World Dictators to US Voters: We'd Prefer You Vote Obama

From Moscow to Caracas to Havana, something disturbing is happening: Dictators with long records of enmity toward the U.S. are endorsing Obama for president. What does that say about the Obama presidency?

Fresh from abusing Venezuela's opposition after his own rigged re-election, Chavez declared, "If I were American, I would vote for Obama. He is my candidate." It was his second direct endorsement of Obama in a week. After that, he spooled off his plans to impose socialism on his country.

Around the same time, Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuba's ruling communist capo Raul Castro, Fidel's brother, told CNN: "As a citizen of the world, I would like for (Obama) to win."...

There was more of that appreciation of Obama's heartwarmingness from Russia's stoat-faced autocrat Vladimir Putin: "Obama is a genuine person who really wants to change much for the better," he said, in what The Moscow Times said was "widely viewed as his most direct endorsement of Obama."

...there have been de facto endorsements based on acts — from the evidence of Chinese cash coming into Obama's campaign coffers through the China-domiciled Web site Obama.com — to the sudden declaration by Iran's mullahs last weekend of "peace talks" soon to be held, but only if Americans vote for Obama. _Obama: The Dictator's Choice

Americans are accustomed to the more leftist candidate receiving endorsements and support from academics, foreign and domestic journalists, and media celebrities. But when a candidate receives endorsements from the world's dictators and most outspoken enemies of individual rights and freedoms, something odd is going on.

In the case of Chavez and the Castro oligarchs, it's obvious enough that Obama governs in a way that resembles their own — increasing state employees and state dependency, ruling by decree, singling out companies for punishment, and engaging in a cult of personality where the state is replaced by the leader.

But in the case of some of America's other dangerous foes — from Russia to China to Iran — the only answer to this odd phenomenon is a recognition that Obama is a weaker horse. He is therefore easier to corner or checkmate to achieve their own power ends — in the case of all — military and nuclear power. _IBD

America represents a threat to every imperialistic dictator-state in the world, by virtue of its economic, political, and military power. Any US president who promises to weaken the US in any of those areas, would be a godsend to such a dictator-state. In that sense, another Obama term is a bright and shining promise that these dictators cannot ignore.

Celibrating Perversity: US Orgy of Ethno-Gender Neo-Tribalism

A great society will find ways to bring its people together around a central organising principle. A society that is in decline will fragment into competing tribes and pseudo-tribes. A perverse society will actually feed this fragmentation into competing interest groups. As a perverse society destroys opportunity in the private sector in order to feed the bloating public sector, the in-fighting between the tribes around the public trough grows vicious at times.

The US celebrates Black History Month in February. Significant parts of 8 months of the year are dedicated to one special interest group or another, in the US. The only group that is not celebrated is the hard working producers who keep the economy running to compensate for all of the neo-tribalistic waste of resources centered in Washington DC.

Month	Occasion and Description
February	Black History Month To recognize the contributions of African Americans and foster a better understanding of the African American experience. Carter G. Woodson, who in 1926 spearheaded Negro History Week, started the observation. It was expanded to a month in 1976. February was chosen because of the birthdays of Frederick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, two people who had a dramatic affect on the lives of African Americans.
March	National Women’s History Month Women’s History Month started as Women’s History Week in 1978. In 1987, Congress was petitioned to expand the week to an entire month. The month recognizes the important contributions made by women through programs in school, workplaces and communities.
May	Asian/Pacific American Heritage & Older Americans Asian/Pacific American Heritage observation originally began as Asian/Pacific Heritage week on July 10, 1978. In 1992, President Bush signed legislation designated May as Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month. The term Asian/Pacific American includes many ethnic groups with diverse cultures. The month celebrates the collective achievements of the many different communities. Older Americans Month Older Americans Month was established by presidential proclamation to honor the contributions of older Americans to society. Begun in 1962, Older Americans Month is a time to celebrate and reflect on the unique contributions of older Americans in our society.
June	Gay and Lesbian Pride Month Gay and lesbian Americans have made important and lasting contributions to our nation in every field of endeavor. In June of 2000, William J. Clinton, President of the United States of America proclaimed June as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. All Americans are encouraged to observe this month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities that celebrate our diversity and recognize the gay and lesbian Americans who have contributed and enriched our national life. Caribbean American Heritage Month On June 5, 2006, President George W. Bush signed a proclamation making June officially Caribbean American Heritage Month. This month has been established to recognize the historic relationship between the people of the Caribbean and the people of the United States as well as to recognize the many contributions Caribbean immigrants and their descendants have made to the well-being of America.
September/October	Hispanic Heritage Month The first Hispanic Heritage Week was approved on September 15, 1968. The month gives people the opportunity to plan and participate in ceremonies and activities that recognize the contributions of the many diverse cultures within the Hispanic community. In 1988, the celebration was expanded to a month and goes from September 15 to October 15.
October	National Disability Employment Awareness Month In 2003, previously known as National Employ the Handicapped Week, President George W. Bush proclaimed October as National Disability Employment Awareness Month. During this month, we recognize the many contributions citizens with disabilities make to our society, and we reaffirm our commitment to helping them achieve their full inclusion in our workforce.
November	National American Indian Heritage Month National American Indian (or Native American) Month was enacted with a presidential proclamation in 1990. During the month, all Americans are encouraged to participate in programs ceremonies and activities that celebrate American Indian and Alaskan Native peoples’ important contribution to the United States.

There are many forces threatening to spin the US apart at its seams, diminishing any sense of common goals or destiny.

In the modern US, blacks are best known for high crime rates, low IQ, and maintaining a high level of grievance at all times. No matter how high the level of preferential treatment toward blacks in the US, the level of discontent and simmering anger in the tribe as a whole appears to grow worse every year.

Mexican immigrants to the US maintain several organisations dedicated toward "the reconquista" of parts of the US. Large numbers fail to learn to speak English after decades of residence. Dependency on public assistance is widespread among both legal and illegal hispanic immigrants. Crime rates and crime gangs are far more common in hispanic neighborhoods, than in all other neighborhoods except black.

In general, the best way to honour a population group within a society, is to make sure opportunities are equal for all, and that the rule of law applies equally to everyone. That way, no group will be singled out by officials for punishment or discrimination.

In the US, political leaders continue growing the central government at the expense of the private sector -- raising the general dependency upon the government, particularly among those of low aptitude. Separating the population into neo-tribes and special interests in an environment of high public sector dependency, puts an inordinate amount of power into the hands of government officials, bureaucrats, and politicians.

Such is a perverse society, which is on its way down -- unless significant changes occur.

Competent persons in the US who are concerned about the futures of their progeny will want to consider how they can free up their own productivity within an environment of opportunity -- given the general trend toward perversity generated by the Obama government and previous central governments.

