Feeling Like an Ex-Pat in My Own Country

 The term “ex-pat” is short for ex-patriot, an individual living and/or working in a country other than his or her country of citizenship, often temporarily and often for work reasons.  Ex-pats, while usually having chosen and enjoying their life abroad, still very much consider themselves citizens of their homeland and generally experience some level of homesickness for it.  They often get together with other expats from the same country to celebrate traditions of their homeland or otherwise enjoy aspects of their homeland that are missing in their current country of residence.

In today’s world I often feel like an ex-pat in my own country.  While many of my fellow citizens feel similarly, I am sure that many others are not really aware of the depth of irreversible change that is taking place, and which will leave us with not an improved America but with a very different country entirely. 

The progressive Left agenda is more than just some typical political posturing and gamesmanship.  Today’s progressive and socialist Left would like to see America as we know it completely dismantled and re-established as some sort of socialist utopia.  America is already changing its character and essence into a truly different place, and that is why many are feeling like homesick expats – strangers in a strange land homesick for their homeland.

I am not talking about some nostalgia for an America of yesteryear.  This is not a desire for an America that never changes or does not work to cure its deficiencies or constantly evolve.  Rather, it means a desire for exactly that America – the America with the core values that has allowed it to ever evolve forward, closer to the ideals of its founding and its Constitution, the ideals that have allowed it to be the beacon of freedom to the rest of the world for the past 245 years.

So many of what one often cites as characteristics of America and as those things which make her unique and great are being cancelled and replaced by very different characteristics.  Those new characteristics or values are encouraged by the Left along with their handmaidens the mainstream media and big corporations.  These changes are all interrelated and while each alone affects some aspect of America, when all become intertwined they eat out America’s heart and soul.

What is being cancelled and how is it being replaced? I have created two charts which only begin to suggest the changes that are occurring.  These charts suggest some of the characteristics of America and its people that are being cancelled – the characteristics of the America that I and other expats here are homesick for. 

Of course some, especially the woke Left and their minions, are thrilled to see these many changes.  Others of us are terrified as we see these many interrelated elements creating a new America, one without our traditional freedoms and values, one that will require an authoritarian structure for whom most of us will be required to relinquish our individuality as we essentially become its slaves. 

While the below charts only scratch the surface of the upheaval that is taking place in America, they perhaps give a sense of its extent.  America is not evolving or growing but being destroyed in order to serve some sort of reimagining by the Left (reimagining being the appropriate word here because this has all been imagined before – by every failed or failing socialist or Marxist regime that has ever existed). 

As I look about me and see a very different America emerging, I realize that I am an ex-pat in my own country.  The problem is, I did not choose to move here, I don't like it, and I cannot go home.

Individual and Societal Characteristics in America Today

Part 1:  Aspects that emanate from something external to the individual (e.g. inherent/constitutional rights, the State, the mob)
Being Cancelled	Being Encouraged	Examples/Effect of Change
Inherent Rights (rights that belong to the individual and cannot be taken by the State)	State granted rights (The state owns the right and can choose to grant it or how to grant it and can take it away)	E.g.: Entitlement programs or amount of those programs: housing & rent assistance, social services,
Rules that apply equally to all	Rules apply depending on the situation and who is involved	E.g: Leaders not following own rules; favored victim classes excused from what are legal violations for others
Regulated borders	Open borders; immigration laws not enforced	Loss of identifiable and unified country; no control over who enters and why
Choice	No Choice (in goods or beliefs)	E.g.: Certain points of view cannot be posted on social media, are disinvited from college campuses, are fired because of beliefs
Equality (Equal opportunity for all, but results might not be equal)	Equity (Equal results for all)	Requires some form of discrimination to achieve the desired result; the State (as opposed to the individual) determines what the result will be; eliminates motivation & competition
Uniqueness of Individual	Group identity	Causes dissention as groups are defined as victims or oppressors; labels people based on external characteristics
Rights require responsibility	Rights without responsibility	Entitlement and little motivation to work or to contribute to country, society or the greater good
Meritocracy	Mediocrity	Socialism.  Destroys the Individual and fulfillment of one’s abilities
Acknowledge and learn from history (good & bad)	Cancel and deny history	Judgmental; repeat old mistakes; denies respect, pride, understanding for how the country overcame negatives and for those who came before
Freedom of speech and thought	Cancel or limit & attack opposing ideas/theories/suggestions	Stymies the ability to progress with new ideas and innovations; does not allow challenges and suggestions that can improve theories
Decisions based on fact and logic	Decisions based on emotion and self interest	Irrational and inconsistent outcomes; often not best for the country as a whole or for the greater good

 

