But What About His Tax Returns?

The recent post There Will Be No Obituary for the Left stated

This is all they have left. You don't throw those kinds of hail mary's unless you're completely desperate and the clock is running out. Today my google news feed said nothing about what was the biggest and virtually only story in the news just two days ago. Instead, I saw something about Sessions Russia connections (lol) and a story about how the CBO says Trump's budget won't balance. They're either going back to old news that already went no where (seriously waiting to start hearing about tax returns again soon) or giving, gasp, valid and deserved criticism of Trump's policies.

This was done somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but recall, the left can no longer be satirized. From my Google news feed today.

Satire and prediction have become one and the same. They've circled back around. It's back to Taxes Taxes Taxes. Will Rachel Maddow be vindicated after all? I wonder how far they'll regress. Do you think they'll go all the way back to Trump has no mathematical chance to win the Republican primary? Actually, that's probably a fair prediction. At some point, we'll hear up and down about Trump's stiff primary competition from some National Review favored neocon. Expect that soon after the 2018 Congressional elections are wrapped up.

Flashback to the 2016 Democratic Campaign

As a reminder of what the Democratic campaign against Donald Trump looked like, here is a message Elizabeth Warren posted on Facebook a year ago today.

While we're having problems now with Trump seeming to flake on his campaign promises, let's never forget why he won the election. Trump was out there talking about major policy issues: immigration, trade, national security. The Democrats were name-calling. Look at all the insults this US Senator hurled in a brief and public post.

• racism
• sexism
• xenophobia
• KKK
• incites supporters to violence
• praises Putin
• authoritarian
• dictator
• attacks
• puts our servicemembers at risk
• cheerleads illegal torture
• a collection of charlatans
• contradictory
• nonsensical
• incoherent
• truly bizarre
• narcissism
• divisiveness
• toxic stew of hatred and insecurity

223 words written, and 20% of them are insults. The rest serve merely as scaffolding, a place to hang the insults like little ornaments of angst. They are just overhead. The only item in the whole post that communicated any information  was the phrase "toxic stew of hatred and insecurity," which seems to be a projection of Senator Warren's own psychological condition. Other than that, there is nothing of substance to be found in this rant. Remember, we were told constantly that Trump was the vacuous candidate, the know-nothing who would disgrace our political system. And yet this sitting senator, one of the leading Democrats in the country, could do no better than string a series of insults together.

The American public picked up on this, to some extent. Enough to give Trump a strong electoral victory, at least. And if in the next three years the Democrats can't find someone to do any better than just string insults together, a task for which most playground children are qualified, then I wouldn't suppose 2020 will be very pleasant for them, whether or not Trump abandons his base.

The Law of Canceling Hypocrisy

A month or so ago in Democrats Face a Pandora Dilemma I described the wiretapping situation as being one where the left had to decide whether to condemn the actions that took place under Obama or to normalize them at a time when Trump holds the same powers. As predicted, they've opted to accept the activities that occurred under Obama and to even attack Trump for daring to criticize them. Let's look at today's article from Business Insider, Congress is poking holes in a key Trump talking point about Obama-era surveillance. Note the tactics they employ in the headline, because they know in the facebook era most people will 'Like' articles based on the headline alone, and assume that the article supports the headline, and thus the headline can be taken as fact. They're trying to make it look like it's an article about what Congress is saying, and not just a propaganda piece. And yet the sources are, as usual, anonymous US officials. From the first sentence:

Obama administration officials did not act inappropriately in trying to unmask officials on President Donald Trump's transition team whose conversations with foreign officials were incidentally collected during routine intelligence-gathering operations.

When I said they're normalizing it I meant that in the literal sense. The first sentence comes right out and says Trump was monitored in routine intelligence-gathering operations. Totally normal.

Let's look at some more language from the article.

Trump's accusation, for which he offered no evidence...

Well duh, the evidence is classified. We assume that if the case can be made it will be eventually made to the American public. No one expects a secretive kangaroo court like, I dunno, the FISA Court that was used to spy on Trump in the first place.

Nunes reiterated in multiple press conferences that there was still no evidence to suggest that Trump or his team had ever been surveilled illegally.

Yes but the surveillance may have been done in way that obeyed the letter but not the spirit of the law. Just because they got a FISA warrant doesn't mean they should have. And the bigger question here anyway is about the unmasking.. Improper unmasking and dissemination is spying whether or not the initial collection was incidental, and especially if it was "incidental."

that investigation was ultimately fruitless

Are they saying the investigation is over? Then what are they even talking about?

Rice's requests to unmask US persons were neither unusual nor against the law. 

So long, Pandora's lid.

Rice requests were neither unusual nor against the law. That means that Trump's people can do the exact same thing to their political opponents. Not just can, but should. In fact my biggest worry about Trump is not that he'll turn into a neocon (and that's a big concern) but that'll he'll refuse to use his enemies' own tools against them. He should use the foreign intelligence apparatus to spy on political opponents. He should circumvent rules of government transparency in the ways the left excused Hillary Clinton for. He should use the IRS to target opposing political organizations. He should funnel government money to friendly NGOs.

He should do all those things. Because that's what his predecessors did, and no one was ever punished. If he doesn't do those things, then he's just leaving them for the next Democrat to pick up and run with. The worst thing Trump could do would be to worry about being called a hypocrite. They'll make up things to call him a hypocrite anyway, so it doesn't matter. Let me put forth what I shall dub the Law of Canceling Hypocrisy.

Tenet: hypocrisy is not a valid argument against hypocrisy. Perceived hypocrisy is immaterial if the accuser must engage in hypocrisy to make the case.

If Trump set up a secret, private email server the left would scream it was the biggest hypocrisy they had ever encountered. But they must be hypocritical to make the case because they've already excused Clinton's behavior, and she faced no legal repercussions. Because they've declared those actions to be acceptable they cannot reasonably condemn Trump for engaging in what they allowed to become precedented behavior, even if he was previously opposed to it.

Remember, When They Go Low, We Go Low. When the opponent engages in "cheating" behavior, they must be punished and, if they are not punished, the behavior must then be used against them. If your opponent fights with knives, you must fight with knives. And if he brings a gun, well we all know the sage wisdom about not bringing a knife to a gun fight. It is not hypocritical to bring a gun to a gunfight, no matter how much you might have railed against gunfights in the past.

Republican Contradictions

The great challenge of Trump's presidency is quickly approaching. It is not building The Wall, or repealing Obamacare, or fighting the various establishment power blocks. It is navigating the debt ceiling. On one hand it shouldn't be a big deal. It was only an issue under Obama because Republicans in Congress fought him over it. Trump has both houses of Congress, so one would think that Republicans would be able to fund their own budget. To fail to do so seems extraordinarily self-defeating. But it is logical as it only exposes some core contradictions within the party.

Foremost, Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility, yet they don't tend to be very fiscally responsible, not in Washington at least. That's a pretty big contradiction, and a lack of integrity. A general distrust of Republican integrity is what allowed for the rise of Trump to begin with. Trump himself has railed against Obama's doubling of the national debt, yet is proposing big spending coupled with big tax cuts. He vows he can do those things and avoid a spiraling debt situation because his leadership will drive a resurgent economy. It not wise to outright dismiss Trump, the exemplar of achievement despite all odds, but it all does sound something like a fairy tale.

Another contradiction is that the Republicans have unified power in Washington, but are not that unified. Congressional leaders like McCain and Ryan have betrayed Trump at every opportunity it was politically expedient to do so. Others are not actually conservative, and won't vote to take away any federal benefit that might cause them political harm. So we have a Congress that says it's conservative and fiscally responsible, but isn't; who wants to fund it's own agenda but is afraid to lose face for not backing the claimed fiscal responsibility it doesn't really have; and who should do so any way to support the Republican president whom they also frequently betray. That's a lot of contradictions. And it makes it impossible to predict anything.