More: Society's confusion over race

Good Fences = Good Neighbors; The Benefits of Segregation

... peace does not depend on integrated coexistence, but rather on well defined topographical and political boundaries separating groups. Mountains and lakes are an important part of the boundaries between sharply defined linguistic areas. Political canton and circle (sub-canton) boundaries often separate religious groups. _PO

Switzerland by Language and Religion

History is filled with examples of ethnic violence, the type that erupts when people with differing cultures attempt to live side by side. The Middle East comes to mind, as does Northern Ireland or Yugoslavia. What’s not so common are studies done that show what sorts of things actually work to prevent problems when people of dissimilar backgrounds live next door to one another. Thus, a new study done by Yaneer Bar-Yam and his team at the New England Complex Systems Institute, appears to be particularly relevant. He and his colleagues, describe in their paper on the preprint server arXiv, how a study they’ve done of the ethnically diverse country of Switzerland, shows that political and geographical boundaries have served to keep the peace between the different groups. _PO

Source for article excerpted above: Good Fences: The Importance of Setting Boundaries for Peaceful Coexistence, arXiv:1110.1409v1 [physics.soc-ph] arXiv:1110.1409v1 [physics.soc-ph]

Forced multicultural integration typically leads to more violence and crime, despite the good wishes of social engineers and government policy makers. Countries and regions with greater ethnic, religious, cultural, and linguistic homogeneity tend to experience lower levels of crime and violence, all other things being equal.

One cannot help but notice the rapid rise in disorder and violence in European cities, as rising numbers of poorly assimilating immigrants and their children crowd the cities of the UK, Netherlands, France, Sweden, Belgium, and so on. The same phenomenon occurs virtually everywhere that significantly dissimilar groups are forced to live too closely together.

No matter how good the intentions of the highly placed promoters and enforcers of the multiculturalist agenda, they are laying the foundations for bloody violence and civil wars of the future. The violence of Beirut and Baghdad are coming to the first world, riding the magic carpet of multicultural good intentions. If you voted for the multiculturalists, you are largely responsible for what is coming.

If you have gotten smarter since then, like Greg Sheridan did, you will begin taking precautions -- and may even consider re-locating.

More: Multiculturalism in the USA...A recent Tulsa Tragedy to go with the Wichita Massacre and the Knoxville Horror.

These stories are actively suppressed by the politically correct, "skankstream media," so one must actively search for them to understand how common these incidents have become.

Grow -- Or Die; Get Busy Livin' or Get Busy Dyin'

Grow or Die as Applied to a National Economy

Under current leadership, Europe and America are busy dyin'. Dynamic innovative attitudes and thinking have given way to a stagnant, steady state, dieoff.orgy bureaucratic liquidation of western civilisation. We are being crowded by our overlords into a tight, descending chute, forced down into an abattoir of stasis where civilisations go to die.

Grow or Die Applies to the Living and Business Worlds Also
"Grow or die," is a natural imperative. " ...all living systems are either growing or dying, there is no sustainable stasis...There is accretive, replicative and transformational growth." (Source) We can choose how we are to grow, but we cannot choose not to grow. Not if we want our civilisations and our bloodlines to survive.

Respected science fiction author Neal Stephenson laments the loss of innovativeness in modern American society:

This summer, at the age of 51—not even old—I watched on a flatscreen as the last Space Shuttle lifted off the pad. I have followed the dwindling of the space program with sadness, even bitterness. Where’s my donut-shaped space station? Where’s my ticket to Mars? Until recently, though, I have kept my feelings to myself. Space exploration has always had its detractors. _WorldPolicy

An Unusual Situation from The Farsight Group on Vimeo.

Matt Ridley laments the fact that even today's innovative optimists appear to be contaminated with an overlay of "culture noir," a subconscious acceptance of too much of the modern gospel of stasis. Small wonder that our shrinking number of modern innovators sometimes appear schizoid about progress, when they are so beseiged by the culture of defeat that surrounds them in academia and society.

Obama did not set American culture down this greased rail of pessimism and malaise, but he has accelerated the rate of despair and futility. In Obama's America, there is very little reason to push for growth, when the bureaucratic culture of stasis is standing by to penalise any such efforts. Electing such a person once can be written off to frustrated desperation. Re-electing such a person is a certain sign of the impending death of the society as a going concern.

We are living on a finite Earth, which is floating in an infinite universe. The Earth is our cradle, the universe is our rightful home. Until humans shake off the infantile desire to remain in a comfortable sustainable cradle until it becomes a sustainable grave, stasis will have the upper hand.

But that mainly applies to the part of human civilisation that remains under the guidance of the mainstream, bureaucratic governments of steady state stasis. For those who choose to step outside the mainstream and make their own plans for the future, more positive choices can be made.

Precautionary Principle, Primum Non Nocere, Paralysis

“The precautionary principle, for all its rhetorical appeal, is deeply incoherent. It is of course true that we should take precautions against some speculative dangers. But there are always risks on both sides of a decision; inaction can bring danger, but so can action. Precautions, in other words, themselves create risks—and hence the principle bans what it simultaneously requires. _C. Sunstein [as Quoted]

The "precautionary principle" appears to be the primary policy guide for the leftist Green environmental movement. It asserts that even in the absence of proven cause and effect, society must vigorously defend against hypothesised environmental harm. It is an open-ended prescription for a chaotic descent into an infinite regress of clashing prohibitions, denials, and punishments.

Here's more on the precautionary principle:

At this year's annual meeting of the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science in Anaheim, California, in a symposium titled "The Precautionary Principle: A Revolution in Environmental Policymaking?", environmentalist advocates and academics insisted that a principle of ultimate precaution should trump all other considerations in future environmental and technological policy making....

...The heart of the Principle, of course, is the admonition that "precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause-and-effect relationships are not fully established scientifically." As one biomedical researcher in the audience objected, all scientific conclusions are subject to revision, and none is ever "fully established." Since that is the case, the researcher pointed out, the Precautionary Principle could logically apply to every conceivable activity, since their outcomes are always in some sense uncertain. Furthermore, David Murray, the director of the Statistical Assessment Service in Washington D.C., points out another possible--and disquieting--interpretation of the Principle. Anyone who merely raises "threats of harm" with no more evidence than their fearful imagination gets to invoke precautionary measures. Precautionists would not need to establish any empirical basis for their fears; they may simply posit that something might go wrong and thus stymie any proposed action. _Reason

This "principle" appears to be grounds for using mental phantasms as the basis for technological and environmental policy. That will work up until the point where the economy stagnates for lack of productive output, leading to a long-term population decline.

Eventually, of course, the more ambitious and intelligent people will rebel against the unimaginative drones of the environmental - governmental bureaucratic coalition who have eagerly put such suicidally paralytic "precautionary" policies into place. Basing one's policy upon such a negative principle leads inevitably to an unsustainable society -- unless your plan is to instigate a human dieoff.orgy and technological collapse. In that case, you will want to force humans back into a hunger - gatherer subsistence culture, with a global human population of no more than 100 million persons.

But believers in vague "precautionary principles" do not generally want to understand to figure:ground positive:negative nature of the world. They merely wish to have their own poorly-examined prejudices enforced upon everyone else.

Hippocrates stated the central principle most clearly: Primum Non Nocere, first do no harm . . . or something like that. One wishes not to act, if acting will only make things worse.

But often it is impossible to know or predict in advance the likelihood of a specific action leading to improving or worsening conditions. And in situations where large numbers of people are involved, there will always be those who object to action or inaction.

The question should be: What evidence of possible harm is sufficient to put an end to an action which could conceivably lead to a great good? There is no getting around the grappling in the mud and shite. Leftist Greens want to place themselves and their prejudices above the fray, to seize veto power over any action by commercial, industrial, governmental, or other entities.