Individual and Societal Characteristics in America Today

Part 2:  Aspects that are internal to the individual and contribute to the individual’s values and approach to life
Being Cancelled	Being Encouraged	Examples/Effect of Change
Selflessness	Selfishness	Loss of belief in something greater than self; little respect for human life; no concern for the greater good
Faith in something beyond self	Self-gratification is prime consideration and glorification	While superficial appetites are gratified (e.g. gender fluidity, sexualization of women and children, legalization of traditional vices), there is an emptiness in the soul; decline of religion
Respect for elders and experts	Everyone is an expert, believing they are as knowledgeable as anyone on a subject and so can and should be able to run it	Hampers ability to learn because no belief that the one from whom one is learning is any more knowledgeable than the self (or their ability to Google)
Individual responsibility	Victimhood	Blaming others for one’s pain and predicament does not allow for personal growth, does not allow one to move forward as an individual
Rewarded for one’s own labor	All share in rewards even if they did not contribute	Contrary to the moral of the children’s store of The Little Red Hen, this encourages laziness and mediocrity
Self-reliance	Reliance on State	Diminishes the ability to take pride in and feel rewarded by one’s own accomplishments; creates dependency on State and underclass of those who are dependent
Acceptance of reality of imperfection with goal of every improving towards (unattainable) perfection	Belief in possibility of utopia	Everyone’s utopia is different and all utopias require authoritarianism
Critical thinking	Superficial solutions to problems while questions, deep thought demeaned	Without critical thinking individual cannot realize own true and full potential

 

 

Turns Out, I Wasn’t Buying It Even Then

In my last post I included Solzhenitsyn’s criticisms of the idea of situation ethics or relative morality.  When writing that post I was put in mind of my having read Joeseph Fletcher’s book “Situation Ethics: The New Morality” for a sociology class.  That would have been in the late 60s (the copyright date is 1966).  My memories were that I was swayed by the arguments in that book to look at my views of morality differently.  Turns out I actually still have my original copy (price on cover: $1.95) with my notes from the time.

My notes throughout the book reveal that I seem to have open mindedly considered as well as questioned the arguments and theses of the book, but that in the end I wasn’t sold.  Indeed, I seem to have at least intuited the criticisms spoken by Solzhenitsyn 5 or 10 years later.  The inside cover includes my handwritten comment that reads as follows:

whole book, & idea appears as just a way of rationalizing your sins, and “is trying to get out of it.”

makes us all out to be gods, who can choose to take a life for example, but we aren’t and we can’t.

Seems very slanted.  Only uses a very few Biblical examples over and over.

I don’t recall myself as being that perceptive.  But maybe it takes one looking back with later experience and history to see what one actually knew in the past.  The fact that my memory was that I had a fairly positive and transformative reaction to the book when I studied it is telling as to how the book and this new philosophy of relativism must have taken hold within our culture. 

Now, looking back with what I know and what I see around me today, I find the book truly frightening.  I see how right Solzhenitsyn was when he noted that the Communist ideology of relative (or class and identity) morality was a successful tool in its (and today’s Leftist Progressive ideology) anti-humanity crusade to gain power only for itself and gain the ability to fully manipulate the rest of us.

THE LURE OF SITUATIONAL MORALITY

The back of my copy of Situation Ethics touts it as “a manifesto of individual freedom and individual responsibility, elaborated within an ethic of love, which extricates modern man from rigid, archaic rules and codes.”

That was the 60s.  Think how enlightened that sounded.  “Individual freedom and individual responsibility”: isn’t that what people of the 60s were discovering – their ability to be themselves, to not conform and be like everyone else?  “Elaborated within an ethic of love”:  love one another was a sound and phrase of the times, how could that be bad?  And with these positive slogans we will “extricate modern man from rigid, archaic rules and codes”:  those would be the absolutes, the good and evil that served us well since civilized time began, the absolutes whose removal, Solzhenitsyn notes, leave us with nothing but the manipulation of one by another.

On page 56 of the book one finds a summary of the six propositions on which its philosophy of situation ethics rests: “The first one pins down the nature of value.  The second reduces all values to love.   The third equates love and justice.  The fourth frees love from sentimentality.  The fifth states the relation between means and ends.  The sixth authenticates every decision within its own content.” 

According to the author, “The new morality, situation ethics, declares that anything and everything is right or wrong, according to the situation.”  The author declares this new morality is not new, but is Bible-based and, like so many false prophets before and after him, he takes selected quotes from the Bible out of context to justify his philosophy that essentially comes down to:  do what feels good for you – if it feels good, it’s OK.

WHERE DID IT LEAD US

I think that in the 60s most who considered it didn’t notice the possible consequences of what embracing situational or relative morality might mean.  It is, I believe, a part of the lives of most of us today, and the Left has fully embraced it.

I think most everyone today will ignore otherwise rigid rules in at least some situations.  And probably people have always done this to some extent (is there anyone who has never told “a little white lie”?). 

But when there are absolute rules of right and wrong, good and evil, the breaking of these rules is less prevalent and is accompanied by some sort of guilt and understanding of one’s own wrongdoing.  When those “rigid” rules are gone one is ultimately left to do whatever one wants, regardless of what may be right or wrong for others.

