As Tom Brady Reaches His 10th Super Bowl, Does Inequality Still Bother You? (AIER)

As Tom Brady Reaches His 10th Super Bowl, Does Inequality Still Bother You?: "The unequal elevate those around them. Does anyone think the Patriots would have missed the playoffs had Brady stayed? Does anyone think the Buccaneers would be in the Super Bowl without Brady? Let’s be serious." ~ John Tamny

 Ya know, a similar thread popped up this morning whilst shoveling soil (Mrs. Mojo was admitting she liked it when I did "manly work") and we somehow got off onto G/T education and equity.   The bottom line is that when you are way out on a distribution tail, it's tougher than it looks.

The co-optation of the media by the Left goes much further back

 

The Sordid History of the Fairness Doctrine --Reason.com

"Despite its evocative name, the Fairness Doctrine was primarily a tool wielded by established political interests to suppress unwelcome speech."

This is a useful read, but it is only one part of the entire picture.  While we can argue about press manipulation going back to McKinley and even Lincoln during the war, it would be the Progressives who would take it to the next level.  FDR, of course, would set the gold standard for how to shape and control the media.  Kennedy wasn't all that far behind, either.  The genius of Reagan and (!?) Trump was that they used media in spite of the engrained opposition and not with its tacit support.  

On this day, we remember the Shoah.

 אבל: יִתְגַּדַּל וְיִתְקַדַּשׁ שְׁמֵהּ רַבָּא. [קהל: אמן]

בְּעָלְמָא דִּי בְרָא כִרְעוּתֵהּ וְיַמְלִיךְ מַלְכוּתֵהּ בְּחַיֵּיכון וּבְיומֵיכון וּבְחַיֵּי דְכָל בֵּית יִשרָאֵל בַּעֲגָלָא וּבִזְמַן קָרִיב, וְאִמְרוּ אָמֵן: [קהל: אמן]
קהל ואבל: יְהֵא שְׁמֵהּ רַבָּא מְבָרַךְ לְעָלַם וּלְעָלְמֵי עָלְמַיָּא:
אבל: יִתְבָּרַךְ וְיִשְׁתַּבַּח וְיִתְפָּאַר וְיִתְרומַם וְיִתְנַשּא וְיִתְהַדָּר וְיִתְעַלֶּה וְיִתְהַלָּל שְׁמֵהּ דְּקֻדְשָׁא. בְּרִיךְ הוּא. [קהל: בריך הוא:]
לְעֵלָּא מִן כָּל בִּרְכָתָא בעשי”ת: לְעֵלָּא לְעֵלָּא מִכָּל וְשִׁירָתָא תֻּשְׁבְּחָתָא וְנֶחֱמָתָא דַּאֲמִירָן בְּעָלְמָא. וְאִמְרוּ אָמֵן: [קהל: אמן]
יְהֵא שְׁלָמָא רַבָּא מִן שְׁמַיָּא וְחַיִּים עָלֵינוּ וְעַל כָּל יִשרָאֵל. וְאִמְרוּ אָמֵן: [קהל:אמן]
עושה שָׁלום בעשי”ת: הַשָּׁלום בִּמְרומָיו הוּא יַעֲשה שָׁלום עָלֵינוּ וְעַל כָּל יִשרָאֵל וְאִמְרוּ אָמֵן: [קהל: אמן]

Eventually, I will be required to endorse the paralogic or lose my job.

 Psychopathy and the Origins of Totalitarianism.  This is a very long read, and many of my colleagues will immediately ignore the plank in their own eyes and say OMG THIS IS ABOUT TRUMP.  If you cannot see these things on the Left, I cannot tell you if it is willful blindness or not.   What I CAN tell you is that when the paradigm shifts again, it will not be pretty.

Why, yes, I DO teach this interpretation of Lochner when I do the Progressives

What Amy Coney Barrett Got Wrong About Lochner --Reason.com

Unlike the rest of the Bakeshop Act, which properly and legitimately regulated "washrooms and closets," the height of ceilings, floor conditions, and "drainage, plumbing, and painting," Peckham wrote, the limit on hours involved "neither the safety, the morals, nor the welfare, of the public" and was thus "not, within any fair meaning of the term, a health law." He concluded that the provision also violated liberty of contract, a constitutional right secured against state infringement by the 14th Amendment.