Boston University law professor George Annas, a prominent bioethicist who favors the Precautionary Principle, clearly understands that it is not a value-neutral concept. He gleefully told me, "The truth of the matter is that whoever has the burden of proof loses."

The result: Anything new is guilty until proven innocent. It's like demanding that a newborn baby prove that it will never grow up to be a serial killer, or even just a schoolyard bully, before the baby is allowed to leave the hospital. Under this corollary, inventors, scientists, and manufacturers would have to prove that their creations wouldn't cause harm--ever--to the environment or human health before they would be allowed to offer them to the public. This is asking them to prove a negative. How can someone prove that a new plastic will never, ever interact with any metabolic pathway in any plant, animal, microbe, or person? There is simply no way to test for all possible effects given the millions of different species living on the earth. _Reason

Such a principle is a recipe for paralysis across the board of human action. And if modern humans know anything, they should know that they cannot afford to be paralysed -- not if they wish to avoid widespread poverty, starvation, disease, and bloodshed. The leftist Green fantasy of a great human dieoff.orgy is not merely hypothetical -- is sits firmly within the realm of possibility should technology be so tightly constrained as to essentially fail.

Here are some examples of the principle at work in US law:

American environmental law is filled with regulatory programs that authorize, or even compel, regulatory action in the absence of scientific certainty about the nature and extent of potential risks to the environment or public health. The Clean Air Act, for example, requires that the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) adopt measures to control various types of air pollution when, in the administrator’s “judgment,” the emission of certain pollutants “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.”6 Absolute proof or scientific certainty is not required. Rather, a “reasonable” belief in the possibility of future harm is sufficient—indeed, such a belief may require action.7 Other portions of the Clean Air Act require the EPA to set air-quality standards at the level “requisite to protect the public health” with “an adequate margin of safety,” irrespective of the cost.8 Thus, the law requires the EPA to set the standard at a level more stringent than that known to threaten public health.
In a public policy context, ‘better safe than sorry’ is a fairly vacuous instruction. Taken literally, the precautionary principle is either wholly arbitrary or incoherent.

The Endangered Species Act also requires government action in the absence of scientific certainty. Under the Endangered Species Act, the Fish and Wildlife Service must list species as endangered or threatened on the basis of the “best scientific and commercial data available.”9 That the “best available” scientific evidence may be inconclusive or uncertain does not relieve the Fish and Wildlife Service of its obligation to list a species if the “best available” evidence suggests that it could be threatened with extinction.

Federal environmental law also includes requirements that federal agencies consider the “full range of alternatives” and their likely environmental effects before taking action. Consider the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires the federal government to consider not only the likely environmental consequences of major federal actions but also various alternatives, including forgoing the proposed action altogether.10 This seems to line up nicely with the Wingspread Statement’s call for “an examination of the full range of alternatives, including no action.” _American.com

If any imaginary harm at all could come about as a result of an action -- regardless of the harm from inaction or the good from the action -- under the modern leftist Green principles, the action should be prohibited.

Clearly it is one short step to an all-pervading government control over virtually any conceivable action, and then to the arbitrary exercise of this control to benefit political friends and to harm political enemies. Such corrupt abuse of government power is inevitable, and grows more inevitable and horrific the greater the power of ideological government over virtually any private action.

The end result is a corrupt, quasi-totalitarian Green dictatorship, ruling over an increasingly impoverished, polarised, and suffering human population.

It is difficult to see such misery by merely looking at the words and reading the language of the laws, regulations, and appropriated powers. Even those few individuals who actually do read the acts of Congress and the executive orders might find it hard to foresee the consequences accurately. But the chaotic and counter-productive consequences are unavoidable, once the laws and rules are put in place and strictly enforced.

The first remedy is to return to reasonable standards of evidence, causation, and proof -- in other words, to enforce the Hippocratic rule of "first do no harm" on Congress and the entire governmental structure. If all human governments were forced to abide by such time-tested wisdom first of all, as was intended by the US Constitutional Congress, the massively dysfunctional human world as we know it would not take its current form.

In a human world subject to evolutionary constraints, paralysis is not a workable principle. The self-righteous and vacuous promoters of the modern leftist Green precautionary principle are likely to drown in the tumult resulting from their own policies, unless they cynically plan ahead far enough to step outside the maelstrom. Imagine that -- lefty-Luddites going Galt to escape their own self-created apocalypse arising from playing it "too safe."

In the future we will need to explore the issue of determining levels of risk, and how to make decisions based upon different methods of determining risk.

Off topic desultory aside:

Pascal's Wager is a similar "better safe than sorry" general approach to policy-making -- specifically the personal policy of belief or non-belief in a superior being, god, or God. Pascal suggested that a person had nothing to lose from believing in God, and everything to gain.

But Pascal's principle suffers from a similar lack of "fleshing out" as the so-called precautionary principle. What if God is actually a devil, who only torments those who believe in him? In that case, it would be far better not to believe in God than to do so. And so on, down a million different alternative ways of looking at the human :: superior being contrast and juxtaposition. Pascal's unspoken assumptions are too parochial and constricting to apply to more than a miniscule fraction of the infinite possibilities.

Pascal is discussing the personal risk of "eternal fate." Fortunately, most modern governments have not yet overtly inserted themselves into that particular topic.

Organising Community Riots: Revolutionary Without a Clue

... Those who run up debt in good times can borrow only so much more when a recession strikes. And heavily indebted governments postpone fiscal stabilization at their peril. If you wait to reform until the bond market calls time, you are—to use a technical term from economics—screwed. _NiallFerguson

Revolutionary Riots Spill Over from Arabs to Europe to US?
If you are US President Obama, you are ready to blame almost anyone else for the economic despair settling over the American population. As a community organiser, President Obama's instinct is to call out the shock troops, take to the streets, and pin the blame on big banks and capitalism. In fact, billions of US$ were recently diverted from Obama's stimulus moneys to community organising groups, for just that contingency -- among others.

In three short years, Obama has added over $3 trillion to the US national debt. And rather than curtailing the deficit as the president had promised, it is getting much worse. Debt is a killer, but it is easy for the politicians who are responsible for the debt to point to everyone but themselves.

Riots in Europe are occurring as European governments look into the abyss of massive debt and cautiously tinker with a few timid spending reforms. But the people of Europe have come to feel entitled, and will not tolerate even the hint of a retreat from the wet nurse nanny state toward a more firm and responsible oversight government.

Americans are beginning to feel the same sense of blanket entitlement as the Europeans, thanks in part to having elected a community organiser as US President. Due to this massive growth of entitlement sense, the same type of riots seen in Arab countries and in Europe could easily spread to the large central cities of the US and Canada.

Risk of systemic fallout from Eurozone crisis

More from Mish on European abyss

The Obama path to collapse

Politically Correct Delusions and Madnesses of Crowds

The fates of modern democratic societies are dependent far more upon the behaviour of crowds -- or the mob -- than most citizens would like to believe. Popular culture is determined by mob tastes and preferences, and the often unpredictable behaviour of mobs on election day is bemoaned by leaders of all political parties -- at one time or another. Mob behaviours are guided by mob beliefs, which are as often as not, delusional. Here is a good example of a modern popular delusion from Princeton Physics Professor William Happer:

I want to discuss a contemporary moral epidemic: the notion that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, will have disastrous consequences for mankind and for the planet. The “climate crusade” is one characterized by true believers, opportunists, cynics, money-hungry governments, manipulators of various types—even children’s crusades—all based on contested science and dubious claims.