Today, beyond more prevalent acceptance of excusing rule breaking in some circumstances, there are those who seem to believe that there really are no rules – they truly believe that a situation itself is the governing body in all circumstances. 

How else would we find people justifying theft and robbery (because they are just taking what they need), justifying the killing of police (because they are allegedly systemically racist), justifying violent riots called protests when they claim to serve a popular cause, even when they hurt or kill innocent bystanders, businesses, and government buildings (BLM riots after Floyd killing) but demanding severe punishment, even death to those whose protests violated the perimeter of the Capital building for a cause out of favor with the Left?

How else would we find people justifying the silencing of opposing viewpoints that they find uncomfortable, the disinviting of conservative speakers to college campuses because their views are offensive to Left-leaning students and faculty, the justification of harassing, namecalling, and sometimes physically attacking individuals who speak out in opposition to Leftist causes (most recently those who oppose CRT)? 

How else would we find the entertainment business and the elite and progressive individuals who profit from it justifying a daily diet of “entertainment” that sexualizes women and children while then acting as if they are horrified when someone whose politics are contrary to theirs commits even the slightest “MeToo” violation?

How else would we find the Left asserting its support for women’s rights and equal opportunity, then undermining those assertions when a biological male wants to compete as a female?   

How else would we find people believing that they can claim to be a devout follower of Catholicism yet be pro-abortion (a mortal sin in that faith) and demand they still be allowed to participate in the holy eucharist which requires adherence to the Catholic liturgy?

How else would we have a President requesting that social media censor and ban any posting that does not speak the truth, yet giving no criteria for what is “truth” or who will decide if a posting meets it, resulting, for example, in the idea that any suggestion that the Wuhan Virus came from the Wuhan lab should have been banned as untruthful, even though that now is the prevalent scientific theory?  How can science and humanity progress if no one is allowed to question or to present alternate ideas and theories?

THE RESULT OF EMBRACING RELATIVE MORALITY IS NOT PRETTY AND IT IS ANTI-HUMANITY

The above list could go on and on.  It includes just some of the examples of situation ethics in action that immediately come to mind.  I am sure every reader of this blog can think of many others.

We are destroying ourselves while believing that we have raised ourselves to some higher level of love.  Self-love seems to be the guiding principle – open any lifestyle magazine, any Sunday supplement, any self-help blog, any TV morning-show type supplement and you will hear about the importance of “self-care.”    That is where situational morality has taken us – to place the self as a god and the center of one’s universe. 

That’s fine if you live alone on some mountain top, but when two or more people come together who believe the situation and their feelings govern all even to the extent of justifying murder of the other, someone is going to have to determine whose self-love is superior. 

Once people have been manipulated into giving up absolute moral values, they need someone in power to decide what is OK in this or that situation.  That is where the progressive Leftist philosophy comes in.  They believe they can and should decide for each and every one of us, not because they know or care what is best, but because their philosophy requires and entitles them to do so.  They will take away humanity and replace it with manipulation and indifference.  As Solzhenitsyn so aptly noted, their goal is to destroy our social order.  The back cover of the Situation Ethics book essentially admits that as its intent.

My 1960s notes on Situation Ethics were more accurate than I understood at the time. I didn’t buy into it then, even though I thought I had.  Perhaps you didn’t buy into Situation Ethics either when you were first introduced.  But when there is what Solzhenitsyn calls a “constant dinning” and what we would today call propaganda with a daily barrage of one viewpoint taught from almost birth, it is easy to lose what one knows to be true and to buy into what we inherently know to be a mistake.   

We are not gods and relative morality, no matter how honorable and humane and even holy it may sound, is nothing more than a way to destroy the human essence and individuality and replace it with an ugly and oppressive power wielded by an elite and selfish few.  Each one of us who has let this destructive situation ethics into our lives needs to exorcise it immediately.

The Warning is Still Relevant and Even More Urgent if Anyone Will Listen

 

Is it possible or impossible to transmit the experience of those who have suffered to those who have yet to suffer?  Can one part of humanity learn from the bitter experience of another or can it not?  Is it possible or impossible to warn someone of danger?

               -Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Warning to the West

 The above words express much of the frustration Solzhenitsyn must have felt when he came to America after his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974.  The above quote is from a speech given to leaders of the AFL-CIO in New York on July 9, 1975, during which he tried to warn this group of American workers and leaders of the dangers inherent in Communism and Socialism.

The sad thing, the similarly frustrating thing, is that most of Solzhenitsyn’s words and warnings ring true as even more relevant today.  The frightening thing is that once again no one is really hearing the words, perhaps because without having experienced what is being warned of one cannot hear the warning.

And yet, there are those perhaps fools who will keep shouting the warning to anyone who will listen, hoping perhaps beyond hope that someone will hear at least a small whisper, that someone will awake and they will awake others and perhaps the impending danger can be avoided.  We will see.

