No Penetration
the late-imperial back off challenge
I’m not sure which part of the employee handbook he violated, but Vivek Ramaswamy was obviously called into a conference with HR.
Federal debt has now passed $34 trillion, is well over 100% of GDP, and is on track to top $40 trillion in maybe two years. What are we going to do about that? We’re going to spend over a trillion dollars a year in the foreseeable future to cover the interest on that debt. Worth noticing?
The United States fought the Taliban for twenty years, accomplished nothing, and then let them take all of Afghanistan instead of just the half they controlled when we invaded. How did that happen? How did we spend thousands of lives and trillions of dollars on literally nothing? We trained and funded the Afghan National Army, which then turned out to not actually exist at the very first moment it was expected to function without us. Should we work to understand that failure? Should we maybe ask where the money went?
And so on. Pick your own top ten things that need to be discussed and examined. Covid policy, the emerging disaster of learning loss from school closures, the failure and increasingly obvious danger of the mRNA injections, our long history of remarkably unwise foreign interventions, the Frankenstein’s monster of our corporate-state merger and revolving door regulatory capture, the ideological rigidity of academic culture, whatever. There are crushingly obvious and disturbingly consequential failures all over our recent national record.
So our presidential candidates are facing persistent and aggressive questioning about…their willingness to denounce white supremacy. Is racism bad? Is racism bad? Is racism bad? Will you denounce it? Will you denounce it? Will you denounce it, denounce it, denounce it?
Denouncing things is very important! The commissariat needs to hear a firm, clear denunciation from you to clear your name for the record.
Journalists watched this….
….and then moved on to barking the usual ritual questions about denunciation ceremonies and the phantom “white supremacy.” We examine nothing. We discuss no failures. No serious questions ever break the cultural shell. We fight wars, lose them, and then drop it. Reading a lot about Ukraine, lately?
The function of the news media is to not talk about important things. They exist to distraction-blather about insurrection and racism, into the face of decline and failure, as a way of not talking about the decline and failure. In the United States, in 2023, we have no serious discussion underway at all about the American habit of failed foreign interventions, and no national debate about the growing chaos emerging from a global recognition of American weakness. The Houthis think they can shoot at us, for crying out loud. Wonder why.
The back off challenge is a distraction game on the golf course. People shout a steady stream of jokes and insults at golfers to make them screw up their drive.
This is the national news media. They exist to shout distracting non-sequiturs to trip people up as they try to do real things. It would be an enormous improvement if they merely became useless.
I have attempted, when I think it is appropriate, to start some of these conversations. Especially during the Afghanistan debacle. Unfortunately, I am surrounded by liberals, and even the moderate and conservative leaning people I know are not interested in the conversation. The liberals I deal with in my work life and interact with in my community are quick with comebacks about how "Trump spent a lot of money too!"
Try engaging in a political conversation on Reddit and see how many hardcore liberal women and the men that support them attack you. It isn't an easy topic and there are no clear solutions (except not deficit spending, duh) but the liberal side of the aisle uses "zingers" and ridiculous arguments to shut down any interaction. I pray there are people like me that see the problem and just choose to be quiet to prevent ugly confrontations. Most of the people I interact with that are so closed minded to discussing the problems latch on to a handful of liberal talking points, but don't actually know much about the issues.
I live in a small community in Central Oregon, and used to live in the Intermountain West in Idaho. Oregon is becoming more liberal in the high desert, and I have looked into moving back to the Intermountain West. Unfortunately, since the pandemic debacle, the wealthy work-from-home crowd have infiltrated mountain towns and recreationally focused areas of the Intermountain West, and prices have skyrocketed. Idaho, Montana, and where I live in Oregon are very beautiful, and day-to-day feel similar to years past. But, when you look at the development trends and patterns, and see how politically these areas are moving from red to purple and approaching blue in the voting patterns, it is sad and concerning. Not only are people not talking about our $34T in debt, they are changing the last bastions of conservative living by increasing the cost of living with their votes in favor of more local government spending. We all know the large west coast cities are hopelessly liberal and their policies have created a mess. But, now that many of those liberals can work from home, and they have money, they are outsourcing those beliefs to the rest of the country. How many towns in the Intermountain West plead with new comers not to "bring your failed policies here," only to have it fall on deaf ears?
If you believe the last presidential election, and midterm elections were stolen (I do) and see the shenanigans the left is pulling trying to keep Trump and now other republicans off of ballots, one can only wonder the depths the left will go to trying to "win" another election. It won't take much longer at this pace before elections are a lock for the lefties, and these policies are pushed through with increasing ease.
As a self employed person, I pay for my own health insurance, and even though it wasn't cheap, I used to be able to purchase plans based on my needs, at a price that fit my budget. I also used to be an insurance agent and sold health insurance. When the Affordable Care Act was passed, I was very disappointed in the policies available to me, and the prices I had to pay. Fast forward a decade and health insurance is unrecognizable, astronomically expensive, and if you like you doctor, tough shit. There are no private practice primary care physicians. Many are nurse practitioners more skilled at deciphering medical insurance coding, paperwork, and prescribing statins than improving health. I have changed doctors a couple of times in the past few years in an attempt to find someone competent that can treat me as an individual, but have given up. It is all the same bullshit, quoting from the higher ups and asking if you are interested in getting caught up on all the latest vaccines. The mess of health care was planned, and is a direct result of the ACA, and the plan of the left all along. Most of the RINO CONgress happily supports these policies. Or maybe they will have subcommittee meetings ranting at someone like Fauci to get soundbites but never do a damn thing about it.
Considering how far left the millennials and Gen Z lean, I suspect things will continue to degrade. I would love to be wildly wrong, but the trends of the last decade, and the polarization since Trump and the plandemic don't leave me much hope. Chris, I agree the lack of conversations about our debt and other issues is concerning. But, it seems most don't care and are more concerned with the liberal narrative than looking at the issues honestly.
How many of the young products of elite universities on the journalism/activism/social justice track even possess the analytical tools to consider such questions?