...We need to be vigilant to keep our land, air, and waters free of real pollution, particulates, heavy metals, and pathogens, but carbon dioxide (CO2 ) is not one of these pollutants. Carbon is the stuff of life. Our bodies are made of carbon. A normal human exhales around 1 kg of CO2 (the simplest chemically stable molecule of carbon in the earth’s atmosphere) per day. Before the industrial period, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was 270 ppm. At the present time, the concentration is about 390 ppm, 0.039 percent of all atmospheric molecules and less than 1 percent of that in our breath. About fifty million years ago, a brief moment in the long history of life on earth, geological evidence indicates, CO2 levels were several thousand ppm, much higher than now. And life flourished abundantly.

Now the Environmental Protection Agency wants to regulate atmospheric CO2 as a “pollutant.” According to my Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, to pollute is “to make or render unclean, to defile, to desecrate, to profane.” By breathing are we rendering the air unclean, defiling or desecrating it?

...As far as green plants are concerned, CO2 is not a pollutant, but part of their daily bread—like water, sunlight, nitrogen, and other essential elements. Most green plants evolved at CO2 levels of several thousand ppm, many times higher than now. Plants grow better and have better flowers and fruit at higher levels. Commercial greenhouse operators recognize this when they artificially increase the concentrations inside their greenhouses to over 1000 ppm.

...We would be perfectly healthy in a world with little or no atmospheric CO2—except that we would have nothing to eat and a few other minor inconveniences, because most plants stop growing if the levels drop much below 150 ppm. If we want to continue to be fed and clothed by the products of green plants, we can have too little CO2.

The minimum acceptable value for plants is not that much below the 270 ppm preindustrial value. It is possible that this is not enough, that we are better off with our current level, and would be better off with more still. There is evidence that California orange groves are about 30 percent more productive today than they were 150 years ago because of the increase of atmospheric CO2.

...A rare case of good correlation between CO2 levels and temperature is provided by ice-core records of the cycles of glacial and interglacial periods of the last million years of so. But these records show that changes in temperature preceded changes in CO2 levels, so that the levels were an effect of temperature changes. This was probably due to outgassing of CO2 from the warming oceans and the reverse effect when they cooled.

...The earth’s climate has always been changing. Our present global warming is not at all unusual by the standards of geological history, and it is probably benefiting the biosphere. Indeed, there is very little correlation between the estimates of CO2 and of the earth’s temperature over the past 550 million years (the “Phanerozoic” period). The message is clear that several factors must influence the earth’s temperature, and that while CO2 is one of these factors, it is seldom the dominant one. _WUWT

Full article by Professor Happer at First Things

Another popular delusion of politically correct crowds is a strong belief in the desirability of replacing modern coal, gas, and nuclear power plants with wind and solar power.

Mass delusions do not require reason or logic to gain converts. They only need to project the view that "everyone knows that ..." "every schoolboy knows ..." or "everybody believes that ..." This false sense of security in perceived numbers of believers has taken in a huge number of pseudo-intellectuals within the academy, in journalism, in politics, and in popular media and entertainment. All the better to project the delusion of universal belief.

In hindsight, such delusional madnesses are quite clearly absurd and without rational foundation. But when one is living through the delusion, the primeval instincts of the species hold sway.

Basic Reading on crowd behaviour:

Gustave le Bon: The Crowd
Charles Mackay: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
Both titles above are also available for download at the Gutenberg Project

More on Gustave le Bon from Against Politics

23 May 2011 More: The increasingly rowdy and violent mobs known as government unions should be seen a particularly ominous portent for the future, to anyone who cares about freedom and independent action.

Debt and Demography: A Deadly Double Dose

Mish
Interest on the US national debt is scheduled to explode wildly out of control, faster than entitlements, faster than any other government expenditure. And yet the US government cannot bring itself to stop its suicidally profligate deficit spending, adding over US$1 trillion a year to the debt!.

This is clearly a global problem, not just a US problem. As the economic foundations of the world's military hegemon and economic powerhouse crumble under an overload of debt and collapsing demographics, the rest of the world is going to feel the pain as well. Just as US baby boomers can find no one to buy their accumulated lifetime wealth, so the US government is finding it harder to find buyers for its accumulating debt.

Across the advanced economies, demographics are collapsing. And the US is not even on the list of the 17 countries with the fastest-collapsing demographics. The deadly combination of exponentially rising debt on top of a quickly collapsing demographic, becomes irreversible after a certain point. But in order for welfare states to maintain their bloated social benefit spending schedules, they must go deeply into debt -- just at the time that their productive workers are disappearing in time.

At the state government level of the US, reality is slowly and spottily sinking into the minds of those who are tasked with keeping the pensions and benefits solvent. But the blowback from leftist government unions, communtiy organisers, and other leftist special interest groups is severe and verging on open violence. In Europe the leftist backlash against proposed austerity programs -- even very modest and minimal plans -- is likewise bordering on open insurrection.

Obama has a plan for a fundamentally different America. We know that Obama has a plan -- he must have a plan! But we cannot decrypt the US President's plan from his words or even his actions. We may have to wait a hundred years, and look back in time at what we can learn about Mr. Obama's plans, to finally understand.

Al Fin has been suggesting that readers should buy precious metals, acquire the capacity to grow their own food, develop the means to defend yourself, your loved ones, and your possessions, and more -- for years now. Some readers may still wonder what he is getting at....

France, Germany, UK Agree: Multiculturalism Has Failed

France's Sarkozy declared, just yesterday, that multiculturalism has failed.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared Thursday that multiculturalism had failed, joining a growing number of world leaders or ex-leaders who have condemned it.

"My answer is clearly yes, it is a failure," he said in a television interview when asked about the policy which advocates that host societies welcome and foster distinct cultural and religious immigrant groups. _AFP

The UK's Cameron had asserted just this past Saturday, that multiculturalism is a failure:

Prime Minister David Cameron, in a speech attended by world leaders, on Saturday criticized his country’s longstanding policy of multiculturalism, saying it was an outright failure and partly to blame for fostering Islamist extremism. He said the U.K. needs a stronger national identity to prevent people turning to extremism. "If we are to defeat this threat, I believe it's time to turn the page on the failed policies of the past," he told an international conference in Munich. _MSNBC

Only this past October, Germany's Angela Merkel stated outright that multiculturalism had utterly failed:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a gathering of young members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party this weekend that the "multikulti" concept – where people of different backgrounds would live together happily – does not work in Germany. _CSM_More_

For many years, lonely and persecuted writers, politicians, and speakers have attempted to convey this message -- this utter failure of multiculturalism and European self-abnegation -- to no avail. Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh were assassinated for speaking this truth. Geert Wilders has been threatened with death by Muslim hate groups, and is being persecuted by his own government and by the UK Labour government which preceded Cameron's.

Europe has long been a weak-kneed patsy for an increasingly militant third world presence. In the face of decreasing birth rates among Europeans, both legal and illegal third world immigrants have flooded European schools and birthing wards with the coming waves of another Muslim youth bulge -- this time a threat from within.