In the meantime, I would like to go through some of the key statements from this particular Solzhenitsyn speech with notes on how they reflect very clearly what is happening in America today.  It is not possible to read them without recognizing things we see all around us.

[Notes.  The full text of this speech can be found, collected with other of his speeches in the book Warning to the West by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1976.  It can also be found in the July-August 1975 edition of the AFL-CIO Free Trade Union News beginning at page 17, and available at this LINK.  The page numbers to which I refer below are pages of the speech in the book Warning to the West.  While I generally use the term “Communism” as did Solzhenitsyn in his speech, one should understand that the basic concepts warned of are also aspects of Socialism and Democratic Socialism.]

“The whole world can read, everyone is literate, yet somehow no one wants to understand.  Humanity acts as if it does not understand what Communism is, as if it does not want to understand, is not capable of understanding.” (p. 54)

I don’t know about you, but that to me sounds like most of the people around me in this country.  We have around 1/3 of our young people thinking Socialism/Communism is a great system.  We have leaders and politicians pushing a big government Socialist agenda and no one even seems to bat an eye.  Perhaps no one wants to know because it is too disconcerting; it is easier just to go about enjoying one’s daily life without paying attention to what is going on around one.  Or, perhaps as Solzhenitsyn suggests, “the essence of Communism is quite beyond the limits of human understanding.”

What is the “essence” of Communism?  Solzhenitsyn reminds us that it never changes. (p. 55) Sure, while during the Soviet era it was the proletariat vs. the bourgeoisie and today those labels have been replaced with the appropriate identity group labels of the day, the basic rhetoric has not changed.  Communism as well as socialism assert that once the evil group has been overthrown, “the most happy and radiant society will then arise.”  But no Communist leaders ever describe concretely what that new society will be like.  

If today’s Left successfully put into place their many social justice and new world order programs, do you have any idea what the new society that they wish to create will look like?  Will the promises of a rosy new world of peace, joy, and happiness be sustainable, or will it look more like the many other failed Communist and Socialist regimes with negligible resources, corrupt and selfish leaders, starving and unhappy populace?  Perhaps it will look a bit like the Cuba of today that the people who have actually suffered and are suffering this brave new world are risking their very lives to protest against.

“Marxism has always opposed freedom.” (p. 57) “Communism is anti-humanity.” (p. 59)

According to Solzhenitsyn Communism reduces all the complexities of human nature to “crude economic processes.”  Man is “reduced to matter.”   Solzhenitsyn lays out one way in which this is successfully accomplished:  the destruction of traditional concepts of morality, good, and evil.  These concepts were once seen as absolutes, but Communism considers morality to be relative and a class matter. 

“Depending upon circumstances and the political situation, any act, including murder, even the killing of hundreds of thousands, could be good or could be bad.  It all depends upon class ideology.  (p. 58)

Communism has been highly successful in spreading the concept of situation ethics and the relativity of good and evil.  Indeed, people who profess absolutist concepts of good and evil are often seen as some character from the dark ages; the concepts are seen as old-fashioned and laughable. 

Why is it OK for BLM to conduct violent protests but largely peaceful protests from the political right are condemned?  Why do some large cities excuse shop-lifting if done by certain identity groups or excuse theft and violence if it was because the individual “needed” what was stolen?  Why are acts by the “victim” identity groups against the “victimizer” identity groups excused?  Why do the laws apply to some and not others?  These are questions asked in this country every day, and yet the real answers, the underlying source of the destruction of moral standards, are often ignored.

“And who defines this ideology?” Who determines when something is wrong or right when there is no clear or absolute standard?  In America today it seems to be a combination of Leftist political leaders, big corporations, and media.  It is not the people.

As Solzhenitsyn notes, the problem is that if we are deprived of the basic concepts of good and evil, deprived of standards of conduct that apply to all, nothing but the manipulation of one another is left.  And that is just fine with the Communists because they will take the power and do that manipulation while the rest of us “will sink to the status of animals.” (p. 58)  We seem to have a good cadre of Leftist leaders who are more than willing, indeed eager, to take all power and become our manipulators.  

“But what is amazing is that apart from all its writings, Communism has offered a multitude of examples for modern man to see.” (p. 59)

Solzhenitsyn gives numerous examples of the horrors of Communism taken from the time of his speech.  We can find equally timely ones today.  In China there are the Uyghur internment and forced labor camps that also likely include torture and death.  Actually, had anyone noticed, China was already becoming an example in 1975: “China is characterized by all the same [Communist] traits: massive compulsory labor which is not paid in accordance with its value; work on holidays; forced living in communes; and the incessant dinning of slogans and dogmas that abolish the human essence and deny all individuality to man.” (p. 64)

But we also have others.  Venezuela comes to mind:  the socialist/communist country that promised a great society to its people but that has collapsed to the detriment of its populace.  North Korea is another whose horrors are only partially known.  We have other socialist/communist authoritarian regimes that have all begun with a promise of some wonderful new world and which are in some form just the opposite for their people.  And we have Cuba whose people are right now trying to rise up against the horrors of Communism but who might just as likely be destroyed like any other group in Communism’s history who dared to speak out against its social order. 