If the Republicans can overcome their own self-contradictions, and it turns out that Trump is an excellent president except that his policy program tends to push the federal government even closer to bankrupty, well then maybe that would make him a perfect president.

Appeasement is Futile

Healthcare

Paul Ryan fucked up. Again. The leading Republican Congressman doesn't seem to comprehend a rule that any creature capable of basic pattern matching should understand by now: there is no benefit to appeasing the left. What good has ever come of it? What do so-called conservatives expect? Do they think the left will say, "oh look, they're acting in good faith....let's do the same" or "well we've gotten reasonable concessions, no need to demand more." Has that ever happened? Can someone provide any recent example?

Likewise, a conservative has never benefited for admitting wrongdoing. After a successful witchhunt do liberals ever say, "Well he's admitted to the transgression and apologized, that's the important thing." No, they always double down. Apologies are merely admissions of guilt. Once they get your confession, they go for your job. They hate that Trump (almost) never apologizes. And of course they do! He's depriving them of one of their most potent weapons. That's why he's in the White House, and lefty appeasers like McCain and Ryan handed Obama an easy re-election win.

Ryan catered to the left, giving them everything they could have hoped for in the Omnibus Bill. All of Obama's leftist agenda was well-funded. Ryan couldn't have appeased them more if he tried. The result? Well, the media left him alone, even praised him, for a while. That was great for his career...he was Washington's golden boy! But where is he now? He's pushing for a healthcare "reform" bill that keeps the major tenets of Obamacare in place. The left should love this bill. No, it's not ideal; they'd rather have liberals in office pushing for socialist state-run health care. But considering that both houses are Republican, the states are supermajority Republican, the Supreme Court will soon be fairly conservative again, and the President is a Republican who ran on the promise of repealing Obamacare, this is the best they could ever reasonably hope for. And yet they are shitting all over it and shitting all over him. It doesn't matter to them one little bit that he has twice now worked to get Democrats the best possible deal they could ask for.

Ryan and Trump are both screwing this up. Frankly, I'm surprised at Trump. His core business strategy is to always have leverage. You start with the conservative plan and negotiate from there. And you force all the RINOs in congress to take the stance of rejecting the conservative plan for all to see. Instead, they've started with the liberal plan. What do they hope to achieve? The conservatives hate it because it's the liberal plan, and the liberals hate it because they don't care what the plan is, they're not going to support any Republican-sponsored healthcare plan no matter what it is. We can understand Ryan's decision to push the healthcare plan. He appeases the left. That's what he does. I'm not saying he's an idiot, a wimp, or a traitor, but anonymous insider sources tell me that he is. Why does Trump support the plan? He knows the plan is a shit sandwich and fails his basic tenets of negotiation strategy. Why such warm support for it? Is he that desperate to score a legislative win? Many of his supporters believe he is playing the long con: that he is letting Ryan's plan die on its own. By appearing to openly support the proposal no establishment Republicans will be able to blame him for the bill's failure. The left will attack him for losing a legislative fight of course, but who cares, they'll attack him no matter what! That's the beauty of not appeasing the left: you don't have to worry about what they're going to think. Politically the best course for Trump is if the subpar legislation dies, nothing happens this year, and Obamacare continues to fail under its own weight until even liberals are begging him to do something. But he is adamant to get healthcare done first. His dedication to fix the worst things first is admirable, but he needs to play the political game right to extract the best long-term results.

Update: Rand Paul gets it

Tax Returns

The left has obsessed over Trump's tax returns for a year now, reaching fever pitch during the election when they seemed to categorize his decision to withhold them as a criminal act. Never mind that the whole thing is an idiotic tradition; they just wanted anything they might use to attack him. Trump's decision to withhold was a thing of beauty. Could anything be more affirming that he is the right guy? If he had released his taxes, they would have found something to promote as scandalous. And if he didn't, they'd attack him for that. So why appease them at all? What's the benefit?

Trump didn't appease. He chose not to give up his leverage in return for no benefit. It may have seemed peculiar at the time. "Why wouldn't he just give them the returns to shut them up?" says the RINO who only understands the strategy of appeasement. "And besides, what leverage could those returns possibly give him after the election?" Those people don't understand the power of leverage, whatever it is, and the stupidity of appeasement, whatever it is. Trump operated on those fundamental principles, and he just scored an enormous political windfall out of it. Instead of using his weapons in futile self-defense, he held on to them and used them to bait his enemies into an epic defeat. 

Appeasement: don't do it

Leverage: if you don't have some, get some

Immigration

Finally, let's look at immigration. Trump originally crafted an immigration order in strict compliance with legal precedents and statutes. He didn't really have to; the president has authority in those areas. But it doesn't matter. The left found a judge to rule in their favor who didn't even bother to mention the relevant legal codes. Why should he? They don't care what the law says.

So Trump backed off, withdrew the order, and wrote another softer order. This all smells like appeasement. It has now been overturned by a federal judge in Hawaii. The reality seems to be that the president can't do anything so long as even one federal judge disagrees with him. How does Trump fight back against those judges without getting himself into legal trouble himself? That is the question. But there are tactics at his disposal. First, he needs to throw out red herrings to distract them. Attention getting orders that will occupy the left while the real orders pass through quietly. Sure the left will eat him up for scripting illegal orders. They're going to anyway. He'll just have to be careful that legally minded conservatives don't get too annoyed.

He'll have to pick up the dirty habits of his predecessors. Cite national security wherever possible so that orders can be classified. Establish clandestine backchannels. He always has the nuclear option of a temporary ban on all immigration, citing security concerns. Remember, When They Go Low, We Go Low. Yeah he'll get a little swampy in the process, but it's that or have his presidency completely steam-rolled by the 9th Short-Circuit Court. And finally he needs to be appointing judges with one primary criterion: that they will return the favor of judicial obstructionism when the next Democratic president is in power. (God forbid). We'll have to assume that Trump, who maintains leverage and recoils from appeasement, is working diligently to outmaneuver the tyrannical judiciary.

Trump Invades Syria While Liberals Obsess Over Microwaves

The strongest condemnations of Trump's actions in the middles east are coming from the right. The trend from the election continues: the left doesn't really attack Trump where it matters. It's always either something entirely baseless (like the mythical Russian connection) or related to some social grievance that is minor in the context of the President of the USA also serving as the Emperor of the American Global Hegemony. We're seeing Trump - who promised sane foreign policy (as did Obama) - appearing to turn neocon very early on. The left is supposedly antiwar. And they will lambast Trump for any perceived flaw no matter how trivial. Yet they leave this alone?

I can imagine only two hypotheses:

1. they want to attack Trump but don't want to also indict Obama for his neocon foreign policy
2. the left doesn't control their own narrative; it is set for them by the same establishment elites that drive neocon foreign policy

The first claim almost seems plausible, but there is enough evidence to discredit it. The left has no problem slamming Trump for doing the same thing as Obama. They were highly enraged that Trump would seek to halt immigration from a foreign country, which Obama did twice; and they cried foul when Trump limited access of a network news org, when Obama did the same; and now they're condemning his firing of previously appointed federal judges, even though Obama did the same. There is no credibility to the suggestion that on just this one issue the left is concerned with maintaining logical consistency.