Prisons of Europe are beginning to fill with newcomers and children of newcomers, as the native children of Europe find themselves in the minority on schoolgrounds and on the streets. Young girls of Europe are increasingly under threat from rape gangs and worse. Young native boys are beaten by gleeful immigrant gangs who laugh their victory over the natives -- a fading demographic.

Multiculturalism has failed? Of course it has bloody well failed, you pathetic political panderers and fools. For some of your countries it is already too late for anything meaningful to be done, even if your men had it in them to stand up. Sadly, your police forces themselves have been so overrun and subdued by multiculturalists, that any European with the temerity to stand up for himself or his family against outsider violence, would be treated worse by the police than the offenders themselves.

The demographic collapse of Europe was necessary in order to leave the continent helpless to assault from without, and increasingly from within. Now there is little that most European countries can do to reverse the decay and eventual overthrow.

Europe as Lebanon? Europe as Eurabia? Islam is a religion of fertility as it is a religion of hatred and violence. If Islam is involved in the particular multiculturalism that has invaded your country, then you will have a very difficult time coping -- particularly if your own birthrates are failing.

Cameron, Sarkozy, and Merkel can make all the noises against multiculturalism they wish. Unless they are willing to back those words with meaningful action -- and to be willing to go against the political correctness of their own decaying societies -- the effort will be too feeble, and ultimately futile.

Vitriolic Language from Left Meant to Instigate Civil War?

It is difficult to understand the deluge of vitriol and hatred pouring out of US leftist media outlets, lefty blogs, and US Democratic Party politicians following the tragic killings and woundings which occurred in Tucson last week. Much of the outrageous language appears geared to trigger a stereotypical rage in the reader. It is as if these "leaders" and "journalists" want to instigate the very type of violence which they are pretending to decry.

During the George W. Bush presidency journalists, celebrities, opposition politicians, bloggers, and leftists of all stripes used incendiary language in discussing the idea that the president or vice president might (hopefully in their minds) be assassinated. Many of the very same "indignant leftists" who are opportunistically raising the threat of violence, were busy joking and talking about the possible assassinations of Bush and Cheney. The American left is a sick and putric cesspool of hatred, and has been for decades now.

In a sensitive and incisively worded video, Sarah Palin responds to the cynical and engineered outcry from the left. Predictably, the leftists -- caught in their contemptible misbehaviour and abuse of public trust -- are reacting to the video with howls of stiffly postured indignation.

Sarah Palin: "America's Enduring Strength" from Sarah Palin on Vimeo.

Palin's use of the term "blood libel" has proven particularly controversial, although it is quite understated in the way it was used in the video. Indeed, considering how Palin herself has been treated by the left, her tone on the video and elsewhere in public and professional life has been quite temperate.

Leftists have been poised for any possible incident which they could use for purposes of stirring up their lunatic fringe. Unfortunately, they jumped the gun on the Tucson tragedy, before any facts were in. And now they are committed to following it through to the bitter end.

Palin's video appears to be professionally produced, and was released in a very timely manner -- just before President Obama's trip to Tucson. The former governor's incisive video, along with the term "blood libel", appears to have forced the unhinged echo chorus on the left to "double down" on their public idiocy.

We can only hope that the Tucson wounded will recover as fully as possible, and that the family and friends of those who died will somehow find a positive meaning in their loss.

But on the political front, the insanity from the left appears to be deepening and broadening in a most astounding and sickening manner.

H/T News Alert

The Impending Cult of the Great Green Global Suicide

James Lee, devoted member of the CGGGS (cult of the great green global suicide) committed suicide by SWAT at the Discovery Channel headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland.   Mr. Lee was strongly motivated by Al Gore and the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. More on the story from Wired:

According to a message on the savetheplanetprotest.com website believed run by Lee, the suspect demanded that the Discovery Channel broadcast its “commitment to save the planet.”

Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order. Perhaps also forums of leading scientists who understand and agree with the Malthus-Darwin science and the problem of human overpopulation. Do both. Do all until something WORKS and the natural world starts improving and human civilization building STOPS and is reversed! MAKE IT INTERESTING SO PEOPLE WATCH AND APPLY SOLUTIONS!!!!

_Wired

Salon has more on the story, suggesting that Mr. Lee is a solitary, deranged gunman who took Thomas Malthus just a bit too seriously. But if Mr. Lee were, in truth, as solitary as some would have us believe, why are there so many voices on the wires and airwaves who sound just like Mr. Lee?

The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement is dedicated to the extinction of the human race -- or perhaps only those members of the race who do not whole-heartedly ascribe to the tenets of the VHEM religion. Some members and fellow travelers of VHEM are walking and talking within visual, auditory, or internet range of you at this very moment. When will they take the next step?

Of course there may be some who suggest that the current government of the United States is displaying some sympathies with the VHEM -- through its energy policies. Al Fin himself has occasionally described the Obama Pelosi energy policy as a form of energy starvation, or economic suicide. The way the O - P regime has dragged its feet on development of energy resources of all types -- except for ineffectual and corrupt big wind and solar -- is a sure tipoff that harder times are ahead, unless significant changes in the regime occur soon.

Not that top politicians or bureaucrats have any intention of killing themselves. No, they intend for you to be the victim of their policies. As for themselves? They anticipate sailing through their self-made disasters virtually untouched.

The fantasies of leftists have taken on macabre and disturbing overtones as of late. Mr. Lee's suicide by SWAT is but one of the unsettling directions such fantasies can turn. Expect more occurrences of leftist inspired eco-terrorism in the not-so-distant future.

Somewhere, in a jail cell not so far away, the Unabomber is giggling.

More (5Sep10):

The essence of progressivism, of which environmentalism has become an appendage, is the faith that all will be well once we have concentrated enough power in Washington and have concentrated enough Washington power in the executive branch and have concentrated enough "experts" in that branch. Hence the Environmental Protection Agency proposes to do what the elected representatives of the rubes refuse to do in limiting greenhouse gases. Mead says of today's environmental movement:

"It proposes big economic and social interventions and denies that unintended consequences and new information could vitiate the power of its recommendations. It knows what is good for us, and its knowledge is backed up by the awesome power and majesty of the peer review process. The political, cultural, business and scientific establishments stand firmly behind global warming today -- just as they once stood firmly behind Robert Moses, urban renewal and big dams. They tell us it's a sin to question the consensus, the sign of bad moral character to doubt. Bambi, look in the mirror. You will see Godzilla looking back." _WaPo

72 Hijabs In a Cracker Jack Box

Islam is a religion by men and for men. Women belong to the head of the household, to do with as he wishes. The woman child belongs to the head of the household until he tells her she belongs to someone else -- another male head of another household. If a woman child allows her wrappings of virginity to be soiled by anyone but the master, her life is forfeit.

...male domination and female subjugation are Quranically prescribed, and who is Man to challenge the immutable Word of God—especially when God’s arrangements ensure perpetual male domination? This punitive patriarchy is not confined to Muslims in their own lands; it thrives....in the West, in the lands to which Muslims immigrate, but whose “degenerate” and “sinful” societies they abhor.....the subjection of women within Islam is the biggest obstacle to the integration and progress of Muslim communities in the West. It is a subjection committed by the closest kin in the most intimate place, the home, and it is sanctioned by the greatest figure in the imagination of Muslims: Allah himself. _DB

Men of Islam do not wish to integrate with the west. They do not wish for the westerner's version of "progress." Men of Islam are born into a world of unlimited male dominance. Why would they give that up for western concepts of "equality" and "opportunity for all?"

