NewAgers Never Knew America - Or Anything Else (And Don't Want To Now)

So Slate magazine - are these things still "magazines" if they only exist online? - says The America We Thought We Knew Is Gone, using "we" in much the same way Kurt Andersen does in "Fantasyland": as though we're all guilty of a little yoga, meditation, and whatnot, so must all accept the blame for the lunacy. Nope, sorry, Bud, this is just on y'all. (Especially those supposedly in control. Bill and Hillary and Jen and Brad, etc., all consulting crazy Ken Wilber (above) - Oprah Winfrey will believe anybody about any damned thing - I can't think of any Americans who've been less in control than these celebrities who've been dominating our lives throughout the latter half of the 20th Century.) You Thunderbirds were go, go, GO!

Trump haters understand "flyover country" in the same way they do the president, using the same amount of information, and in equal amounts, because (as we've seen with more-than-a-few journalists trudging in to see "normal Americans" since Trump won) they've deliberately had no real experience with any of this. Notice it's the America "We Thought We Knew" - not the real one - they're lamenting seeing go. The fantasy they've held that never existed. The real America's still here - filled with "deplorables" - and they still hate it. Get it? The fact the "good guys" *might not* be America's haters occurs to them much less than it does Mitchell & Webb's Nazi SS Men wondering if, maybe, they're "the baddies".

Slate's writer is someone named Lili Loopbourow, and she's upset "a reality-television star who lost the popular vote by millions" gets to do stuff. That's odd because, if seeing Donald Trump make it to the White House - right after one-term Senator Barack Obama - doesn't mean the maxim "anybody can president in America" is true, then I don't know what does. And hating the game, after Hillary lost it, is just sour grapes.

"Don't hate the player, Baby,..."

There's no need to go on. (I told you I don't reason with the unreasonable.) I'm just glad to acknowledge the Left's fantasy world is falling apart. I hope they don't take being "really woke" too hard - it's for the best:

All that sleeping everybody was doing is what got us into this mess.

The Internet Is Cruel

Christmas Gift: The New Italian 12 Years A Slave Poster

The Ones

"There are reasons why films of this vein are more readily produced than others. Both economic and social values influence the resurrection of historical accounts like the Amistad while Gabriel Prosser, Harriet Tubman and Charles Deslondes suffocate in obscurity.

One thought is that white audiences should never be left feeling guilty about their ancestors’ sins. Many can walk out of the theater and say to themselves: 'I would’ve been more like Brad Pitt if I was alive during Slavery,' even though residue of the system still permeates around them today — and one could argue that there’s a shortage of mass white outrage over the fact.

In essence, the Prossers and Tubmans of our past deny Hollywood this safety net. They resisted oppression and sacrificed their lives to liberate others.

But more importantly, they don’t leave much room for white saviors. They are the black Bravehearts. And for many of us, we hope to see the day when they’re finally seen in full heroic form on the big screen."

Classic: "All You Do Is Make Pancakes In The Morning!"

There's never been a character like me onscreen:

NewAge feminist males - working from the same bad zombie script,...

Hat Tip to The Evil Blogger Lady

John Ford Called (And He Still Wants His Art Form Back)

Matt Drudge is asking the toughies this morning:

"With Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Will Smith flopping, what next for Hollywood?"

Oh, I don't know, maybe they'll try a viciously anti-NewAge film, starring somebody men can identify with - because we're pretty sure he's not a multi-"married" gay man, an adulterous Ken Wilber groupie, or a closeted Scientologist. 

That's just a guess, though I'm pretty sure they'll stick with M. Night Shyamalan,...

My Reaction To NewAge (Is Also A Product Of NewAge)

Today, I'm saluting what-we're-being-sold-as America's "extended family".

From the Self-Help world, I see Dr. Joyce Brothers has died:

When asked why the public was hungry for personal advice from a public person, she proposed that an increasingly mobile society had heightened feelings of isolation. 

"There is a lot more searching for answers these days," Brothers told the Washington Post in 1979. "And a lot more answers too. But we're missing friends and kinship roles. So you rent a friend. Like Dr. Joyce Brothers." 