So unless someone can suggest another viable hypothesis, the only answer seems to be that the left doesn't establish their own narrative. That has been obvious to those of us on the outside. If it wasn't intuitively apparent, there has been evidence to support it in the Wikileaks, which showed the media actively engaged in collaboration to establish a political narrative. However, this is the first time I've been able to compose something of a logical proof on the matter, or at least to shift the burden of proof onto the left. The argument is this: if you can provide no other viable hypothesis to explain this peculiar behavior from the left, then mine must be the correct one. Lack of a better idea is not a formal proof, but from a pragmatic standpoint if one viable hypothesis is all we have, then that's what we have to go on.

The left doesn't set their own narrative. It is set for them. It has been the most amazing phenomenon for me in the past year to watch so many smart, reasonable, and moral people just lap it up. We know in theory how propaganda works, that it influences public opinion. But to see first-hand the people in your own life become nothing short of brainwashed is troubling at the least.

In this case, the left has abstained from attacking Trump over his Syrian actions for just the same reason they didn't attack Obama for his own warmongering: the media hasn't told them to. If they were free-thinking the conclusion should be obvious. If we are putting boots on the ground in a country against their will, it is an act of war. Since we are a western nation it requires some legal grounding. None has been provided for US actions under Trump in either Yemen or Syria. If you're a cantankerous Constitutionalist like me or Ron Paul, then you believe the required legal grounding actually means a congressional declaration of war. If you're a liberal then maybe you think a UN resolution is all that is needed, or for conservatives some presidential war powers granted by Congress. But there is no such backing for a military incursion into Syria. The only thing we can say positively for the moment is that actions under Trump have been made directly against terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and ISIS, whereas Obama was utilizing them to further a larger geopolitical agenda and to destabilize undesirable regimes.

Donald Trump was not elected on foreign policy. But for many of us he was our Hail Mary. Our last resort to change the system from within. If he turns neocon like his predecessors, it will extinguish any hope that America's foreign policy might be changed through the normal political process. You would think that on at least this issue we would have the liberals as allies in a common cause. But that is not the case. If our enemy is the hegemonic establishment, the mainstream left are their obedient foot soldiers.

RinoCare: Good News for People Who Like Bad News

Paul Ryan's proposed healthcare bill is out. It's a steaming pile, as you might imagine. It's probably worse even than I expected, and I've already called Ryan out as the biggest traitor in politics ever. Subsidies are still there but renamed. The individual mandate is still there but renamed and penalties offset from the IRS to the insurance companies (a smart political move).  It's still a massive entitlement program that requires heavy taxation, heavy redistribution of wealth, conflates healthcare with health insurance, and doesn't address the high prices.

The bill is being dubbed RinoCare, ObamaCareLite, and ObamaCare 2.0, among other names. Some are calling it TrumpCare, but I'm not sure if that's accurate. Trump campaigned on "Repeal & Replace." This is more like "Rename & Modify." Perhaps modify doesn't signify much. No one claimed that Obamacare would never be modified. After the massive premium increases last year Democrats said that everything would be fine as long as Hillary could go in and "tweak" the legislation. Let's call it "Rename & Recess". The Republican Congressmen can shuffle things around, pass a bill that is fundamentally equivalent to Obamacare, and duck out of town before anyone in the media has time to call them racist.

Here are some handy guidelines to tell you how you should feel about this legislation.

• If you're a conservative, you should be outraged in principle, but not in practice. Make any sense? Because conservatives are in principle rooted in traditional cultural values and small government ethos but in practice tend to borrow and spend to grow the size of government. Since the government plans to spend more on healthcare and on the military you should balance out to contentment.
• If you're a liberal, you'll have to wait and see whether or not Trump supports it. Initial reactions indicate he's pushing for it, so I guess you'll need to be against it.
• If you're a libertarian, you're probably a liberal who doesn't like the government telling you what to do. Your biggest gripe should be that the individual mandate wasn't eliminated, just shuffled around.
• If you're a constitutionalist, you should oppose the bill on grounds that the 10^th Amendment has not yet been repealed.
• If you're a socialist, you should love the bill because it's a government program doomed to failure that Republicans are calling the "free-market solution" anyway. Patience Iago, PATIENCE! As soon as the whole thing collapses on itself you can scream until your lungs bleed that free-market healthcare solutions don't work.

So what if you're an alt-righter or one of those right-wing neo-reactionaries? (There's a decent chance if you follow this blog). Neo-reactionaries are certainly opposed to this kind of legislation that furthers the scope of national largess. And that's why we should support it.

Let's make an analogy. Look at Sweden. Sweden has hit peak insanity, as best as I can tell. That's not necessarily sober analysis, it may just be a lack of creativity. Just because I can't imagine how they could be much more absurd doesn't mean it isn't possible. The long-term prospects of Sweden as a culture and as a nation seem to depend on whether they can bankrupt themselves before they destroy themselves. Bankruptcy is sometimes all that stops the gambling addict, and so it may be all that ends the dangerous spiral of pathological altruism.

The brave Swedes lead the way, but the US doesn't lag terribly far behind. As far as healthcare goes, the expectation that the federal government should provide healthcare to all citizens has been established. Trump ran to replace Obamacare, not to remove national healthcare. At this point, it's practically semantics. The people demand healthcare, and politicians who refuse will find themselves sitting at home watching with the rest of us. Writing blogs, probably.

A democracy that gives universal suffrage to a generally irresponsible populace is without a doubt embarked on a slow boat to disaster. The normal tendency of inevitable disasters is the sooner the better. The longer the tectonic pressures build, the more catastrophic the inevitable earthquake. The longer the bubble inflates, the harder the crash. If you see the United States as such a disaster set in motion, then your motivations should be (1) to precipitate the collapse as soon as possible, and (2) to have yourself in the best possible position when that time comes. In general, this means to spiral the debt so high that the government is impeded in its functioning and that either default or inflation is inevitable, which would help prevent foreign debt holders from sucking all the remaining wealth out.

On healthcare, if the people demand it, that's what we'll get. So we want the plan that tends to be funded by government debt. Not taxes, and not increasing premiums and others costs. The government is largely responsible for driving up the cost of healthcare to begin with. Now they want to take over the industry entirely. Fine, let's just make sure we aren't the ones getting saddled with the cost, and that it serves our intentions of bankrupting the Fedguv sooner than later.

Democrats Face a Pandora Dilemma

There are a couple ways the Democrats might respond to the recent wiretapping allegations. They might assess the situation based on a sober analysis of the facts and evidence available to them compliant with the standards of journalistic integrity. I jest, of course. They might also respond by doing everything in their powers to rebuke and ridicule the claims, effectively working to protect Obama from a serious public inquiry into the matter. If their standard pattern of behavior and initial reactions are any hint, they will pursue the route of legitimizing Obama's actions. But is that the wisest strategy for them?

Why Wiretap?

Note that these days the term wiretap is typically meant in the sense of a general interception of communications. Obviously a wireless phone is not literally wiretapped.

I showed in Mainstream Media Unsure How to Best Discredit Itself Over Wiretapping Situation that the Obama administration has a long history of wiretapping. Why would they do this? What benefits might be gained from intercepting the communications of a journalist or a political rival?

Danger warning

All politicians say they want honest and accurate journalism. But if some hypothetical entity was engaged in widespread unethical and illegal behaviors, they might become very concerned, even somewhat paranoid about journalists venturing too close to revealing their misdeeds. (Remember this is completely hypothetical). It is the priority of any shady politician to keep tabs on journalists and be forewarned of any impending scandals.

Competitive advantage

Intel always gives the recipient unfair competitive advantage. There are indications that information gleaned from surveillance made its way to the Clinton campaign. Such actions, if proven, would constitute a massive blow to the notion of a free election, and corroborate Trump's claim that it was rigged.

Political weaponry

Surveillance gives enormous leverage over the subject of interest. If the dubious observer just so happens to find evidence of criminal or embarrassing behavior, they can use that information to either blackmail or destroy their opponent.