Yet we have people that ignore these examples.  The Administration downplays the Cuban revolt, ignoring the fact that the essence of the people’s complaint is Communism.  We do not stand up to the treatment of the Uyghurs in China.  We turn a blind eye to the many Socialist and Communist atrocities around the world.  Yes, it is amazing that the examples are there, but too many choose not to see.

“All the apparent differences among the Communist Parties of the world are imaginary.  All are united on one point:  your social order must be destroyed.” 

(pp. 64-5)

And isn’t that just what our progressive Left, our Democratic Socialists, our Communists in this country are attempting to do with their many social justice and other policies and initiatives, their CRT, their destruction and erasure of history, their cancelling of unwelcome voices? Isn’t the essence of their many policies an attempt to destroy our social order?  And yet no one seems to notice.  Solzhenitsyn does not find it surprising that the world does not understand this.  “Even the socialists, who are the closest to Communists, do not understand it.”  Humanity cannot grasp the evil until they have experienced it themselves and by that time it is too late because they are dead.

“All of the Communist Parties, upon attaining power, have become completely merciless.  But at the stage before they achieve power, it is necessary to use disguises.” (p. 66)

We are bombarded with social justice.  Equity.  The ideal classless society.  The Left and their policies will fix everything for us.  The current Administration is well on its way.  The word “Communism” is not used.  Sometimes we hear “democratic Socialism” with the emphasis on the word “democratic.”  These are disguises that do not cover the truth of what we are facing.  But what are all these fine sounding things but the disguises of Communism.  The classless society is one in which every voice is suppressed by those in power. (p. 69)  

Suppression of speech is becoming pretty well installed in this country as the Administration, the Left, MSM, and Big Tech/Social Media all join hands to suppress voices that they do not like.  People accept it in the name of some sort of civility.   But it is nothing more than the Communist (and socialist) bait and switch.  The goal, the ideology of Communism remains the same: “to destroy your system, to destroy the way of life known in the West.” (p. 70) And to suppress any and all voices that do not speak the party line.

So many Americans buy into the beauteous sounding establishment of a new world order of peace and prosperity for all.  When we live in a country that, while imperfect, is indeed free and aspires to the highest goals of humanity, a country that is prosperous and generous, it is hard to imagine that everyone would not be behind a brave new world that looked like a perfected America.  Yet in reality, that brave new world requires totalitarianism and totalitarianism is the antithesis of America; it is the sort of world to which the disguises of Communism will lead us.

“We are approaching a major turning point in world history, in the history of civilization. . . . It is a juncture at which settled concepts suddenly become hazy, lose their precise contours, at which our familiar and commonly used words lose their meaning. . . . [T]he hierarchy of values which we have venerated, and which we use to determine what is important to us and what causes our hearts to beat is starting to rock and may collapse.” (p. 79)

Solzhenitsyn saw it coming in the 1970s.  It is here now. 

Solzhenitsyn saw two crises occurring simultaneously:  one political, one spiritual.  He noted that the entire world would have to face these crises but that it was America that would have to bear the burden of fighting against them. 

“Your [America’s] leaders will need profound intuition, spiritual foresight, high qualities of mind and soul.” (p. 80) Oh, if only that were true, if only that were the description of our leaders today.  We do not have such leaders.  They either do not see the problem, or ignore it, or are part of it.  The current Administration, essentially governed by the Left, has already seemingly signed onto the Communist agenda, whether they understand what they are doing or not.

Our political leaders, our media, our entertainment, our denial of what is going on around us, our willingness to accept without thought what we are told and do without thought what the Left desires, perhaps because we cannot see the dangers or perhaps because we do not want to, all of these things are leading us to disaster. And yet, “a concentration of world evil is taking place, full of hatred for humanity.  It is fully determined to destroy your society.” (p. 82)

Solzhenitsyn notes that those born in Communist countries are born slaves.  Some are currently striving for freedom.  But we, born in the USA, are born free.  So why, in the words of Solzhenitsyn, would we let ourselves become slaves?  Why do we help those who would become our slaveowners? (p. 84)

The why is stated at the start of this essay.  It seems that for those who live in a country where one can live a free and independent life, the dangers seem imaginary.  It is impossible to warn someone of the danger.  It is hard to ask someone to be vigilant when the danger to them seems unreal.  Solzhenitsyn has given us a heads up of what is to come – advice from one who knows and has experienced evil given to us who have not.  Yet, if the free and independent people of this country do not wake up, do not man the watchtowers, it will be too late for vigilance, too late for warnings from those who know what the Left, the Socialists, the Communists are truly seeking and what havoc they will wrest upon us and our world. It is time that we listen and see what is really going on.