...One demographic that did not seek her advice was her own family. 

"She totally loses her objectivity," her husband told UPI in 1985. "With her family, she's abysmal."

 

 Speaking as someone who's been somewhat isolated my whole life, even when I had a choice, I'd never gone in for that "rent a friend" stuff. I mean, first of all, if you want 'em, real ones are free. (I know - wha?) Second, if you're renting 'em, they're going to tend to agree with you, right or wrong, right-right? Real friends don't do that. My friends and I argue, over the phone, about what we're wearing.

(Like I said, they're free,...)

   

 So - ruminating on the hidden fragility of the family unit vs. the obvious strength engendered in true friendships - what's the possibility of there having been some gravitational pull between A) the selling of circular reasoning by the "abysmal" B) a train wreck, and C) that train just happening to loop back on the blood relatives of the "extended family" they were unwittingly forced into?

As I've been saying for a while now, when it comes to social disaster, most roads lead to Oprah:

Readers don’t pick up self-help books just to ruminate on life’s dilemmas, but to be guided to solutions. The new series of self-help books published by the London-based School of Life, co-founded by the Swiss-born popular philosopher Alain de Botton, echoes the school’s lofty approach to problems, claiming to be “intelligent, rigorous, well-written new guides to everyday living.” Yet to peruse the School of Life’s calendar of classes is to fall into a vortex of jargon pitched somewhere between the banal banter of daytime talk shows and the schedule for a nightmarish New Age retreat,...

 

 This is the upside-down world of NewAge "Friends" - TV shows, talk shows, Facebook - today. Because, would any "friend" be allowed to buy into this nonsense, on the scale it's been, knowing we've got to look at each other tomorrow? Not around here.

Here's the true family reality:

Somewhere, deep down inside, Brad Pitt's wife, Jennifer Aniston, is doing the Snoopy dance - not because Angelina Jolie wasn't held down and abused by misogynistic male physicians - but, with Jolie having announced her breast removal was "My Medical Choice", it's also a pretty good guess it wasn't anything Anniston's husband, Brad, was counseled, or counting on, either.

That's the Self-Helped now.

 

Then there's also the unforgettable issue of Jolie's procedure being insufficiently homeopathic, but then, none of what's transpired - starting with Pitt originally leaving mega-NewAger Gwyneth Paltrow for Aniston - jibes with NewAge's stated purposes (there are many) or even the claims it's participants make about how they live their lives.

Forget friends and family, considering the sadism, I have to wonder, how do they sleep?

The Easy Answer:

 Like (the adulterous) Bill Clinton, to the words of "rent a friend" Ken Wilber.

 

I tell ya, they're everywhere.

It just occurred to me that, even knowing Jolie is a U.N. ambassador, this medical operation is the most significant thing the regularly-voted "Most Beautiful" actress in the world has ever done to garner respect in it.

That's absolutely insane.

It's no wonder so many stick to merely making money:

With so many "helping" this path to enlightenment stuff can be hard,...

 

Stop Crying (Or They'll Give You Something To Cry For)

It isn't often a good William H. Macy movie gets a 46% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but David Mamet's little nightmare, Edmond, has achieved it. 

Brutal honesty, punished, for making the West most uncomfortable. 

And it shouldn't be compared to Falling Down because, when it comes to *legit* mainstream movies about angry white men, Edmond ain't nothing like it - or even Fight Club - though the Brad Pitt vehicle is closer to the mark. They'd make a ruthless art house triple bill, somewhere, that's for sure. 

No, unlike the guys in those other films, Edmond is about a true NewAger. It goes unstated because, in this NewAge Nazi society, it's accepted "logic" that a "man" would use numerology to arrive in front of a tarot deck, and then - based on a combination of sexual frustration, emasculation, and what the cards "said" - proceed to leave his wife. He's "on the path". 

We know the path. Check it out, solipsism fans: 

For viewing online, someone's helpfully even broken Edmond into 8 individual parts,...

I Don't Need Reminders Of How Dumb This Place Is,...

Is it just me, or would life be better when comedians aren't (almost) the only ones who can see how absolutely insane the world we're presented with is? Shouldn't the news be reporting this?