Why Russia?

It seems that surveillance permission was granted to the Obama administration after their second application to the FISA courts. They did not make an attempt to get a surveillance order from a standard court. It would be nearly ludicrous to do so. To go on the record to ask for a warrant against the opposition party's candidate would be quite a scandal. But FISA warrants are issued in secret. That is the warrant you want if you're a shady politician trying to use surveillance as a weapon against an opponent. But the warrant is also very restricted in scope. Because it is effectively a violation of the 4th Amendment, the warrants are limited to foreign intelligence surveillance (the FIS in FISA) information necessary to protect the United States against "grave" "hostile" attack, war-like sabotage, or international terror. It's not enough for Obama to merely allege that Trump is generally a threat to the nation. There must be a concrete plot, either real or suspected, and of a foreign nature.

This is why we have the alleged Russian connection. If you've been baffled over their insistence on pushing this farsical inquisition, be baffled no longer. The Russian connection satisfied the need for the surveillance to be of a foreign nature. With that in place, surveillance was put on the Trump campaign in complete secrecy. This explains not only the pushing of the Russia conspiracy theory during the election, but why they are pressing hard on it still to this day. Once Trump was elected it became obvious that the surveillance would be exposed. They are desperate to keep the idea of Russian collusion planted in the minds of the public to have plausible deniability for using the state security apparatus against the political opposition, which is approximately the definition of tyranny.

The Dilemma

The situation facing the left is this. If they admit that the surveillance was improper then they pave the way for high-ranking former officials, and perhaps Obama himself, to be sent to prison. They almost certainly won't do this. They'll find every reason to deny or justify the surveillance. Obama probably won't go to jail. But then they've justified tyrannical behavior, and now Trump is president. The precedent will be made that to put surveillance on the political opposition, all one has to do is make vague accusations of collusion with a foreign entity and get a secret court order. So which is the better option for the left: Do they let their hero's legacy go down in flames? Or do they open the Pandora's box of legitimizing state tyranny under an administration they are quite certain is tyrannical?

Mainstream Media Unsure How to Best Discredit Itself Over Wiretapping Situation

As you've likely heard, Trump has accused the Obama administration of wiretapping his campaign during the general election. The response of the media has been something like this:

The media, which has run for months on hysteria of collusion between Trump and Russia during the election despite not one iota of evidence, is rapping Trump's knuckles for tweeting without evidence. Don't you love when the double standard is in open display? Apparently news organizations are permitted to run stories without evidence, but a 140-character tweet must be properly cited. I don't think anyone really expects tweets to be held to some high level of journalistic rigor, so the implication being made is that there is no evidence to support Trump's claims. Other headlines spread the same implication. Politico tells us that lawmakers are "stunned, baffled" by the comments. Allegedly many are left scratching their heads over the statements.

Let's look at this case from the point of view of a criminal investigator.

Motive

Obama has said the following about Trump's presidential bid.

I think the Republican nominee is unfit to serve as president.

He is woefully unprepared to do this job.  

 Everything that we've done over the last eight years will be reversed with a Trump presidency.

I would fear for the future of our country.

If somebody can’t handle a Twitter account, they can’t handle the nuclear codes. 

It smells like motive to me. Obama commented openly and frequently his grave concerns about the dangers a Trump presidency posed to the nation.

Behavioral patterns

This is not the first wire-tapping scandal under the Obama administration.

1. Edward Snowden revealed massive warrantless wiretapping against American citizens. (source)
2. Angela Merkel's personal devices were wiretapped, causing a huge diplomatic roe. (source)
3.  Mexico summoned the US Ambassador over revelations he was wiretapped by the US. (source)
4. The Brazilian president was so enraged at being wiretapped by the US that she canceled a state visit with Obama. (source)
5. Fox News reporter James Cohen was wiretapped. (source)
6. They wiretapped more than 20 AP journalists. (source)
7. The Obama administration was sued by former CBS journalist Sharyl Attkisson for wiretapping her computer and cell phone. (source)
8. The Obama administration twice sought FISA warrants against Trump. In June 2016 they were denied. It was the first FISA refusal in six years! In October they again applied for a warrant with a reduced scope and it was granted. (source, not sure if verified. The Washington Post refutes it.)

Update: this was laid out more thoroughly at TheGatewayPundit.

Evidence

There actually is evidence to support Trump's claim.

1. The FISA warrant was pursued and obtained by the Trump administration.
2. Michael Flynn was almost certainly wiretapped. (source)
3. The NY Times reported on the leaks two months ago. (source)

A screen grab from that article shows they specifically use the term wiretapping.

And that brings us to the point I really want to make: media absurdity. Mark Levin made the case this morning on Fox News using the media's own previous reporting on the subject.

The MSM is insinuating that Trump is running reckless with accusations that have no supporting evidence. Yet the MSM also previously reported on it. Only one of the following conclusions can be made.

• The current reporters are unaware of the previous reporting
• The media is being intentionally deceitful in insinuating there is no supporting evidence
• The media is confessing that it runs stories with no supporting evidence

Any case leads to the same result: the MSM does not engage in real journalism. It is fake news.


Update: here is a good piece from Breitbart along the same lines

The Russian Connection. If Only.....

Moscow Accused Trump of Lack of Professionalism

A Russian senator has labeled Trump as "unprofessional" in response to Trump's criticism of the Start-III and accusations of Russian violations of the INF Treaty.

In his interview with Reuters, Trump alleged that Russia deployed cruise missiles in violation of INF Treaty. Thus, the US president believed the rumors spread last week by the US media and Senator John McCain. The assertion that “ a combat-ready unit of cruise missiles” has been deployed turned out to groundless, as the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs previously pointed out to Washington.

Imagine you're Trump. You've heard from John McCain, the media, and the US intelligence community that Russia has violated a nuclear treaty. You meet with Putin, and question him on the issue. Putin responds that the allegations are false.

Who do you believe? McCain the war hawk who has done everything to sabotage Trump's legitimacy? The media who has lied about Trump more times than could possibly be counted? The intelligence community, which has been leaking like a sieve and even wiretapped candidate Trump? Or Putin, a Russian intelligence veteran who has had years to shake down his intelligence apparatus and has a tendency towards candor?

The left has gone absolutely batshit crazy over an alleged Russian connection. It's almost too bad there's not evidence to support it. I would hope that there has been such a channel so that Trump is getting information from sources other than those than have gone unhinged in their attempts to sabotage him. He is in a very tough position in which it is very difficult for him to know who can be trusted. The oligarchy is undergoing a massive allergic reaction in order to reject the intruder. This kind of massive internal sabotage is not something his business experience could have prepared him for. Trump's successes came from building businesses, not engaging in hostile takeovers. It is difficult for us to know just how prepared he is for the task he has brought upon himself. His best chance for a clear picture of how the US government really operates may come not from within the structure that has mastered the art of bending elected officials to its will, but from outside entities that have mastered the art of surveilling the inner workings of the US government.

Adams' Razor

In one of Scott Adams' more viral blog posts, he described how one could determine who was hallucinating when some people observe some phenomenon and others do not. His method is similar to an application of Occam's razor. It states: whichever observation requires an unlikely addition to reality is the hallucination. He provides an example.

If a friend said he could see a pink elephant in the room, standing right in front of you, but you don’t see it, which one of you is hallucinating?

Answer: The one who sees the pink elephant is hallucinating.

And he's correct, but is there any great insight here? It seems to be a simple exercise of conditional probability. Given the odds of an elephant in the room are vanishingly small, as are the odds of there being a pink elephant, the odds of a pink elephant in the room are vanishingly low. So Adams's principle might be stated as:

Whichever of the conflicting observations is least likely is the hallucination.