Most of the history textbooks still have the old interpretation of this being a law opposed by big businesses because it would increase their costs --and they are completely incorrect.  Big bakers supported the Bakeshop Act enthusiastically, precisely BECAUSE it would increase the costs of hundreds of smaller bakers at the same time, most of whom would be forced out of business.  

I'll make a long rant short: the historical profession is still paying the price for the Beards, Richard Hofstadter, and a host of other so-called intellectuals.  Most historians are too high on their own sense of superiority to know any better, though.

Vaccines: no huge surprise I'm not the only one who sees it coming (UPDATED)

Black Markets in COVID-19 Vaccines Were Inevitable Once Government Got Involved --Reason.com

You want the vaccines distributed widely and efficiently?  Let Walmart or Amazon do it.

UPDATE: no sooner than I thusly spake, when lo!

Amazon To Biden: We Stand Ready To Help You With This Vaccine Project, Mr. President

NB Allahpundit is no fan of Trump, but he thinks sometimes along similar lines to me.  It certainly is convenient that with Trump gone, suddenly a lot of things aren't so bad, but for the oddest reasons...

A NEW RECORD!

 Today is the official first day of our semester, and the first student assignment was submitted this morning at 5:15AM local time.  That is a new record by a half-hour.   I don't think the student was ready for it to be graded within twenty minutes, however.  You have to get up fairly early to beat Professor Mojo at the Early Morning Game...

Mrs. Mojo was glad to see me awake, "because if you're vertical, you can be folding clothes."  I liked her better when she was riding at this time of pre-dawn.  Myself, I am waiting for the pre-workout to kick fully in before I head to the gym.

Sunday morning with Rachmaninoff

Yes, the FANGed monster is real and evil, but occasionally produces things I enjoy.  

Example: I like to occasionally tune everyone else (the hell) out and get my classical groove on.  This morning, it's Rachmaninoff:

I do regret that my brain, in all its OCD-style glory, cannot doing more than one hand at a time on a piano keyboard.  I would probably be more popular at gatherings if I could play, and sing, and give everyone a bit of wit:

But I digress...

I have several friends who would agree with me that it's not merely enough to remove toxins from your life once you recognize them.  You must fill the void with what is true, what is noble, what is right -- Philippians 4:8, in other words.  

Save the Constitution from Big Tech (WSJ)

Liberals should worry too. If big tech can shut down the president, what stops them from doing the same to Joe Biden if he backs antitrust suits against social-media companies? Our Framers deeply understood the need for checks and balances in government. They couldn’t anticipate the rise of a new Leviathan with unchecked power to make extraconstitutional political judgments under the mantle of private enterprise.

 American democracy is under siege from Silicon Valley’s political plutocracy. Next week Mr. Trump will be a private citizen without a Twitter account. Our new class of corporate monarchs will still control whether and how Americans can hear from the president—or anyone else. We have devolved from a three-branch federal government to one with a branch office in Silicon Valley. But there’s no democratic accountability for Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg.

--"Save the Constitution from Big Tech" WSJ, 1/11/2021

There is a lot going on here, and I agree with the authors' points for the most part, but another little thought crept in.  In Civilization: Call To Power (the only non-Sid-Meiers-created Civilization iteration), there was a future-gov option called Corporate Republic, where the major companies ran the government.  While some called this a critique of capitalism, I saw a hidden salute.  Corporate republics had to be run for the benefit of the corporations, who still had to generate profits.  But what they found was that the best way to generate profits was ...to keep the people happy by raising their standard of living.  If they didn't do that, revolutions would break out.  The FANGed monsters will need to realize this if they intend to hold power for any real length of time.

And as well, everyone's a wise sage until the paradigm shifts, and then they're idiots again. Trump's super-power was that he shifted (temporarily) the paradigm.  The Left is both doing well and playing a fool's game in tamping down the Right.  It is well in the short run and perhaps the middle run to create a uniform landscape.  The big problem happens when the paradigm starts to shift, and the Powers That Are find themselves holding a wolf by the ears.  