How much did Chanel pay Brad Pitt - who a friend of mine said "ain't the sharpest knife in the drawer" after meeting him - really, how much did they pay Pitt to stand there and spout gibberish? Isn't there a financial crisis happening? Gee, I wonder why? Maybe wasting money played some role in it?

And what of the stupid women? The stupid women who respond to gibberish - there's got to be a lot of them for a perfume company to launch a campaign like this, right? Come on, how many stupid women do you think are out there? Give me a number - in billions.

 I know - the stupid women can't - but the rest of you can: 

 ANSWER ME!

Here's my message to perfume companies, brain-dead Brad, and stupid women everywhere:

Reducing life to a tragic embarrassment does NOT add one iota of value to the experience.

And parody videos don't help, either - not even a little,...

 

I'm A Ramblin' Man (Part I Of A Dialogue On Everything)

Howdy, Folks, how's everybody doing? I'm alright. Yeah, seriously, I'm fine. Having been pushed into a corner, politically, culturally, whatever, I'm starting to find that I like it here. I've come to think it's still part of my, long, post-divorce transition:

When I was in my marriage, I was part of something larger than myself - cared about others and all that - but, now that I'm no longer "hooked-up" to my wife's NewAge freak show, my views reflect it and I'm comfortable.

I've been called a "bigot" a lot lately, which is cool, because - as someone raised where putting others down for fun is part of our subculture - "bigot" is probably one of the lamest accusations anyone's ever leveled at me. As the late, great Christopher Hitchens labeled them, it's the kind of thing "soft-centered types" throw around, thinking they can hurt you because they imagine you're as weak-kneed (and weak-minded) as they are.

Not.

Though, I must admit, this use of the word "bigot" has puzzled me lately since - like the word "nigger" - I've always coupled bigotry with ignorance. To me, a bigot is someone who talks out of his ass against shit he or she doesn't understand. But those throwing "bigot" around now - Mitt Romney supporters - have always known far less about him and Mormonism than I, which was confusing. At least, until I read this line from Hitchens:

I don’t think I would want to vote for a Scientologist or a Moonie for high office, or indeed any other kind, and I think attempts to silence criticism of such outfits are the real evidence of prejudice."

Actually, that's not exactly true. It was that line, plus a reply from an Althouse reader (on Hitchens calling Mormonism "One of the most egregious groups operating on American soil.") that did it. Here's the reply:

Considering that comes from the pen of Christopher "Mother Teresa was a sexually frustrated masochist who gloried in squalor and filth and fellated Third World dictators" Hitchens, I'll pass on what he thinks is egregious.

Got that? Hitchens' scholarship on Mother Theresa, and any other issue, was simply pushed aside in favor of what this person wants to "believe" - in other words, total NewAge thinking. Now things were falling into place:

The prejudiced "soft-centered types," who don't care about facts, are throwing around a tired accusation regarding things they know nothing about.

Should I be bothered about that? I don't think so. NewAge wouldn't exist without it. And - when it comes to me being the target of such attacks - there's really nothing "new" there. As I have said many times, stupidity is the currency of the culture right now, and the larger culture is definitely NewAge.

For instance, if you separate "bigotry" from ignorance, as my attackers seem to be doing, then being a bigot isn't such a bad thing. Here's the definition of "bigot":

A person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.

I can live with that. I'm openly a cult critic. Considering most people know little-to-nothing about the subject, I am almost forced to appear "obstinately or intolerantly devoted" to my own thoughts on the subject. I mean, what else am I going to do? Defer to those who are "so open-minded their brains fall out"? Can't happen.

Plus it puts me in good company. Archie Bunker used to be Exhibit 'A' for what I thought was a bigot, but nowadays, he's the poster child for far-reaching conservative thought:

What's not to like about that? Everybody loves Archie - even if they didn't at the time he was on TV. (According to Wikipedia, "In 2005, Archie Bunker was listed as number 1 on Bravo's 100 Greatest TV Characters, defeating runners-up such as Ralph Kramden, Lucy Ricardo, Arthur Fonzarelli, and Homer Simpson.") If anything, Archie's example reminds me people don't like to accept the truth, immediately, when it's presented - something I knew already.