New Connotation, Same Denotation – Don’t be Fooled

Recently I was writing something in Russian in which I referred to snow as “bleak and isolating.”  I also wrote a translation for someone who does not read Russian.  That’s when I realized that the same Russian word (изолировать) means both “to isolate” and “to insulate.”

Now, while both words can denote the same sort of circumstance – someone or something separated from others –, to me the two words have very different connotations.  I think of something akin to loneliness when I hear, read, or think of isolation, but to me insulate connotes something more positive and warming.

I wondered how someone who did not know what was in my mind when I wrote it would have translated my use of the Russian word.  And if they had used insulate instead of isolate while it might have made the surrounding description seem more pleasant, it really wouldn’t have changed the factual reality of the scene being described; both words have the same underlying literal meaning (as opposed to the connotative emotions or feelings that each word individually suggests).

This is a long way of suggesting that the Left’s current practice of changing words for things is not really changing the underlying substance of the thing.  There are so many examples of the Left using words with different connotations but which, upon inspection, are denoting exactly the same thing, situation, or activity.  Here are just a few:

• Immediately upon President Biden’s inauguration the migrant “cages” of the Trump years became “overflow facilities.”  Yet the actual facility and its detention purpose were the same and looked very similar though far more crowded under Biden.
• Placing individuals in “affinity groups” = separating individuals by skin color = segregation.  The Left (like all of America) opposes or at least claims to oppose segregation, yet the Left is perfectly fine with separating things like college dorms or school classrooms or group activities or reporters by race.  Perhaps they’d just like to put signs up on the doors to the various affinity areas saying things like Whites only or Colored only.
• “Undocumented worker” = in the country without having followed the procedures of our immigration laws = “Illegal alien” (which is the legal term used in those statutes).  But the Left thinks the connotation of undocumented (implying simply not having the right papers) is less offensive than illegal which more directly states the status of the individual’s presence in the country which is in violation of our laws.
• A woman’s “choice” or “right to reproductive health” = a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy = “abortion”.  People know that abortion ends a living being, but choice or reproductive rights have a much softer and kinder connotation. 
• “Riots” become “peaceful protests” or “exercise of First Amendment rights” when acted out in support of Leftist causes but become “insurrections” when voicing Right or anti-Left causes.
• “Marriage equality” = marriages between members of the same sex = “non-traditional marriage.”  Perhaps the Left thinks it is easier to raise support for a phrase that includes the word “equality” (though actually doesn’t equality clash with their current favorite word “equity”?).  Yet, I don’t think the term “marriage equality” fools those whose religious convictions do not support non-traditional marriages.
• And speaking of “equity”, it is used (along with “social justice” and “fairness”) to replace a number of words and concepts that sound less pleasant:  Hiring based on race; removing of AP classes or other challenging curricula; allowing biological males to compete in and thus eviscerate women’s sports; redistribution of wealth so as to take hard earned rewards or property from one and give it to another who has done nothing to help in the achievement of those rewards and has no entitlement to the other’s property; the refusal to treat everyone equally.   

The Left hopes that you will be fooled into thinking that, because of their similar sound and perhaps a similar connotation, that equity and equality are one and the same.  They are not.  Do not think that they are and do not turn a blind eye to all that you give up when you replace your right to equality with some sort of state-sponsored equity.

The examples listed above are just a few of many possibilities that illustrate how the Left thinks it can cleverly change a word, replace it with a different word with a better connotation, and no one will notice that the denotation is the same.  (Interestingly, even “dementia” was replaced by “cognitive decline” in conversations about candidate Biden’s mental abilities.)

Not only does the Left select words that it finds favorable and useful for its causes, it works overtime to make sure that we use them and not words that might point out the truth behind the new language of "wokespeak".  Thus, those that use “unfavorable” language are regularly accused of racism, mistruth, or any number of other sins in order to silence those who do not readily fall in line. This clever use of words based on connotation rather than factual meaning aligns nicely with the Left’s favorite persuasive techniques that rely on emotional rather than logical responses from the audience.

I can’t help but think of this quotation from George Orwell’s 1984: “The revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.”  

Getting us to use the Left’s selected verbiage is only the beginning.  Because at the same time the Left is narrowing our range of thought.  Again from 1984, “Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller.”

I wonder if the Left thinks that we can all be fooled by their Newspeak (Wokespeak) connotative replacements.  Perhaps they believe that once we are blinded by their pleasant replacements for unfair, unconstitutional, and downright ugly concepts and polices that they will be fully in control of us and free to alter our country and our very existence to meet their power needs.  I hope that they are wrong.

Presiding over the Annihilation of Democracy

Apparently, Joe Biden doesn’t just want to annihilate America as we know it, but the Middle East as well.  Perhaps it’s all part of his new world order. 