There have been numerous honor killings in the United States, in which Muslim fathers or husbands kill daughters or wives who have “sullied” the family name in some way; and yet, ....not once has the achingly non-judgmental American press used the phrase “honor killing” in its reports on the murders _DB

Women are among the most prized possessions of the Muslim male. But they only hold their value as long as they maintain their innocence, in the eyes of the master. The moment the master perceives -- for whatever reason -- that innocence is lost, the life is forfeit.

Not every Muslim male is born into a privileged life of wealth, many wives, concubines, and female slaves. Some of them must roam western cities in gangs, to rape infidel women and Muslim women who appear to stray from the path. Others must fantasize of the 72 virgins who await him if he fulfills the conditions set forth for martyrdom -- the ultimate prize and reward, poured out of an exploding Cracker Jack box.

The women must be virgins as they change hands, from master to master. Without innocence of the chattel, the owner master's honour is lost, and can only be regained through the spilling of blood. It is a fetish of innocence, but instead of valuing one's own innocence it is the innocence of one's human possessions that is valued.

There is no escape from this fetish for the Muslim woman. No escape except the one she provides for herself. And if the woman does summon up the courage to escape, how is she regarded? A Somali taxi driver in Washington DC:

“What do you think of Ayaan Hirsi Ali… you know, the Somali lady?” He swiveled his head to fix me with his gaze, and then turned it back to the road. “Very bad person,” he said, after a strained pause. “We think she is a bitch. We hate her.” _DB

Yes, they hate her. They want to kill her, if they could only get past the bodyguards. Most escaped un-hijabbed women do not have bodyguards or protectors, even in the west. Western feminists and the western media and academia generally see these would-be liberated women as an embarassment to the post-modernist multicultural program.

Because if we ever did confront the deep and essential pathology of the Islamic community, what would become of "progressive multiculturalism?" If Muslim women are forced to wear hijabs as a "fetish of innocence hung tightly round the neck", then western post modern multiculturalists must all wear a fetish of feigned ignorance.

As the innocents are slaughtered by the Cracker Jack fireworks, and are sacrificed on the eternal altar of the master's honour, the monkeys of the west must always remember to cover their eyes, ears, and mouths, lest they sin against their own radical religion of "progressive dieoff progressivism."

IQ Largely Determined by Genes: The Evidence Builds

As brain imaging becomes more readily available and more reliable, the evidence supporting a strong gene :: IQ link continues to accumulate.

Some of the determinants of IQ in the brain include 1. The efficiency of the connections in the brain, 2. The quality of the myelin sheaths around axons in the brain, 3. The volume and location of gray matter tissue in the cerebral cortex, 4. The volume of sub-cortical gray matter, 5. The speediness of white matter tracts and more.

All of these variables are highly heritable. As a person ages, the influence of his genetic makeup on his IQ will increase.

The heritability of general cognitive ability increases significantly and linearly from 41% in childhood (9 years) to 55% in adolescence (12 years) and to 66% in young adulthood (17 years) in a sample of 11 000 pairs of twins from four countries, a larger sample than all previous studies combined. _MolecularPsychiatry

A lot of research that is intended to debunk the link between IQ and genes, is conducted prior to the most significant genetically programmed changes in the brain -- in adolescence. The connections between genes and IQ apparently do not fully kick in until early adulthood.

A rich environment can raise a young child's tested IQ during early childhood, but if the genes do not support an elevated cognition, the artificially high IQ scores will not be maintained into adulthood. Such faulty research designs tend to distort comparisons of mean IQ scores between different population groups.

Here at the Al Fin Institutes of Next Level Research, we expect any significant IQ differences between races, genders, and ethnicities to be eliminated by advanced neuroscience within the next few decades. But the currently fashionable denial of the link between genes and IQ is immensely destructive -- particularly to low IQ population groups. The only way to achieve the neuroscientific uplifting of all humans' intelligence, is by an honest pursuit of the realities involved. That uplifting is what is being postponed by the fanatical adherence to political correctness which is endemic to western politics, academia, media, and popular culture.

The modern-day dieoff leftism that dominates western cultures is a deadly and lethal meme that requires attention, before it accomplishes the human dieoff it fervently seeks.

Putin Says "Jump!" and Obama Asks "How High?"

Obama's EPA is instigating an investigation into shale gas drilling practises, with the aim of finding a way of ramping up regulations to largely shut down US shale gas production.

The US shale gas bonanza has thrown a huge monkey wrench into the energy starvation works, and has inconvenienced Russia's plans to hold Europe hostage to its gas pipelines at the same time.

Putin and his minions have been making a lot of noise about how unsafe shale gas drilling methods are to US public health (as if they really cared). So it is funny how quickly Obama's EPA is responding to Putin's prodding.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will conduct a comprehensive research study to investigate the potential adverse impact that hydraulic fracturing may have on water quality and public health.

Hydraulic fracturing is a process that drills vertical and horizontal cracks underground that help withdraw gas, or oil, from coalbeds, shale and other geological formations. While each site is unique, in general, the process involves vertical and horizontal drilling, taking water from the ground, injecting fracturing fluids and sands into the formation, and withdrawing gas and separating and managing the leftover waters.

Hydraulic fracturing is emerging as an important technology in accessing natural gas. There are concerns that hydraulic fracturing may impact ground water and surface water quality in ways that threaten human health and the environment. To address these concerns and strengthen our clean energy future and in response to language inserted into the fiscal year 2010 Appropriations Act, EPA is re-allocating $1.9 million for this peer-reviewed study for FY10 and requesting funding for FY11 in the president’s budget proposal. _GCC

US Congressmen Waxman and Markey took the early initial steps in response to Russian complaints. Now that the huge faux environmental-industrial lobby has gotten into gear to press the Obama administration to shut down shale gas, it is only a matter of time before the issue comes to a head.

We are familiar with how easily enviromental science can be corrupted by power-seeking politicians from the experience of NASA and NASA GISS during the Clinton-Gore administration. The ClimateGate revelations and the incredible string of IPCC follies merely adds to the strong impression of science as being eminently corruptible by government funding -- which is influenced directly by politicians -- who are influenced directly by lobbyists.

Political forces are inherently corrupting wherever they are exerted. Science appears particularly susceptible for many reasons unique to science.

A Late Comprehending of Obama's Incompetence

It has been a year of fecklessness, amateurism, and posturing. Less that is useful has been accomplished by this president in his first year than by any president since Herbert Hoover, and he was ambushed by the Great Depression after seven months. _Ntl.Post

You would have to go farther back in history than Herbert Hoover to find a US president as incompetent as Obama. But far worse than his incompetence is his unshakable belief in his own destiny to determine the fate of the world according to his inner whimsies.

Withal, this president seems overwhelmingly confident, strangely detached,....'cold and faux eloquent.' He is fluent and sonorous, but rather vapid.