There are a few other "bigots" saying the same things I am - after I say them - so I don't feel too alone. Michael Wolff of The Guardian (U.K.) recently did a column on Rupert Murdoch and Scientology that, over a week later, makes the exact same connections I did with Mitt and Mormonism. Of course, that's an anomaly, as most do it piecemeal, unable to put all the pieces together as I do. For instance, today, there was an article stating Brad Pitt was almost a Scientologist. Now, if you're a reader of this blog and have followed Pitt's adulterous "spiritual journey" as I have - through his fascination, say, with the cult leader Ken Wilber - is this really news? No - if you read this blog and understand NewAge, it not only fits perfectly with who Brad Pitt is, but it would be a surprise to discover he hadn't looked (or almost been sucked) into it. Brad Pitt, like most people, is NOT a critical thinker - he's "spiritual."

Which is why, politically, we are where we are. Like that Althouse commenter I mentioned, above, it's all about feelings and "beliefs" for most people, and things are coming apart because such garbage in/garbage out "thinking" has no bearing on reality - except to compel it to destroy anyone or anything that doesn't cooperate:

Remember Global Warming? It used to be all the rage, until reality went on a rampage against it, and now? Somehow, science isn't cooperating with the deceitful "scientists" who once "believed" they had it (and us) pinned down.

And so it goes.

Along with NewAge culture, part of the problem, I think, is the fact there's a velvet rope around who gets to to be heard out there. This occurred to me a few days ago, as I was listening to NPR, and they had Mike Huckabee come on to talk politics. I thought, Mike Huckabee? Do we really need to hear more from him? Is "The Huck" going to bring any new insights to what we already know - or is he just going to peddle pablum as always? He peddled pablum,…and it's the same everywhere else I looked:

The same names, pumping the same nonsense, to the same audiences expecting the same thing.

BTW - I've been listening to NPR in the car for a change, but there is none. As I said, I found Mike Huckabee on Left-wing radio just as I do on Right-wing radio, and that's the problem - it's Mike Huckabee (or someone like him) all the time, everywhere, and no other views are allowed.

What we have here is conventional wisdom, and the latest line, amongst those "soft-centered types" is that this tame-but-deceptive political race is "getting ugly." But - since the conversation stays within the range of these regular guests - I don't buy what they're selling. If this was true, Hot Air couldn't write a sentence like this:

In a palette-cleanser for a slow newsday Sunday BuzzFeed takes us back 40 years to the fashion nightmare that was my youth.

Bad 70's fashion? Astrology pants? Thanks a lot for that (I don't know what Hot Air is anymore, now that they've brought The Ham onboard,…) But, more to the point, how can there be "a slow newsday Sunday" when it's supposedly gotten so damned ugly out there?

Give me a break,...

 

He Said He'd Tell It Like It Is (And That He Did)

It seems it also takes an atheist to speak truth to power in Hollywood:

Ricky Gervais may have scripted his own Hollywood downfall at last night's Golden Globes as the host tore into celebrity targets at the annual awards do - and divided opinion with his cringe-worthy performance.

But it seems that his trademark acerbic humour may have crossed the line, as the U.S., media rounded on The Office comic dubbing his performance 'uncomfortable', 'corrosive' and 'abusive'.

The Hollywood Reporter predicted it would 'undoubtedly be his last hosting gig for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (and, who knows, maybe any Stateside awards)'.

Invited back for a second year, the British funnyman warned he planned to ensure he would not be asked again - and it seems he may well have fulfilled his destiny as he made the A-list audience gasp at jokes about Brad and Angelina, Charlie Sheen and Robert Downey Junior.

He also left the crowd reeling as he made a thinly veiled jibe about 'famous gay Scientologist actors.'

While referring to films that had not made the cut this year, one of those was the Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor film I Love You, Phillip Morris, featuring, as he put it, 'two heterosexual actors pretending to be gay. '

Gervais then added: 'Sort of the complete opposite of some famous Scientologists then'.

