soderbergh told this man's story, why he thought it was worth such epic treatment and why he handled his subject with such glowing veneration.

If Soderbergh made as idol-worshiping an epic about George Washington or Abraham Lincoln - actual heroes with tangible, positive legacies - people would gag at the naive treatment.

Perhaps with 'Che,' the hope is that audiences might be confused or browbeaten into reverence, into just assuming they're missing something.

Instead of making the case for Guevara as a hero, Soderbergh just assumes we all agree.

The movie is the communist guerrilla version of the Stations of the Cross, in which we see Guevara at various stages, enduring various hardships.

The invitation is not to think but to admire, and maybe to worship.

Soderbergh and his screenwriters (Peter Buchman and Benjamin A. van der Veen) barely dramatize scenes.

Rather they present them in an uninflected way, as though to re-create a textured, real-life sense of what it must have been like to actually be there, on the ground, in this supposedly amazing time with this supposedly great man.

This is, incidentally, how the French filmmaker Jacques Rivette presented Joan of Arc in his two-part epic, 'Joan the Maid' - a film that bears more than a casual resemblance to 'Che.'

But in 'Joan the Maid,' the attitude of reverence didn't seem misplaced.

Here it occasionally borders on the absurd.

To be sure, Guevara, man and legend, had impressive personal traits:

He was brave and brilliant, dedicated to his cause and a rock star among revolutionaries.

Guevara is the rare case of a man who was at least as handsome and charismatic as the actor who plays him onscreen, Benicio Del Toro.

But what's the legacy?

Guevara helped lead the Cuban revolution, which ushered in Fidel Castro.

Thanks to Guevara, the poor weren't quite as poor and a corrupt regime was toppled, but in its place came a totalitarian dictatorship.

Fifty years after the so-called liberation, there has been no free election in Cuba.

Then Guevara went to Bolivia to bring the joys of totalitarian communism to that country - as though that were a good thing, and as though the United States might just forget the Monroe Doctrine and tolerate another Soviet satellite in Latin America.

If Soderbergh wanted to make a case that such actions by Guevara were indeed useful and heroic, rather than blindly utopian and destructive, 'Che' could have been a provocative and fascinating polemic.

But because Soderbergh won't dive into the realm of ideas, his movie becomes a series of noble tableaux, and watching it is like sitting through a slow, four-hour worship service in the woods."

-- Mick LaSalle, reviewing an awful film, an awful man, and an awful re-writing of history, in The San Francisco Chronicle.

Here Comes The Cultism!!!! (Part I)

"Obama's nearly trillion-dollar plan will not merely repair bridges, fill potholes and fix up schools; it will also impose a utopian vision based on the belief that an economy is a thing to be planned from above. But this is an arrogant conceit. No one can possibly know enough to redesign something as complex as 'an economy,' which really is people engaging in exchanges to achieve their goals. Planning it means planning them."

-- John Stossel, who obviously hasn't read TMR's post on Obama's love for cultish "nudging," at ABC News.