And that just opens us up to the normal can-of-worms that probabilistic analysis can bring. "Least likely" according to what? Let's look at some of the complexities of applying Adams' Razor in the real world.

Patterns

The case that Adams is working towards is the divergent opinion in the US during the election as to whether Trump was a racist. While I agree with his conclusion - that those who saw rampant racism were hallucinating - I question his logic in getting there. What was being judged was a pattern of behavior, as opposed to a single concrete observation like an elephant in the room. Even proponents of the racism hypothesis could not point to any clear examples of racism; it was always some subtle pattern of racism that he was communicating.

There is no disputing that some are better at discerning patterns than others. It is the basis of the standard IQ test. Training, intuition, and observation skills also help. What locals see as normal volcanic events the vulcanologist sees as signs of imminent eruption. The shrewd investor sees an emerging bear market that others miss. The ability to see crime patterns others miss is the driving force behind such fictional characters as Sherlock Holmes, Columbo, and Monk. Yet Adam's asserts that if anyone doesn't share the observation of the phenomenon, then it almost certainly is false.

The fact that expertise does play a role in determining whether an observed pattern is authentic is all the wriggle room the Trump haters need to claim superiority. In their view they have a more sophisticated comprehension of racism. They are Sherlock Holmes, and the Trump electorate is the clueless constable. But which is more likely: that college-educated city-dwelling liberals possess powers of discrimination discernment to levels country bumpkins just can't comprehend, or that they are narcissists?

The question becomes: is half of America too inept to see racism that exists, or is the other half so deluded that they see racism that doesn't exist? It's not apparent that we can call one case more probable than the other. Perhaps I am in error by focusing too heavily on the observers rather than the observation. Which is more probable, that Trump is a racist, or that he is not? If the question is if Trump is an open racist, then the answer is obvious. As I mentioned in Religion of the Secular West, racism is the cardinal sin of our modern liberal society. That anyone would be openly racist while running for the presidency would be like vying for the papacy while denouncing Christianity. (Although to be fair the current pope is pretty close to that mark.)

The notion that he was openly racist fails Adams' Razor. Some people do claim that he's openly racist, but anytime I've pushed one of them on the issue they quickly fall back to the assertion that he is a covert racist. So what is more probable: that Trump is a covert racist or that he isn't? For starters we'd have to have some idea of how many people are actually racist and know they are but keep it hidden. How do you measure that? Who's going to confess to secretive racism in a survey? And what of the people who are racist and don't realize it, thinking they're not? White-bashing liberals would fall into this category. All this supposes we have some sort of agreed-upon definition for racism to begin with. Good luck with that. Many on the left purport that only whites can be racist. It uncertain how one might find common ground with blatant logical absurdity.

Determining whether someone is covertly racist is impossible to model because we have no way of knowing how many people are racist to begin with. We don't really know how surprising the addition to reality is. The response one might give is that it doesn't matter how improbable the addition is, just that it is there. But that ignores the implicit addition of the other case. In our example, the media incessantly portrayed Trump as having racial bias. If the addition of Trump racism is false, it implies the addition of massive media bias. Which is more unlikely, that a man is biased, or an entire industry?

The only thing here that is "almost certain not to be real" is our ability to quantify any of this. It all comes down to human intuition. And we are back to where we started. Some people will make an honest conclusion after weighing all the possible evidence, and others will start with the conclusion and concoct supporting evidence and discard all conflicting evidence. Adams' approach assumes the Razor wielder is of the first variety, but those people are hardly the problem.

Perspectives

Perspective can skew the relevant probabilities of the observer.

Adams' probability rule doesn't help here since a giant six lying on the ground is no more likely than a giant nine. Let's look at a more complicated example. In the runup to the election those observing the mainstream media were barraged with propaganda and slander against one candidate. This had an effect on the perception of reality. Voters were less likely to admit they were Trump supporters for fear of social stigma, they were less likely to hold the opinion that Trump would win, and the media was more likely to err on the side of skewing the results to favor his opponent. The resulting disparity of their perspective with reality can be seen here.

How would we begin to apply the Adams formula if we were still in the delusion timeframe? Which is more likely, that there was mass co-ordinated propaganda from America's most trusted news sources, or that Trump was a hopeless candidate? From an Occam's razor viewpoint the latter would be the preferred choice. The model of propaganda and collusion is inherently much more complex than the model of Trump ineptitude. It requires a surprising addition to reality: mass collusion between the media outlets and the Democratic party. I don't know how to organize the situation in a way that Adams' Razor gives the proper outcome.

Predilections

A person's own biases can skew what they determine to be the addition to reality. For instance Adams asserts that Trump being racist would be an addition to the world. But it is really an addition to his generic view of the world. It reflects his own belief: that the default state of a human is not to be racist. He probably is not racist and projects his own qualities onto the world. However, many in this country believe that there is widespread institutional racism, that all economic inequality stems from oppression, and that whites are inherently privileged and racist. For those people, a white billionaire like Trump being racist would not at all be a surprising addition to their generic take on reality. Tolerance would be the "unlikely addition to their reality."

Principles

Advances of human understanding alter the probabilities afforded to different observations. In prehistoric times, a group observation of angry deities hurling thunderbolts during a storm would be considered entirely probable, even inevitable. Today's understanding of weather science would compel us to assign very low probability to such an observation, if any at all. Such understanding is not evenly distributed. There are many who remain superstitious enough to find the observation probable.

Similarly if a group of astronomers observed slight discrepancies in star positions based on the time of year, the assigned probability of the observation being considered accurate would depend on whether the Theory of Special Relativity had yet been discovered.

Thus we should see that Adams' Razor doesn't give us any promise of absolute truth. Probabilities are computed in reference to the observer.

Conclusion

Adam's asserts that if there are two conflicting observations, the one with the unlikely addition to reality is the hallucination. The term hallucination doesn't add much. It could be restated as given two conflicting observations, the one with the unlikely addition to reality is incorrect. We know the term unlikely throws probabilistic monkey wrenches into our attempts at objectivity, and we've shown here that the term addition is similarly prone to be subjective. Ultimately the Adams Razor boils down to something like this.

The more probable observation is almost certainly the correct one.

Not only does the principle not gain us anything, it does away with the benefits of probability to begin with. Adams' Razor was intended as sage wisdom from a self-styled expert of hypnosis and hallucination, but as an epistemological tool it really provides nothing of benefit. It is merely a crude rule of thumb for those with nothing else to go on, not a method for achieving objective truth.

The President Still Has Freedom of Speech

A common complaint we're hearing from the left today is that Donald Trump is restricting freedom of the press, by ridiculing what he considers to be the least professional outlets and seeming to prefer questions from more friendly outlets. Oh the horror!

The implication seems to be the he is not allowed to express his opinion on matters of the media. Nevermind there is no sort of legal basis for such a demand, but there is no sort of a moral argument either. The only argument they seem to make is appeal to fear: the presidential criticisms are merely the first step down the path of media suppression seen in dictatorships. Let him call CNN fake news today (actually it's now very fake news) and tomorrow the press conferences will be concluded with Stalinesque standing ovations that go on for 20 and 30 minutes because each man in the room is deathly terrified of being the first to stop clapping.

If Trump is a dictator stifling freedom of the press then why is every single outlet still free to engage in nonstop Trump bashing? Is a message that boils down to "you're very bad at your job" really the same as being violently repressed? Just how soft are these people?