Want a self-fulfilling prophecy?  Tamp down the Right because you're afraid "the next one" will be even worse.

And so here we are.

 I am largely abandoning Facebook because it's a toxic place full of echo chambers, right and left --but mainly the Left.  Seriously, threatening to kick someone off your Friends list for disagreeing with you when the only people who follow you are people who think like you?   Useless virtue signals!  

Remember when people used to talk about boycotting Walmart and buying locally?  Yeah, it's like that.

I would paraphrase Thoreau to explain myself:

Unjust systems exist: shall we be content to use them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and use them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a system as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the system itself and those who benefit from it that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse....

Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the system which I condemn.

For some odd reason, Milton's words draw me in today

Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,
Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seat
That we must change for Heav'n, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he 
Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right: fardest from him is best
Whom reason hath equald, force hath made supream
Above his equals. Farewel happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail 
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n. 
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less then he
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: 
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.

--Satan, "Paradise Lost" by J. Milton, Book I

Oh, we can read many things into this today, many things.   

Peace is a Miracle, and a continuing plague upon their respective houses

Peace is a Miracle:

 

Nihilism is what is killing our democracy. The leftists who toppled statutes believe, because they are taught to believe, that the people the statues depict – the people who founded our country – hated them. And thus that the country itself hates them. The Trump supporters who invaded the Capitol believe – because the people in that very building told them – that the people in that building, who run this country today, hate them. A country cannot have peace while its government tells its people the country hates them. Yet our government has managed to tell both halves of its divided nation that they are hated. If there were a Darwin Award for governments, the American political establishment would be tough to beat. 

There's a lot to digest here.  As a historian, I can indeed think back to the Election of 1800, the "magnificent catastrophe" described by Edward Larson  where James Monroe threatened to send the Virginia militia to prorogue the Federalist Congress (I guess Gov. Northrup DID have a precedent). I can think back as well to "Tilden or Blood" being spoken after the 1876 campaign, and several Northern governors threatening to mobilize their own militias in support of their preferred candidate.  I can think about 1960, where Nixon was urged to push vote fraud claims in Texas and Illinois (the former, at any rate, probably traceable to allies of "Landslide Lyndon").  2000 comes to mind with Bush v. Gore and the beginnings of the marginalization of non-majoritarian voices (or, "the year Democrats realized they could be hurt by third parties, too!" [Search terms "Ralph Nader Florida 2000"]).  And then OMG ROOSKIES! and 2016 (which we are starting to conclude was, yes, largely fabricated).  

But this is different.  Two people died this week.  The Capitol was breached.  And that was wrong and those responsible should be punished.  So moted be.

Remember, however, that a "tu quoque" argument may be a form of ad hominem attack, but it can be useful otherwise in illustrating hypocrisy.  And therein lies the animus of my plague-upon-the-houses: while I cannot support Trump, the rank two-facedness of many who oppose him prevents me from actively working with them.  I've seen your endgame, I want no part of it.  The revolution always eats its own, and the Montagnards always come for the Girondists.

Well, I DID say I was moving away from Facebook...

Somehow I don't see this year as an issue in terms of people still writing "2020" on their checks.  NO ONE wants 2020 to last any longer than necessary, no matter how inadvertent.

Facebook is toxic.  Yes yes yes, it does allow me to talk to a lot of people all at the same time, including folks I haven't seen in years.  But there's too much What Ain't Right over there.  I will not be feeding the beast any more than absolutely necessary.

I'm not sure how this is going to proceed.  I do have this blog, which has been hiding in the background for years now.  I have a presence on Parler, but not many folks have jumped there yet.  Maybe MeWe, or one of the others?  I don't know.  At least the blog format allows me to do funky things with text and formatting.  It may well be that I post weekly summaries on Facebook all the same.

I may be a bit less "guarded" here.  But that's part of the point.  The ability to speak is the ability to be free.  No amount of weasel words to the contrary will change that.  

Besides, when "They" tell you you're wrong, how often it is really not to "Their" benefit?  Seldom are corrections offered that hurt the ones offering them.  And always remember: it's generally only a single paradigm shift that can cause a designation change from "expert" to "idiot."