'Oooooooo,' went the audience, before Gervais added: 'My lawyers helped me with the wording of that joke.'

Nobody was spared by his scatter-gun approach. He kicked proceedings in much the way he would continue, by lampooning Charlie Sheen.

The hugely paid Two And A Half Men star has had a tumultuous year, firstly splitting from Denise Richards and recently spending time holed up in Las Vegas with a porn star, Bree Olson.

'It's going to be a night of partying and heavy drinking,' Gervais began his monologue, sipping from a glass of what looked like beer.

'Or, as Charlie Sheen calls it, breakfast.'

Speaking to the Mail Online backstage, Gervais rather narrowed down the identity of his target, wisecracking: 'I hope people didn't work out who it was.'

He then made a jibe at the expense of nominated film The Tourist, starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp.

'I feel bad about that joke,' he said after his first dig. 'I'm jumping on the bandwagon, because I haven't even seen The Tourist. Who has?'

He was just warming up. He went on to tell the audience that The Tourist had not been nominated by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association just because its members wanted to hang out with the film's stars.

'Girls, we know how old you are. I saw one of you in an episode of Bonanza.'

'That is not the only reason,' Gervais insisted with a saucy smile. 'They also accepted bribes.'

Gervais then dug into the Hollywood Foreign Press, who were the evening's hosts, for nominating Burlesque after being bribed with tickets to a Cher concert.

He added that it wasn't a halfway decent bribe anyway because no one has wanted to go to a Cher concert since 1975.

Gervais also took a dig at the stars of Sex And The City 2 stars and said: 'I was sure the Golden Globe for special effects would go to the team that airbrushed [the Sex And The City 2] poster.

Awww, did Ricky make the millionaire stars uncomfortable? Puh-leaze. If a dig at Tom Cruise and John Travolta's "religion" (and sexuality) is all he got into with that nest of NewAge vipers - and their awful movies - they got off waaay too easy. And isn't it weird that honesty is frowned upon, when they shove such garbage at us every other day of the week? They shame America.

Let 'em squirm! Way to go, Ricky!



UPDATE: And a "Bravo!" from across the pond!

Lying Is The Worst Thing: Requiem For A Dream

It is a sincere tragedy of our lives to witness, and fully understand, those who lose sight of what's important. It crushes us. It bears down on our own will to live.

We feel it in the utterances of those who gleefully point to a 50% divorce rate, without acknowledging what understanding of our collective humanity we've lost. To stand with another person - for life - is no small feat. If you're not up to it, you can hardly claim to have mastered concepts like loyalty, strength, wisdom, or compassion. In truth, you're a failure in the basics of existence. We know this. It is The Truth. The big one religious types claim to seek.

We are nothing without each other.

If you can't handle one person, collecting others won't make up the difference. Too many, who claim to understand the big questions, lose sight of that in their musings. But, collectively, we know.

John Edwards and Rielle Hunter will never be trusted, except by the naive and twisted. Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani will never be president. Bill Clinton will always be watched around our daughters. And Angelina Jolie will always be a multi-divorced homewrecker, attached to Brad Pitt who - no matter how many houses he builds - will never be known for his smarts. Prince Charles and Madonna - no matter who they are or how much money they have - will always be plain weird.

They're all examples of the extremely short-sighted - those who found fame, took shortcuts, and lost. Wealth won't change it. Their characters are fixed, and their characters are broken, if it's possible they have any character left at all. The same applies to the multitude of unknown others, trying to start a new life where no one knows what they've done to those closest to them. They're hiding their shame, and trying to make a NewAge where shame doesn't exist, so they can hopefully cheat humanity once again. But there's no escape. Strike a defiant pose all you want, remarry, claim to be happy. Someone else's misery is out there, created by you, and defiling the land. Do you hope your children will one day be happy? Why? Someone else, who looked for the same promise of a lifetime, found you to their utmost regret.

There's no one here but us on this planet, and - deep down inside - we all know what what-they've-done individually means to civilization. They are the first wave of the forces of evil. It's no surprise that the pain of a break-up has been known to kill. It's no surprise the pain of divorce has been likened to death, and been known to shorten lives. The perps can only run. The people who initiate these actions are murderers of something vital, no matter how blithely they try to brush it away. No matter how they try to make the lie look. They don't want to think about it. They don't want the rest of us to know what it means.