Liberals have 0, at most, empathy for the man. They'll say "he doesn't deserve it" but who cares if they're right or not. Lack of empathy is the core of sociopathy whether the trait is justified or not. Can you imagine how you'd feel about a media establishment that for months broadcast in the snarkiest tones that you were a racist, a Nazi, and a rapist? Even today, and I watched a small portion of the conference, one reporter decided to use his time to interrogate Trump about his anti-Semitism. Can you imagine that? Trump has never said anything remotely anti-Semitic, his own daughter has converted to Judaism, his son-in-law is an Orthodox Jew whom he has made a key advisor, he just hosted the Israeli PM (who can't sing the praises of Trump highly enough)....and he has to listen to constant lecturing from morons about anti-Semitism. If anything it might be logical to question that he is perhaps too friendly towards the Jews and the state of Israel.

Surely I spend too much time venting about these things. Of course the bleating of a dying industry, constantly outmatched by someone they perceive to be an imbecile, has no sort of logical foundation. As such writing these posts serve primarily as a therapeutic exercise to the writer with little additional value, save that hopefully the reader finds some comfort and grounding in them as well. If you're like me and you spend even a few minutes on mainstream media or facebook (good Lord it's nothing but angsty liberals these days) you'll also need a stiff drink and a strong pull off the proverbial logic bong by the end of the day.

Immune Reaction of the Deep State

When our bodies are invaded by a virus we rarely experience its direct effects. The virus attacks our tissues directly, but everything we suffer: runny noses, itchy eyes, congestion, coughing, sneezing, headache, fever, body aches; result from the responses of the immune system. Each ailment plays some role in fighting the infection and keeping additional pathogens out.

[As as aside, to me this is all biological proof that we are genetically disposed to be assholes. Think of what happens when you're sick and you sneeze. Is that sneeze more likely to prevent additional infections from entering through your respiratory system, or to spread the illness you already have to the people around you?]

We are witnessing an analogous process in the political realm, as the deep state unleashes all sorts of ailments on the body politic to rid itself of what it perceives to be a great threat to either (a) itself or (b) the nation overall. (The answer is a but they'll always pretend it is b). The reactions range from irritating to harmful. From a complete loss of professionalism by the media to promotion of outlandish conspiracy theories against our nuclear rival, none of their responses could be remotely labeled as beneficial.

You might note that I include the media as part of the deep state. That they carry water for the deep state is nothing new and has been well documented by Noam Chomsky and others. Also this was confirmed from the DNC leaked emails that showed numerous news organizations were meeting in secret with Hillary Clinton just before she announced her candidacy. This is exactly what media collusion with the political side of the deep state would like.

Make no mistake there is a war brewing in our government, and numerous entities will stop at nothing to undermine the new leadership. How far will they go? When the body marks an antigen as an existential threat it will similarly stop at nothing to eradicate it. A peanut is not harmful. Quite the opposite it is a nutritious food. But if the immune system rejects peanuts it will mount a response so severe that it can even kill the body it is fighting to defend.

When They Go Low, We Go Low

Taking the high road may often by the best strategy, but refusing anything but the high road is a fool's errand and will lead to assured defeat. Let's take a look at why we should always be willing to "sink to their level".

You must defend the fronts on which you are attacked.

Not fighting is just a highly efficient method of losing. It is tempting to say, "We won't be drawn in to such a petty fight." Abstaining by virtue of a moral high-road is practically indistinguishable from surrender. Allowing the adversary to push on a front without response is the same as retreat. Retreat can be a powerful strategic tool, but it can't be the only strategic tool. 

Liberals understand this. They always fight, even when it doesn't make sense to. Conservatives don't, because they are afraid of the liberal media. If doing the right thing was easy everyone would do it, but since it is such a rare trait, doing the right thing must in fact be dangerous and difficult. 

In no domain is this more apparent than in education and the media. Conservatives have given all control of the the most important propaganda assets to their opponents. The only conservatives that seem to have dug in are the religious right, who demand that Creationism and other religious topics be taught in the schools. The more reasonable conservatives don't have the same conviction. And they've allowed the education sector to be totally dominated by the left, to the point where some pursuits, such as social sciences, have no conservative faction at all. See where being reasonable gets us? 

The left pushes back on instinct. In fact, as I described in an earlier post, it is their defining quality. If the right stands against Roe V. Wade out of legal reasoning they push back with women's rights. Doesn't make sense does it? Nope, not at all. They're not even having the same discussion we are. Being reasonable is less important than having a casus belli. The left has had great success even though objectively their arguments suck.

The left fights back even when they contradict themselves. After years of calling the lack of federally mandated maternal leave another example of oppression against women, they actually attacked Trump when he made the proposal in his campaign. Insane? Yes. Effective? Considering their grip on the vital institutions like education and the media, yes, they are doing something right. Perhaps they are modern day Berserkers, but so what?

The right must adopt this mentality. They must instinctively defend any front unless there is some good reason not to. Who cares if they call us hypocrites? They call us hypocrites anyway. Who cares if they employ their SJW weaponery against us, calling us racist, sexist, etc? They do those things anyway. They will attack you whether or not you choose to defend yourself. The issue here is not one if intellectual or moral superiority, but a simple lack of courage and conviction. 

You must employ the tactics that are used against you.

If your opponent deploys a previously shunned tactic that gives them an advantage, you must respond in kind. At the least, you must consider that the tactic is a viable weapon in your arsenal. If you're in a fist fight, you will like keep some level of civility to it. But if they go below the belt, you absolutely must return the tactic. If they are allowed to kick you where it counts but you don't allow yourself to use the same tactic, you will be at a marked disadvantage. And if your opponent knows they can fight dirty and you won't respond in kind, then you only encourage them to disregard all decorum.

Right now the left is winning the dirty deeds fights. The DNC has funded and organized highly illegal activities intended to damage the other side. And they've faced no legal repercussions for doing so. It would be foolish at this point for the right not to respond in kind. Why should they not have paid protesters show up to liberal events? Why should they not work to shut down rallies of their opponents? Because we're better than that?

This shouldn't imply that we blindly react. Of course restraint is its own virtue. Donald Trump could have responded to Hillary's insults of his base by insulting her base, but he "looked past the sale" and chose not to do so. Maybe he should have, but he came out on top of things. Today they are doing everything they can to provoke us into violence, but using violence against us. We are wisest to resist, because we know how they are using the media to in their favor. (Note if they didn't control the media then this would not be to their advantage. That's what we get for giving up that battlespace to begin with.) At this time it behooves us not to respond in kind, but we have specific reasons to disobey the general rule: always respond in kind.

Wars are never battles of ideas.

Ideas may fuel wars. Belligerents use ideas to underpin moral justifications. But ideas are just one front of the war. You can quite easily win the battle of ideas and lose the war. I see a lot of people complaining about meme warfare. It's low-brow and childish. Yes and it's highly effective. Trump may be the first man deliberately memed in to office. Memes are most effective when you have your logical arguments in place, which can guide the memer to make pithy laconic statements that efficiently convey powerful statements. But they don't have to be. The left's most viral meme right now is just ridicule of Kellyanne Conway. Memes don't have to convert; they can simply serve to boost morale for the embattled soldiers.

To win the battle of ideas but lose the fronts of emotion, self-interest, information, logistics, strategy & tactics, organization, communication, etc is to be utterly crushed in the war. When they go low, that is outside the realm of ideas or civil discourse, we must be able to defeat them in that domain as well. In fact the only thing ultimately to keep an opponent from "going low" is the fear they will suffer greatly for doing so. In face of defeat they will always resort to "low" tactics. This is perfectly natural and we should never be surprised at them.