...For all the claims that the Republicans are too influenced by religious zealots and country club knuckle-draggers, the administration may be in the hands of 'redistributive,' pacifistic Kool Aid drinkers. ConradBlack

Unemployment rose in 43 states in December 09. The state of California is on the brink of economic collapse. Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and several other Obama strongholds are not far behind. Even the labour unions -- among Obama's staunchest supporters -- cannot escape the fallout of incompetence emanating from ground zero of Doombama. Consequently, union membership is growing among government employees but falling in the productive sector -- where everyone is suffering.

The middle class has always been a bulwark against collectivists and dictators. And the US middle class is starting to wake up to the reality of Obama. It is growing angry.

The frustration of the middle class is the angry confusion of people who can appreciate the opportunities Big Government denies them. It is the anxiety of those who hear the businesses who employ them relentlessly demonized, while the ruling class is never held responsible for its foolishness, waste, and theft. It is the resentment of people who suffer through disasters that President Obama and his allies regard as opportunities. It’s the hearty distrust of a State, and its media apparatus, that declares every frigid blast of bad economic news to be “unexpected” – but expects us to believe it can predict market fluctuations, technological advances, and even the global climate.

The President says “I have every interest in seeing a unified country solving big problems.” The rest of us have an interest in being allowed to pursue our individual solutions to those problems, according to the liberties our Constitution says belong to us as absolutely as our souls. We can see the wreckage of those “unified” solutions strewn through our past, and littering the rest of the world. Our frustration is born of intelligence and moral strength, not stubborn blindness. _TheGreenroom

There is nothing new about Obama's incompetence. What is new is the growing public comprehension of the invisible nature of the emperor's suit. Obama has always lacked leadership ability. But the news and entertainment media have been willing to provide a smokescreen to hide the man's incompetence -- until now.

It was easy to get caught up in the Obama crusade -- for those who had never had an original thought, for those who had nothing truly important to accomplish, and for those who saw an opportunity to advance their own selfish goals under the cover of a populist crusade. But as the destruction grows and as failure mounts, it is not so easy to ignore the sense of an approaching abyss.

Can politics save a nation from the disaster that politics has created? No. But it can delay and mitigate the disaster long enough for the more thoughtful and competent ones to prepare.

Mr. Obama Puts His Bootprint On Higher Education

Mr. Obama's Department of Education is totally refurbishing the formerly defunct National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI). If you thought university staff and faculty had gone overboard on politically correct speech codes, race-gender consciousness-raising, and far-to-the-left indoctrination of students to the point of academic lobotomisation, take a look at the makeup of the new NACIQI committee:

Earl Lewis, currently the provost at Emory University, was previously the dean of graduate studies at the University of Michigan. He was heavily involved in the 2003 landmark legal case Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the Supreme Court upheld the University of Michigan's law school's race-based admissions policy. Lewis has since co-authored Defending Diversity: Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan.

Frank H. Wu is the first Asian-American professor to teach at Howard Law School and testified in Grutter v. Bollinger in favor of affirmative action. He is the author of Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White. In it he calls for a new paradigm in American race relations, which unfortunately looks like the same old divisive enfranchisement of racial antagonisms and grievances known as multiculturalism. And he suggests that ethnic minorities should form coalitions to press for political power.

Jamienne S. Studley was once the president of Skidmore College and legal counsel for the Department of Education during the Clinton administration. She is currently the president and CEO of Public Advocates Inc., a California-based "nonprofit law firm and advocacy organization" that, according to its mission statement, "challenges the systemic causes of poverty and racial discrimination." In November of 2009, Public Advocates Inc. released the following "Statement in Support of ACORN":
Public Advocates believes that real change and real justice only happen when disadvantaged and excluded communities organize, speak out together, and build their own power. That's why we are proud to have worked for years with California ACORN as partners, friends, and lawyers.


Federico Zaragoza is the vice chancellor for professional, technical and workforce education for the Alamo Community Colleges system (the San Antonio region). While most information about him suggests a straightforward emphasis on vocational and continuing education, in a report he wrote for the system's website in 2007, he twice mentions activities undertaken in conjunction with LULAC. LULAC was started as a patriotic organization back in 1929, promoting the assimilation of Hispanics through learning English. It became radicalized in the 1960s.

Susan Phillips is a psychology professor and provost and vice president for academic affairs at the State University of New York, Albany (SUNY). According to her school biography, she has been "instrumental in creating cross-disciplinary initiatives, including developing research capacity for university-community partnerships through the University at Albany's NIH-sponsored Center for the Elimination of Minority Health Disparities."

Aron Shimeles is the most questionable appointment. The son of Ethiopian immigrants, he is a senior at Occidental College in Los Angeles, President Obama's first college. He is a member of the school's Black Student Alliance and helped to produce a hip-hop concert for them.
Shimeles is also listed as a member of the editorial board of the Critical Theory and Social Justice Journal of Undergraduate Research. The journal's mission statement says that "CTSJ is dedicated to providing a forum for undergraduate students to develop and share critical research and writing on the intersections of 'race', 'sexuality', and 'nationality' as they relate to problems of social justice."


...Obama and Duncan have not likely appointed this group to be their representatives on NACIQI to maintain the status quo, but rather to push their agenda. Establishing control over the accreditation process could be a great source of bureaucratic power. Since the federal government will provide financial aid only to students of accredited schools, a college's existence is precarious at best without it (except for the handful of schools that forgo federal aid).


It should therefore come as no surprise if the new members attempt to introduce diversity mandates and social engineering into the accreditation process. And it is not likely that this Congress will try to stop them if they do, as they did in 2008. _Source

This committee of far-left political activists will have the power of life or death over any university that wants accreditation. But this is Mr. Obama's legacy to US higher education. He may be an incompetent clown, but at least he puts ideology ahead of a quality education.

You Know the Million People Who Marched on DC on 9/12? They Were Just a Figment of Your Imagination

The best estimates for crowd numbers for last weekend's march on DC range from 500,000 to 1,000,000 people. But ask a brain-scarred lefty from DU or Kos, and they'll tell you what really happened on 9/12: It was all a conspiracy done using digital graphics tricks.

You can't make these people up, they are too fanciful.

You might see similar dialogue at JornoList and other similar forums. A veritable parade of idiocracy. But that's what happens when universities and mainstream media try so hard to limit the intellectual sphere to a single point of view. University graduates become academically lobotomised, and incapable of accepting the reality of other points of view.

Oh,yes -- do you want to know what may be motivating those 1,000,000 people who marched on DC last Saturday are just figments of your imagination? You should.

High Above the Bloody Streets Below

Welcome to the future, where city streets are war zones between drug gangs and sectarian militias. A world whose cities are like Beirut of the 1980s, where the sounds of firefights, car bombs, and bloody martyrdom greet one's ears more commonly than sounds of birds singing or children playing.Having been financially and morally depleted by the Obama administration of the early 2000s, the United States had long since lost its ability to keep trade routes safe, or to ride herd on trans-national criminal organisations and religious terrorist groups. At street level, it has become a free-for-all, worldwide. People of means began looking for higher ground.