  Destroying America

By now it must be obvious to anyone who is paying attention that President Biden’s domestic agenda is incredibly destructive to every core American principle and value.  He is not merely enlarging but is totally bloating the powers of the federal government, far beyond what even the broadest reading of our Constitution would allow.  The effect of that agenda is the loss of personal freedoms and of what were until now Constitutionally protected rights.  And, if HR-1, which Biden fully supports, is passed, the voice of the people via free, fair, and integrous elections will be seriously impaired if not lost.

Beyond the seemingly dictatorial government power grab, Biden’s agenda is destroying the American spirit.  He pays people to not work.  His policies destroy any reward or incentive for hard work, whether it is removal of AP classes to satisfy “equity” (while at the same time destroying any motivation for a student to excel), or the fact that one can now earn more on unemployment than being employed (encouraging dependence on the State for one’s survival while removing any suggestion of personal responsibility), or that companies that spent time and effort during the previous administration’s Warp Speed to develop Covid vaccines can now not patent those vaccines and thus earn the financial reward to which they, until now, would be entitled for their efforts (and let’s hope we don’t have another pandemic because the drive to innovate has essentially been quashed when the innovators must share the rewards of their efforts with those who sat back and did nothing). 

A core premise of our nation, at least prior to this administration, is equality.   We don’t always manage to get it right, but we have always strived for equal treatment of all.   As has been explained by myself and many others, equality is not equity.  Equality does not guarantee equal results, but it does give (or at least strives to give) all individuals the ability to go after that which they themselves want their life to be.  And, in an America that values tolerance, we respect goals that differ from our own.

There is a fairness to equality that is not present in equity.  Equity simply strives to have the same result for everyone.  There is no guarantee that result is arrived at fairly or that it is what the individual is seeking.  Equity actually requires significant inequality and discrimination as it provides extra benefits and rewards to some while denying benefits and rewards to others so that all will have the same result; a result determined not by the individual but by those in power.

What equity does is give us mediocrity and no incentive for an individual to strive to be the best that he or she can be.

Biden’s policies are also creating a suffocating weight around the neck of our country far greater than the weight of the Albatross on the Ancient Mariner.  The country’s debt was not good, but Biden makes it far worse with his stimulus and other giveaways, all of which he and the Left seek to make permanent and all of which must be paid for by taxpayers.  His policies are causing inflation.  His energy policies not only cause gas prices to rise, but also create rising costs for any product that is transported, whether by truck, train, or plane.  While Biden says he won’t raise taxes on the middle class, the burden of all his programs will be a far more serious strain on the middle class. 

President Biden also seems to have no respect for the rule of law.  Not only did he speak out in favor of one result prior to the jurors’ decision in the Chauvin case, he regularly inserts his opinion into legal issues without actual knowledge of the facts (for instance his erroneous statements about the Georgia voting law which continued even after Washington Post fact checkers had given him “4 Pinocchios”.)   

The Biden Administration is also breaking immigration law in any number of ways.  These include not enforcing border controls, keeping children locked up for days or even weeks in horrific and crowded conditions, releasing migrants into the interior of our country without a return court date, encouraging sanctuary cities (whose very purpose is to violate and disregard federal immigration law).

The upshot of the above, and actually of just about every action that the President takes, is to tear America apart and down.  If he is allowed to keep this up for 4 years (or even 2) he will have, in effect, annihilated the America that we know, the America that was a shining star to the world.

   Destroying Middle East Peace and/or Israel

Biden’s acts of destruction go beyond our borders.  Look at the Middle East, the place where the previous administration was able to do the impossible and negotiate 4 peace accords that were a major step in achieving a new understanding between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Since his inauguration, President Biden has essentially ignored Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu while pandering to Israel’s enemies.  He provided money as well as tacit support to Iran which emboldened Iran to provide missiles and other weapons of war to Hamas. 

Hamas is an admitted terrorist organization whose goal, stated in its own charter, is to “obliterate” Israel.  Styling themselves as some sort of victim class, Hamas has begun firing rockets against Israel.

We all know that our current administration loves any victim class and will bend over backwards to support the alleged victims against their perceived oppressors.  So, rather than condemn the terrorist aggression, Biden calls upon Israel to stop defending itself and cease fire.  There is absolutely no condemnation of Hamas, no acknowledgement of its mission to destroy Israel along with all Jews, not even a nod to Israel’s right to protect its own people.  

Israel’s army is superior to Hamas, and that seems to be a reason to condemn Israel.  Perhaps Biden would like to see equity between the armies of Israel and Hamas, but such equity would probably destroy Israel.  Israel is the most humane of any armed force:  it always provides a warning of upcoming strikes when planning to strike an area where civilians may be present.  Hamas on the other hand uses civilians and especially children to shield their rocket launchers and other weapons. 