Conclusion

Political wars will tend to spiral towards the bottom if no mutual or societal pressures exist to prevent it. We have a society built on rule of law meant to prevent this. But the inhibiting effect is only as strong as the enforcement. And if the rewards of violating convention exceed the punishment, then someone will violate. We can't control society, we can only operate within it. And if society is willing to permit uncouth behavior, we must use it so the other side cannot gain an unfair advantage over us, while at the same time working to build a society the effectively clamps down on the same behavior. It is not hypocritical to do so, and in fact is the only reasonable approach to these things.

Update

These ideas may be somewhat more mainstream than I though. They are largely influenced by Vox Day. He has a fairly large following, but that doesn't make him mainstream. I was surprised that when I caught the Mark Levin on my commute after writing this, the guest host Dan Bongino spent the beginning part of the show on this (2/6/17 podcast). He points out that the left reflexively fight on every issue, and the right doesn't. Very similar to what I wrote on the same day. Maybe he reads the blog? (traffic stats indicate not likely)

Another thing I didn't mention though is the the left is heavily Marxist these days, and in Marxism everything is politics. Art, literature, education, science, you name it: it is all just a front in oppression politics. So naturally they fight us everywhere, and we're slow to respond because they don't seem like political battles. They are.

Troubling Revelation from the Yemen Raid

It's been over a week now since the Yemen raid that was, while successful in its objective, so troubled that is being largely labeled as a botched raid. In my first post on the subject I fell just short of condemning the operation because it does not seem to be in line with Trump's stated foreign policy or even the policy that has been in place. At this point we're still in the honeymoon phase with Trump and I'm willing to throw him some benefit-of-the-doubt while he establishes patterns of behavior. However in the past week the most troubling aspect of the whole incident has come to light: the media has largely left it alone.

That's not to say he hasn't be criticized and ridiculed for it. He certainly has. But nothing of the co-ordinated media blitzes we're used to seeing used against him. This operation opened a huge to flank to attack Trump on both foreign policy and military judgment. It could easily be spun to fit the media's depiction of him as brash and careless. But it was hardly even the biggest story of the week. Much more effort was spent on the narrative that Trump's teams is "in chaos." An even bigger story was the nonsense of Trump having belligerent phone with multiple foreign heads of state. The most viral thing I've seen out of the left this week is their ridicule of Kellyanne Conway for stating that it was a massacre in Bowling Green that led the Obama administration to impose travel restriction to some countries, rather than an averted massacre. It was primarily an exercise in pedantry, certainly no where near the magnitude of the Yemen raid in importance.

Why is the media laying off Trump when they have an actual legitimate reason to blast him? Clearly they must support his actions there. Or more like, the people driving the propaganda agenda support it. It is very troubling that the first action of the candidate with the anti-establishment foreign policy seems to be an establishment-approved operation. Is he being turned so soon? Or is this the learning curve at play? Certainly the same institutional forces that almost completely bent Obama to their will have been heavily lobbying Trump. If that is the case, then the silver lining of the botched raid may be to drive Trump to reject this kind of advice in the future, in the way that John F. Kennedy was said to have lost faith in CIA counsel after the botched Bay of Pigs operation.

Trudon't Tread On Me

It looks like six spots have opened up for Trudeau's valuable refugees.

One of two gunmen who shouted 'Allahu akbar!' as they opened fire at a mosque in Quebec City was of Moroccan origin, a witness and local media reported Monday, revealing the first details about the attackers in the massacre that killed six people.

The terror suspects were identified as Mohamed Khadir and Alexandre Bissonnette......

A second source confirms they were both yelling Allahu ahkbar, and that the non-Moroccan had a heavy Quebec accent.

This is a strange attack because initial reports indicate a shooting on a mosque by Muslims, one an immigrant and the other possibly a native Canadian convert. However we do have to consider Coulter's Law on this. If the other shooter was white it would likely have been plastered all over the news by now.

Either way, the race of the perpetrator's is not highly significant: that they were killing in the name of Allah is. This is abysmal timing for Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, who just recently tweeted (the second being faked):

The virtuous PM is basing his nation's immigration on the notion that all refugees are, well, refugees. Even if that was the case I would strongly condemn such a policy. If for no other reason that if you believe it is our duty to help them, you can help 12 times as many by assisting them in theater. So for every refugee you bring here you're telling 11 others to screw off. But even worse it ignores the fact that a great many aren't fleeing persecution, terror, & war, but exporting it. The German interior minister has stated there are over 500 ISIS Jihadis posed as Syrian refugees. This isn't a vague future threat. It is already happening.

I stand by the notion that the worst thing you can do to the west is bring in the refugees, the worst thing you can do for the home countries is bring in the refugees, and the worst thing you can do for the refugees is bring in the refugees.

• It's bad for the west because it is a destabilising force. This "Diversity is our Strength" talk is utter nonsense. Has it ever been true anytime in history that diversity was strength? It could be argued that strength leads to diversity, because people want to live in the prosperous country. There is simply no evidence that diversity is strength. However there is a multitude of examples of homogeneous nations that became powerful, and then fell after they became diverse.
• It's bad for the home countries because it drains them of their key resource: their people. Look at Syria, where men of fighting age have been allowed entry to Europe by the hundreds of thousands. Who is going to rebuild the country? This is not just a problem of Muslims. The quaint east-European nation Latvia is struggling immensely with a demographics crisis because the most talented seek employment in the west. By letting them in the western countries are draining Latvia and other nations of life. That doesn't seem very charitable, and is certainly not a wise approach for long-term continental stability.
• It's bad for the refugees in the long-term. In the short-term it may seem charitable to allow them admittance to escape the savages of war. Except most of the refugees are not fleeing war. That vast majority are not from war-torn areas or even war-torn countries. They are opportunistic economic migrants. As the western nations lose their cultural, religious, and ethnic bonds, they largely are tied together by one force: economics. And that is precisely why the refugees come in the first place. It's only for material benefit. What happens at the next economic collapse? Surely it'll happen eventually; it always does. What happens when there are food shortages? If wide-scale violence ever descends on the west, the foreigners are going to bear the brunt of it. Groups of unassimilated foreigners will not fare well in a collapse situation. 

The great failure of democracy is that policy is now being made by feelings rather than intellect, despite the left's self-assurance that they are the defenders of science. This is not recipe for success. The decline is imminent. I never predicted Trump could save the west, but I held out some hope. As I've seen the visceral emotional reactions from the left, I'm quickly losing all faith in that. My facebook feed is insane, and it's only the more reasonable liberals that have not unfriended me over politics. I can only imagine what it would look like if I had never actively supported Trump. 

We can't have a democracy when feelings trump reason. We can't have a democracy when half the country actively pursues the demographic destruction of the founding nation. We can't have a democracy when one parties primary strategy for power is to import votes at taxpayer expense. We can't have a democracy when half the country is increasingly condoning violence in support of political objectives. (The definition of terrorism). 

Civilizations exist to solve problems. The hallmark of the left is their solutions always end up creating problems worse than what they were trying to solve in the first place. There are big problems with global capitalism but the solution of Communism is by comparison to anything else a disaster. There are two paths the US is likely to take. In one path we continue this long march to Communism. In the other the country becomes increasingly weakened to the point of dissolution of the union. I'm seeing the latter as more likely. We're already seeing a serious movement for Calexit. And if you are an intellectual or free thinker of any sort you should be hoping for the latter. Communists always start killing the intellectual dissidents first. If you care about yourself and your family you should be supporting liberal exits from the US, rather than having them drag us into an oppressive system where they control the state apparatuses of violence. And at this point I would also urge you to consider that liberal democracy does not offer long-term stability and we should be considering other forms of government.

UPDATE It's looking like the shooter was not an immigrant (he's white with a French name) and not a Muslim. However than doesn't invalidate my post. Cultural conflict is happening even if in this case it went in the other direction. Also this post was written in response to general trends, not a single isolated incident, although the incident did compel me to write on the subject.