The world's elites decided to create cities in the sky, in an attempt to escape the cheapness of human life on the streets below. By paying "protection fees" to street-level gangs and militias, the sky-cities' street level foundations and ground access were protected, for the most part. The last sky city to be brought down by the gangs was in Singapore of 2049. Subsequent brutal reprisals against the streets of Singapore by the triad owners of the felled Sky City left most of the island freehold uninhabitable to this day.
The rise of China as world hegemon in the early 2020s paved the way for expansion of third world corruption to Europe, North America, and Oceania -- regions formerly supportive of property rights and rule of law. Finally, as China itself fragmented into warring factions in the late 2020s, the entire world became a place without law. The teeming masses of the third world discovered that the developed world lacked the will to defend its borders. Soon there was no distinction between third world and first world.

Crime lords and militia leaders have no use for space launches, so every year another irreplaceable satellite falls flaming back to Earth. During the 2030s, nuclear arsenals finally fell into the hands of the gangs, and a few short nuclear wars quickly thinned the ranks of would-be nuclear terrorists and warriors. Several warheads turned out to be duds, and a few thousand self-styled nuclear submariners took residence in Davy Jones' locker. They lacked the competence to safely pilot the aging sea monsters -- particularly the Russian death traps.

As the skies of the world once again grow dingy with coal and wood smoke, all pretense of protecting the water and air of the planet are abandoned. Any species that cannot fend for themselves will suffer the fate of the dodo. Rain forests are slashed and burned, and huge pit mines gouge the surface of every continent and large island. This is the rapidly poisoning world that the many leftist environmental movements of the late 20th and early 21st centuries made possible, through their quasi-terrorist tactics against the world of law -- a world that was quickly shrinking under their noses. It took only an Obama presidency and the lack of any credible opposition for the "Greens" to finish off human economic freedoms and any chance for a clean prosperity that might carry men to the stars.

And so the wealthy few -- many of them crime lords themselves -- huddle in the uncertain safety of the sky cities. Listening to the bombs and gunfire far below. Forgetting how close the world had come to climbing out of the primitivity of lower human nature -- but now mired in the stinking, choking future of perpetual sectarian and criminal warfare.

H/T Inhabitat and Time

What Is Really Important In Life, And What Does That Have to do With Europe?

The same self-absorption in whiling away life as pleasantly as possible explains why Europe has become a continent that no longer celebrates greatness. When life is a matter of whiling away the time, the concept of greatness is irritating and threatening. What explains Europe’s military impotence? I am surely simplifying, but this has to be part of it: If the purpose of life is to while away the time as pleasantly as possible, what can be worth dying for? Murray

In a recent American.com article, Charles Murray talks about "The Europe Syndrome", and how European public policy (and the current batch of Euro-copycats in American government) affects the things that he sees as truly important for a well-lived life.

To become a source of deep satisfaction, a human activity has to meet some stringent requirements. It has to have been important (we don’t get deep satisfaction from trivial things). You have to have put a lot of effort into it (hence the cliché “nothing worth having comes easily”). And you have to have been responsible for the consequences.

There aren’t many activities in life that can satisfy those three requirements. Having been a good parent? That qualifies. A good marriage? That qualifies. Having been a good neighbor and good friend to those whose lives intersected with yours? That qualifies. And having been really good at something—good at something that drew the most from your abilities? That qualifies.

...The problem is this: Every time the government takes some of the trouble out of performing the functions of family, community, vocation, and faith, it also strips those institutions of some of their vitality—it drains some of the life from them. It’s inevitable....If we knew that leaving these functions in the hands of families and communities led to legions of neglected children and neglected neighbors, and taking them away from families and communities led to happy children and happy neighbors, then it would be possible to say that the cost is worth it. But that’s not what happened when the U.S. welfare state expanded. We have seen growing legions of children raised in unimaginably awful circumstances, not because of material poverty but because of dysfunctional families, and the collapse of functioning neighborhoods into Hobbesian all-against-all free-fire zones.

...Drive through rural Sweden, as I did a few years ago. In every town was a beautiful Lutheran church, freshly painted, on meticulously tended grounds, all subsidized by the Swedish government. And the churches are empty. Including on Sundays. Scandinavia and Western Europe pride themselves on their “child-friendly” policies, providing generous child allowances, free day-care centers, and long maternity leaves. Those same countries have fertility rates far below replacement and plunging marriage rates. Those same countries are ones in which jobs are most carefully protected by government regulation and mandated benefits are most lavish. And they, with only a few exceptions, are countries where work is most often seen as a necessary evil, least often seen as a vocation, and where the proportions of people who say they love their jobs are the lowest.

What’s happening? Call it the Europe syndrome. Last April I had occasion to speak in Zurich, where I made some of these same points. After the speech, a few of the twenty-something members of the audience approached and said plainly that the phrase “a life well-lived” did not have meaning for them. They were having a great time with their current sex partner and new BMW and the vacation home in Majorca, and saw no voids in their lives that needed filling.

...

If that’s the purpose of life, then work is not a vocation, but something that interferes with the higher good of leisure. If that’s the purpose of life, why have a child, when children are so much trouble—and, after all, what good are they, really? If that’s the purpose of life, why spend it worrying about neighbors? If that’s the purpose of life, what could possibly be the attraction of a religion [AF: or moral theory] that says otherwise?

....We are seeing that infiltration appear most obviously among those who are most openly attached to the European model—namely, America’s social democrats, heavily represented in university faculties and the most fashionable neighborhoods of our great cities. We know from databases such as the General Social Survey that among those who self-identify as liberal or extremely liberal, secularism is close to European levels. Birth rates are close to European levels. Charitable giving is close to European levels. There is every reason to believe that when Americans embrace the European model, they begin to behave like Europeans.

_______________

This is all pretty depressing for people who do not embrace the European model, because it looks like the train has left the station. The European model provides the intellectual framework for the social policies of the triumphant Democratic Party, and it faces no credible opposition from Republican politicians.

...Over the last half century, it can be demonstrated empirically that the new generation of elites have increasingly spent their entire lives in the upper-middle-class bubble, never even having seen a factory floor, let alone worked on one, never having gone to a grocery store and bought the cheap ketchup instead of the expensive ketchup to meet a budget, never having had a boring job where their feet hurt at the end of the day, and never having had a close friend who hadn’t gotten at least 600 on her SAT verbal. There’s nobody to blame for any of this. These are the natural consequences of successful people looking for pleasant places to live and trying to do the best thing for their children.

But the fact remains: It is the elites who are increasingly separated from the America over which they have so much influence. That is not the America that Tocqueville saw. It is not an America that can remain America. _American.com

Murray seems to believe that America's elites will somehow wake up to the fact that the foundations of their most deeply held beliefs are without substance. That will never happen. The existence of echo chambers such as the JournoList is a sign that leftist elites will never admit error or misunderstanding publicly.

And America can never be like Europe. Even Europe is finding it harder and harder to be like Europe these days, thanks to a suicidal drop in birth rates and a masochistic immigration policy. Europe's days are numbered by its own "Europe Syndrome" of being about essentially nothing -- like Seinfeld.

America will go broke and experience a painful re-construction along more sustainable lines, before it will approach the lack of relevance of today's Europe. Leftist elites have been wagging the dog for so long they believe it is their right to continue doing so indefinitely. But America cannot afford it much longer. Obama is the dream president for the elitist tail end of America, and he will be the instrument of its demise, as he continues to act out the script (however telepromptered).

Most Americans have not yet discovered how they have been "had" by the pompous idiots who have been telling them how to live, what to think, and who to vote for. When enough Americans finally discover the sad truth, there is no telling what they may do.