But the Left is anti-Israel, and as with everything else, Biden is either strongly Leftist or caves to the Left.  So, today, he demanded a "significant de-escalation" by Israel.  No call for Hamas to disarm.  No acknowledgement that Hamas is the aggressor.  No recognition of Israel’s need to protect its own people.  No grief over the suffering or death of the Jews.

Thankfully, Prime Minister Netanyahu is a leader who cares about his country and its citizens whom he is bound to protect rather than one or another cause du jour.  He stated that “Israel will push ahead to return the calm and security to the citizens of Israel."  That is his job, and President Biden should acknowledge the right of our longtime ally and only democracy in that region to protect itself from terrorist attack.

But Biden does not.  In the interest of pleasing the Left he seems willing to see Israel destroyed along with America.  He seems to care nothing for the people of America or our longtime ally Israel.  He seems to care nothing for democracy or freedom. 

What’s next, the world? If Biden and his far-Left policies continue, democracy will be destroyed not only in America, but in the entire world.  And then, where will those seeking freedom and the right to exercise their inherent, inalienable, and God-given rights go?

Update

Here is a short update on the removal of my post.   

I will have a new post coming this week.  There is so much going on at the local, national, and international level that it is hard to focus on which craziness to write about!  Nonetheless, there will be at least one new post in the next few days.

Thanks for reading!

This blog is not dangerous

 Google has determined my site to be "dangerous".  It is not.  Just not Leftest.

It has removed the following blog that was posted on 3/12/2021.  I repost it below.

I will have more to say on this in the next week or so.

Tuesday, March 2, 2021

A Very Sanitary Future

 

The future.  It is often portrayed as so very perfect.  So clean.   Yet also so sterile and sanitized.

The sanitation has begun as cancel culture tells us what to think and how to behave.  Eventually we can become like the automatons that we see in futuristic portrayals.  All on the same bland even keel.  No ups, no downs, no extremes of emotion. People are calm.  They say only the right things.  They have only the correct behavior.  And they have no joy.  No humanity.

Today there are things you can’t say.  There is history that must not be taught.  There are books that cannot be read.  Our world, and especially the world of our minds, is being sanitized.  Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird are stories that if anything create an awareness and perhaps empathy for the Black experience in America.  Yet those books are cancelled because they use language of the times and are true to the times.  Dr. Seuss has now been cancelled.  I find it hard to believe that every child who was given a Dr. Seuss book to enjoy, to giggle at, and in the process to learn something of phonetics, I refuse to believe that those children because of that experience were turned into racists.

Soon our stories will be fully sanitized and will all read something like this: “They met.  They fell in love.  They died.”  No detail allowed - it might offend someone.  No joy, no sorrow, nothing to learn from.  Just a few words on a page, sanitized and approved.  (Those who are familiar with Russian history will of course think of the Soviet establishment of socialist realism as the only acceptable aesthetic for authors who were given basic mandatory plots to follow.  Any deviation was banned, sometimes along with the authors themselves.)

We learn from that which has not been sanitized.  Great literature teaches us about our humanity, about the human condition.  History teaches us about where we went right and where we went wrong, thus allowing us to not repeat the same mistakes.  Information, even information that might offend one or many, can spark thoughts, innovations, excitement in the human brain and the human soul. 

It is information and the spark of inspiration that it provides that allows humanity to progress.  Information feeds our natural curiosity.  It is as essential for our being as is food.

Human emotion is a part of us, both its positive and negative passions.  It cannot be banned; allowing us to be conscious of it means that we can learn about and from it and perhaps even control our own individual demons.

Once upon a time I wrote a poem about an Eagle and a Pigeon.  I don’t think I understood the significance of it then but let me use its spirit here.  The mighty Eagle soars and dives.  I don’t know how an eagle feels when it dives, but I do know that when it reaches the bottom it often gathers sustenance that allows it to soar again.  Our minds, indeed our whole being, when allowed to be open, are like the Eagle, soaring to great heights of joy, diving into sadness and depression, learning from both and indeed living as we humans are meant to live, full of spirit, emotion, reason, and passion. 

Yet with the onslaught of cancel culture we are becoming more like carrier pigeons.  Kept in cages, their route is always direct and level and predetermined by someone else.  Even the message they carry is not theirs but is instead written for them.  The pigeon does its job, but with how much joy or personality?

People are not perfect. Nor are they level and unthinking or unfeeling.  Their ugly parts cannot be banished and indeed it is the contrast with the ugly that allows us to experience our greatest joys.  Much as we might try, while we might be able to sanitize a city for a day, we simply cannot fully sanitize the imperfect being called human.  We can force the humanity onto the level and predetermined course of the pigeon, but sooner or later the individual human spirt needs to soar.

The sanitized future may look lovely.  A “perfect world.”  But it seems more and more like that perfect world, cold and devoid of emotion, requires us to sanitize our very selves so that we no longer exist.  We still have the ability to soar and to dive like the eagle, but every time a thought or a word or an action is banned from our access, we move a little closer to the pigeon.