Principe Trump

An interesting paragraph from Machiavelli's The Prince:

Hence it is to be remarked that, in seizing a state, the usurper ought to examine closely into all those injuries which it is necessary for him to inflict, and to do them all at one stroke so as not to have to repeat them daily; and thus by not unsettling men he will be able to reassure them, and win them to himself by benefits. He who does otherwise, either from timidity or evil advice, is always compelled to keep the knife in his hand; neither can he rely on his subjects, nor can they attach themselves to him, owing to their continued and repeated wrongs. For injuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being tasted less, they offend less; benefits ought to be given little by little, so that the flavour of them may last longer.

Border Walls: Recently Racist

In the past election cycle we've learned a lot that we didn't know before. For instance, we've learned that border walls are racist. I'm not sure that this means all border walls are racist. Would a wall between white countries like the US and Canada be racist? It seems the wall would only be racist if it divided countries of generally different ethnicities. America has a fairly strong white majority, and Mexico is almost entirely Latino. So that wall is racist.

I have to wonder, when did such walls become racist? Has it always been racist for one nation to keep outsiders, well, outside. For instance was it racist for the Chinese to build a wall to keep out the Mongolians, or the Romans to keep out the Scots? Now maybe that's going back a bit to far. We live in modern times, so that is not a good comparison. Let's not count those. So when would be a good cutoff. Should we count the 1900s? Well then you have to consider the Berlin Wall and all that. Let's cut that off too. We will only consider the context of the 21^st century.

So if I'm understanding liberals correctly, walls that separate nations (in the ethnic sense) are racist in the 21^st century. So wouldn't it be awkward if those same liberals have actually themselves built such border walls, in the 21^st century? Well they did, in 2006. Notable liberal heroes on the list include but are not limited to:

• Barrack Obama
• Joe Biden
• Hillary Clinton
• Chuck Schumer
• Barbara Boxer
• Diane Feinstein

What is shocking is that these people who run the Democratic party were openly racist as recently as a decade ago. Surely the liberals don't realize. We must tell them immediately so they know to start attacking them for the walls they built with that legislation in the same manner they are attacking Donald Trump for building a wall using the same legislation.

Saturating the Media Bandwidth

Vox Day's post today called 3rd Generation Politics is relevant to my post yesterday about Trump's rapid-fire first week in office.

What I believe we're seeing is the marriage of two tactics: [Col. John Boyd's] Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act (OODA) Loop and Cernovich's media cycle disruption described in MAGA Mindset, being combined into a strategic approach designed to render the media's mass firepower irrelevant.

What Trump is doing is saturating the media's bandwidth. While they're obsessing about crowd sizes he's already made numerous important executive decisions. The simply can't keep up. By barraging all the changes early on, it does 3 things.

1. It destroys the media's OODA loop. Part of the media's loop employs co-ordination. We saw that in the election when newspapers would come out all using the same words and phrases against Trump. (And we saw some proof of this co-ordination in the leaked emails.) They engage in co-ordination to amplify the propaganda effect of their message. Trump is not giving them time to coordinate. If they do they simply get left behind. He's not giving them time to settle on a narrative. All they have time to do is report the facts. Probably with snark, but they can't engage in the normal consensus building.
2. They can only have so much impact. Judging by my facebook feed liberals are very agitated right now, I'd say 7 or 8 out of 10. (They were 10/10 on Nov 9). Each new bit of news can't really agitate them much further. Trump is hitting them all at once. Vox thinks his actions will become increasingly radical and specific. Perhaps. I predict he'll go through waves. At the end of the waves he'll do something big that most liberals would approve of. Since they only care about identity politics, it'll be some sort of gay rights or reachout to black America or something like that. He'll slow down, let that dominate the news for a bit, before hitting with another rapid-fire session. I predict he will also give them something very controversial to run with before each new session.
3. He's making it known that there is a new boss in town. This is a common tactic for a new CEO or general to engage in. It establishes the new authority and accelerates detractors through the stages of grief; they are aggressively presented with the new reality in a way they must accept.

Conventional wisdom would tell Trump he should slow down, not push too hard at once. Trump is not conventional, and he is a genius at these things. 3rd Generation Politics was the perfect description of what is going on. I wonder if he'll end up changing the face of politics forever.

Update: Vox's persiscope talk on this (link). He makes the same prediction I did: that there will be a cyclical aspect to Trump's blitzes. Also in light of his analogies I think my title is pretty bad. The bandwidth is not being saturated. The bandwidth is their great strength, it is analogous to the great artillery firepower of trench warfare. The bandwidth is the media's ability to barrage the public with a coordinated narrative strike. So to say their bandwidth is being overloaded is not accurate. In fact it is more likely being underutilized. To keep the computing analogy, the media is currently CPU-bound, not network-bound.

The Power of the Presidency

It's weird that since I've been so supportive of Trump everyone assumes I'm a lifelong Republican, with some sort of tribal attachment to the party. It's especially weird with all the liberals who unfriended me on facebook when I started posting pro-Trump material, just a very short time after I had been supportive of Bernie Sanders. Those people surely saw both sets of posts, they would have had to. But when they started seeing Trump on my timeline, they just assumed I was on "the other side" and away I went.

I'm sure they naturally assume I was a Bush supporter. The truth is I never supported Bush, I never voted for him, and in fact I spent most of the Bush era as a fervent 9/11 conspiracy theorist. I got real turned on to Alex Jones at that time, and I did believe we were seeing a mass power grab by the government (and we were), but even to the point of fearing martial law was a real possibility. Needless to say, I did not support the expansion of executive power under Bush.

At the time I heard Democrats saying, "You guys support the empowered president now, but one day there'll be a Democrat in charge and you won't like it." I agree. And lo it was soon true. When Obama came to power I was sure he would be a disappointment. I never supported him. I never voted for him. I suspected that Obama would actually curtail the excessive executive power he had inherited. I believe the standard narrative about him. That he was intelligent, thoughtful, peaceful, a Constitutional scholar. If anyone would re-balance the government it was him. I was sure he would at least not increase the excesses of his office.

So I was somewhat surprised, but not shocked, when the scope of the executive continued to explode under his watch. To the point he was making drone assassination strikes on an American citizen and unilaterally negotiating a nuclear treaty with a power labeled as a state sponsor of terrorism. And I found myself saying to Democrats: "You guys support the empowered president now, but one day there'll be a Republican in charge and you won't like it."

And here we are. Three business days in to Trump. Frankly I'm taken back at what he has already been able to do by presidential decree.

• Ordered the completion of the controversial pipeline Obama left hanging for him.
• Effectively crippled the individual mandate, the key aspect of the Affordable Care Act.
• Withdrew from TPP, the most significant foreign trade project during Obama's term.
• Froze federal hiring, suspended numerous programs, especially in the EPA.
• Is poised to end the Syrian refugee program.
• Will halt immigration from nation's with significant Islamic terrorism.
• Will begin construction of the border wall.
• Has begun motion to renegotiate NAFTA.
• Has rallied numerous jobs and investments to return to America.

These are huge shifts in national policy. Immigration, trade, healthcare, jobs. In three days he has done this. I honestly underestimated the power of the presidency. And so did a lot of people. Think of all the people who scoffed that he could never do the things he promised. But also look at how the establishment became totally unhinged at the prospect of a President Trump. They must have known the true power he was assuming. They allowed it during Bush. They allowed it during Obama. And now Trump has it.

At this point Trump is using that power to undo the mistakes of his predecessors. Eventually he will have to start dismantling the power, and we will have to pressure him to do so.