Neither do we, but we do.

Victimhood Is Ugly (Too Bad You're All Victims)

Here's a quote from Tunku Varadarajan that jibes quite well with my current observation that, because of other shallow or pointless concerns, people with good ideas get short shrift these days:

"Once you go down the ‘identity’ route, your success as a politician tends to rest more on the weight of numbers—the size of your ethnic constituency, or your racial voting bloc—than on the weight of your ideas."

In other words, amongst idiots, ideas (good or otherwise) don't just speak for themselves. In today's climate, you can be brilliant - have all the answers - and nobody gives a shit, unless you're kissing the proper ass or already have a following.

Einstein would be a nobody today.

Another example is from a New York Times economics story, about a guy named Edward Hugh, that opens with this:

"For years, almost nobody paid attention to the sky-is-falling alarms of Edward Hugh, a gregarious British blogger and self-taught economist who repeatedly predicted that the euro zone could not survive.

Living a largely hand-to-mouth existence here on his part-time teacher’s salary, he sent one post after another into the Internet wilderness. It was the height of policy folly, he warned, to think that aging, penny-pinching Germans could successfully coexist under one currency umbrella with the more youthful, credit-card-wielding Irish, Greeks and Spaniards who shared the euro with them.

But now that the European sovereign debt crisis is rattling world markets, driving the euro lower almost every day and raising doubts about the future of the monetary union, his voluminous musings have become a must-read for an influential and growing global audience, including policy makers in the White House."

Get it? It's just like Jr. High:

Something has to start falling apart before the popular kids will ever entertain they could be wrong - and then, and only then, will they let someone else have a whack at it. We're surrounded by fools. And we wonder why the world, today, always seems to be teetering on the brink of disaster.

I'd like to also point out that Mr. Hugh is "gregarious" - not a sourpuss or angry - but nobody would pay him the time of day (or one thin dime) until they needed to, though he knew more than others did, all along. This man - the one with an accurate view of the world - was "living a largely hand-to-mouth existence" while the dumbshits (who probably made all the problems he's now being asked how to remedy) were feasting quite nicely, thank you.

This is our world.

This is why I call people stupid. There's no other word for it. People will say they're looking for answers - to any number of things - but, really, what they're looking for is their own self-aggrandizement. Problem-solving comes second.

So what kind of ideas do make the cut? Well, as I pointed out, The Washington Post's Sally Quinn talks to astrologers - while she writes a religion column for the paper. All perfectly acceptable in the year 2010.

So acceptable, she can mention it to The New York Times' Maureen Dowd and Dowd doesn't immediately run home and type out a column saying Sally Quinn is nuts for believing in a totally debunked idea (like they did when it was Nancy Reagan) but, instead, tells Quinn that NBC reporter David Gregory and President Obamas' Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, are involved in a stupid 5,000 year old Indian spiritual practice brought to America by a con man. Again:

All perfectly acceptable activities for the powerful opinion makers, and others in control of the United States, in the year 2010.

Brad Pitt is pretty big on telling the rest of us how to live as well. And why shouldn't he, when he's only the adulterous fan of the cult leader, Ken Wilber - along with the adulterous Bill Clinton - and Pitt also consults a psychic? Say it with me:

All perfectly acceptable in the year 2010.

What's not acceptable in 2010 is to point out this is all crazy. That the rich and powerful of this country have taken leave of their senses, and their decisions - which are affecting (infecting?) the rest of us, negatively, in all sorts of ways - reflect it.

Take San Francisco Mayor, Gavin Newsom - please! - he cheated with his campaign manager/best friend's wife, dated a Scientologist, was married by a psychic, and has destroyed the economy of The City, and what is the result? People want him to run for Lieutenant Governor! And don't you dare, in the year 2010, say anything against it. You'll be laughed out of the room.

And, by the way, Mayor Newsom is a big Lady Gaga fan (even after she admitted her music sucks) and Lady Gaga is,...oh, never mind.