tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post1428685820990102002..comments2024-03-26T06:17:49.527-07:00Comments on Had Enough Therapy?: Ray Donovan and the Decline of Muscular ProseStuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-39379610167475523722015-07-20T04:11:34.418-07:002015-07-20T04:11:34.418-07:00To follow up, we must begin to ask harder question...To follow up, we must begin to ask harder questions about what is going on. All of us, as I somehow doubt my fellow countrymen of the opposite political persuasion would find the present circumstances palatable, should they be placed in the position of being the “loyal opposition” amidst such a non-conversation and in the face of this bureaucratic tyranny, which is exactly what it is. <br /><br />The executive is to enforce the law, not the laws that he chooses and to rewrite the laws he doesn’t like. By his enforcement and non-enforcement, President Obama has made his contempt for this country, its history, its power and its traditional values. He believes them unfair. Fine. Then engage in the battle of ideas in a way that is above board, not a radical perversion of executive prerogatives. <br /><br />No one wants to not like the President of the United States. This feels unpatriotic and unseemly, as we recognize all states need a leader, and want one with popular, broad support. With that as a given, I must admit that I do not understand this president’s motivations and interests. To quote Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign remark: “Everything that should be down is up; everything that should be up is down.” We’re feeling good about ourselves in championing the interests of all the “downtrodden,” and forgetting the rest of us. Murders in Milwaukee are up 180% this year. Is that “social justice”? <br /><br />The question I will ask coming out of this comment is "Who are the people defending or advancing this agenda?" Not the organizations, think tanks, politicians, reporters, media outlets. We need to start being curious about who the PEOPLE are who are creating this environment -- their names, connections, motivations, worldview and the outcomes they seek for our country. Until this happens, the president and his advocates will continue to push "Forward" and their opponents will look like paranoid boxers swinging at phantoms. There are real people behind all this. The most powerful among us appear invisible, yet they are hiding in plain sight. We just have to know what to look for, and how the pieces connect.<br /><br />I suspect what is at stake is our most basic, most personal freedom: our conscience. We are not being protected from the state, we are being forced to participate. This is a creeping form of thought control. That goodness is not about results, it's about intentions, feelings, emotions, empathy. Those who have "bad intentions" are met with dizzying attacks, and then the attackers slip back into the jungle. It's a battle of ideas, but one side is fighting in a guerrilla style, while the other is lining up to fight set-piece battles using tactics that worked in the 1980s. First we have to identify our enemy, then move to neutralize or destroy him in this battle of ideas. Right now, they are winning. We have to find out who "they" are, because they’re not only the politicians and office-holders themselves. There’s a cunning supporting cast.<br /><br />It’s time to man up. Otherwise, we will be virtual slaves, living a virtual lifestyle, and lose everything that’s worth having: the freedom to fail, the opportunity to succeed. You can’t get that from a government check, a reality TV show, Oprah, the New York Times, political speeches, etc. You have to go out there and take it for yourself. It’s never given. That’s what it means to be fully alive. <br /><br />America is about the man who doesn’t have to, but chooses to be great. And it doesn’t have to be at a billionaire level… it can be in a family, on a school board, in a church. Being on the Glowing Box is not the key to success. Living life on your terms is the key to individual greatness. And people should be able to find that for themselves, not because an unelected, unaccountable bureaucrat approves of their choices, ends or means. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. termed it: “The free struggle for life.” That’s not some anesthetized, emasculated, vanilla way of life… it’s the real thing, not an image on a Glowing Box.Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18222603717128565302noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-13510703256463583362015-07-19T08:19:50.429-07:002015-07-19T08:19:50.429-07:00Is Ray Donovan still looking for his reputation ba...Is Ray Donovan still looking for his reputation back?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-84947730054468515262015-07-17T11:02:42.529-07:002015-07-17T11:02:42.529-07:00"Clearly, political correctness and the Age o..."Clearly, political correctness and the Age of Obama killed it. More especially, a media and academic world filled with people who know little more about reading than how to find evidence of thought crimes has stifled and repressed these more manly writers."<br /><br />Well said. Our culture is moving in a new direction. Our elites and leaders are "chicken shit" about... well, just about everything.<br /><br />I suspect we are in the early stages of a new "soft fascism." The Wikipedia definition of fascism is "a form of radical authoritarian nationalism." When I say "soft" I mean social marginalization using communication, en lieu of physical force. It is "radical" in its plain Left-wing politics, no longer veiled for the sake of American consumption. It is "authoritarian" in its political mobilization, constraints on political institutions, and reliance on emotion in targeting opponents. Its "nationalism" is about replacing our traditional national identity with a new one, using sophisticated mechanisms of social conditioning. We are in transition from our Constitutional separation of powers to a regime of unchecked, unaccountable bureaucratic socialism. <br /><br />This is emasculating, as evidenced throughout our culture... even with essayists. The "American cowboy" stereotype is fast becoming an American cow. The Marlboro Man is replaced with Caitlyn Jenner. This is our cultural trajectory.<br /><br />We have a situation where people are not attacked directly, but by a coordinated, media-based coterie that is seemingly invisible, yet in plain sight... because few are looking, and even fewer are asking questions. Issues of outrage move at such dizzying speed that we cannot collect and evaluate them. "It's a crisis, so we have to do something." There seems to be a confederation -- whether it is loose or a formal union is irrelevant -- of politicians, journalists, academics and mainstream media types that are quashing any debate. It's kind of like Valerie Jarrett... looming in the shadows, outside of scrutiny, but in full control.<br /><br />This may seem like conspiratorial bunk, but look around you and consider some of the strange things that are happening and how they are asserted and defended. I'm not claiming to know the endgame, but what we have in the end is a monitored, censored and supervised "conversation" that is filtered to allow the "correct" voices to participate. It's a setup. And it doesn't have to make sense. For example: We must remove all vestiges of the Civil War Confederacy, yet we must respect Islam as a "religion of peace." Mind you: not Southern people, but the Confederacy; not Muslims, but Islam itself. It's an odd cocktail, and it's founded on distrust. It starts out symbolic, and then gets personal. <br /><br />The net result is that we are empowering everything we don't want. We now identify as victims, impaled by "micro-aggressions," and making excuses for why our lives are the way they are. Meanwhile, there is precious little discussed about the people who really make American work, who hold families and towns together, and contribute to our communities. It's all ass-backwards. And it's all okay, because no one wants to criticize our president. Our society has lost courage and suffers from a feminized malaise that few enjoy, but don't dare talk about. Instead of a virtuous, productive, moral and free society, we now collect... checks for entitlement benefits.<br /><br />Look at who's running the conversation. Look at who's winning. How are they doing this and that? It's not through the ballot box. Their legitimacy comes from the Glowing Box It all comes back to television. Conservatives are losing because we don't have a strong, clear, optimistic presence on TV. American life is consumed on the other side of a Glowing Box. Until we realize that, huddle up, an have an answer, everything we cherish is going to slip away. Everything.Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18222603717128565302noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-899114205097545742015-07-17T10:59:34.871-07:002015-07-17T10:59:34.871-07:00Interesting writing on a show I will never see.Interesting writing on a show I will never see.Sam L.https://www.blogger.com/profile/00996809377798862214noreply@blogger.com