r/K Themes in Moana

Moana is the current blockbuster sensation in the young children's market. I finally watched it last night after some intense lobbying by my four-year-old. It's a good movie, I enjoyed watching it with her, but I'm always on alert during children's shows for any subtle messaging or propaganda. Often the messaging isn't deliberate, but it can say a lot about the internal biases of those producing the film, as well as what they think is marketable in the current culture. I believe Moana falls into that category. It's not deliberate propaganda, but the contents of the movie say a lot and give a lot to chew on for social commentary. So let's begin.

Moana is a Polynesian princess whose tribe encounters a food supply crisis. Fish stocks have collapsed and the coconuts fallen to disease. Moana suggests fishing the outer waters but her father, the chief, insists it is too dangerous. Eventually Moana is compelled by her grandmother and the ocean to embark on a journey to save her people. Aided by her male counterpart Maui, a human-turned-demigod voiced by The Rock, she faces off against pirate coconuts, monsters of the deep, and finally Tikal, a powerful volcanic demon. Ultimately she discovers new fertile land, returns to her home island, and convinces her tribe to make the ocean voyage.

Societies become K-selected when they live at the carrying capacity of their environments. It has always been my assumption that island nations, like the Hawaiians, were probably very K in nature. That means they were competitive, hierarchal, and valued chastity and delayed sexualization of children. Leaving for richer lands is sometimes the best option, but r-type people are more likely to want to escape competition for limited resources than Ks are. The Moana scenario was very common in history. Sometimes there was a successful exodus, but most of the time the results were less poetic: a lot of people starved to death. K-selected society isn't all roses and honey. Those who can't compete for the limited resources die. In time of food shortages the weak and low-ranking die of starvation and illness. There's a reason Polynesians are so well-adapted to store fat, much to their detriment in the modern era.

The conflict between Moana and her father is a conflict between r and K. Moana wants to flee for greener pastures. Her father, the strong chief, wishes to stay and face the difficulties. Ultimately Moana has her way. The movie is a tale of r winning over K. How very Hollywood. 

There is more to the story than just that, of course. The main character embarks on a journey of personal growth that also benefits her society. This is a heroic epic. Other writers have bemoaned the death of the heroic epic, yet here we have one in the greatest blockbuster out right now. Or we almost do. In a heroic epic, the protagonist overcomes some tragic flaw in their journey. Moana has no tragic flaw. She was always right; she was just restrained by those around her. Stupid, backwards K societies are always standing in the way of utopia. The movie is all about girl power, so instead the flaw is given to her male companion. Maui is a demigod in a reduced state. Without his magic hook he has no power, and we find him marooned on a desert island. His flaw is that he is self-interested, vain, and overly individualistic. Ultimately he overcomes his flaws, helps deliver his estranged tribe from harm, and becomes more empowered himself. He is actually the hero of the tale. Moana was supposed to be, but the writers just couldn't bear to depict her as flawed.  

It's worth noting that the tribe-oriented heroic epic is still permitted at all. The reason seems pretty obvious. National identities are permitted, but only for non-whites. I don't watch many movies, but I can't think of many exceptions to the rule. The Lord of the Rings would be, but it's been over 15 years since that franchise started. Much has changed since 2001. Back then white did not equal racist. The rule has pretty well held for the last five years or so, and I predict we'll see no sort of "Moana for white people" for a long, long time, if ever. Not at the mega-blockbuster level, anyway.

One counter-example that might be offered is Frozen, the girl-power mega hit that preceded Moana, which, quite surprisingly, featured an all-white cast. But Frozen isn't a heroic epic. Elsa is certainly flawed, but she isn't a hero. She does nothing for the better good, and in fact she doesn't really ever overcome her flaws. Her lack of self control just vanishes after Anna's sacrifice, but it was nothing Elsa achieved. Anna is also not a tragic hero, as she was never particularly flawed. She always had a good heart. Frozen is all about Elsa's narcissism, so powerful it nearly destroys her own nation! Surely that's a vastly different story than Moana, a girl without flaw who delivers her people from tragedy.

Even the children's heroic epics of the last couple decades had much stronger K themes than were permitted in Moana, where there is never direct resource competition. Mulan, a heroic epic where the protagonist saved her people from doom, was a resource struggle between the Chinese nation and the evil Huns. The Lion King, a fantastic heroic epic, pitted lions again hyenas in a battle for resources. Simba is drawn into a listless life of abundant resources, but his fate compels him to return to jump into the resources struggle and take top spot in the hierarchy. It was a story of K winning over r. Oh, how things have changed in a couple decades!

One other thing you can't help but notice watching the movie is the extreme sexual dimorphism. The princess is portrayed as usual by Disney, described by Stefan Molyneux in his analysis of Frozen as neoteny. Massive eyes, subdued chin, and tiny little noses. Here's a look at Frozen. 

Anna and Elsa were both extremely overdone, Elsa looked like an alien to me, but the male lead has nearly normal eyes, a large nose, and protruding chin. They certainly didn't make Christoph a wimp, but his demeanor is fairly passive, and bumbling around women. His masculinity was kept in check. There's a hilarious scene at the end where the bad guy is exposed. Christoph takes after him, fists clenched, ready to unload some pain. Anna stops him, and instead punches the baddie herself, sending him flying off the ship into the water. They can't have male aggression! But just look at her tiny little wrists.

Counter to that, here are the Moana characters.

They couldn't display more sexual dimorphism if they tried. (I don't believe Moana is quite so muscular in the film.) She retains the normal princess features. The male is gargantuan, with biceps the size of her waist, beady eyes, a wide nose, and an enormous chin that is nearly as large as her whole head. Now, it might be that he's a demigod, so he has to be portrayed bigger than puny mortals, but Moana's father is also massive. What's interesting is that dimorphism is a K trait. K environments prefer strong fathers and nurturing mothers who can protect the child until they are able to face the harsh, competitive world. r strategy is to reproduce early and often, so their is no driving force for highly masculine men. Those women tend toward "bad boys" who exhibit r traits. Look at all the women who swooned over the recently deceased Charles Manson, who oozed r-selection but was very diminutive, barely five feet in height.

The question that arises is, is sexual dimorphism more acceptable when the characters are ethnic? It sure seems like it. Disney also showed a great divergence between Mulan and her army captain. It would sure fit the trend. Liberals complain endlessly about toxic masculinity and rape culture on college campuses, which is nonsense, yet defend it in the Muslim world. The left is before anything, even before being feminist, opposed to western culture and the white race. It's hard to imagine a caricature of masculinity like Maui being depicted for a white character. The character may have drawn extra masculinity because he is voiced by The Rock, a hyper masculine fellow who has recently said some pretty lefty things. Mortal sins like toxic masculinity can always be ignored for those who pledge allegiance to The Cult. I'd also note that the primary songwriter for the movie was lefty hero Lin-Manuel Miranda, the same guy who berated Vice President Pence at a showing of Hamilton for...being there, I guess. But this just goes to show you who's involved in the movie. The only two I'm familiar with are noted lefties. In a move praising r-selection. Go figure.

There is nothing that makes the movie unfit for consumption. Just keep in mind that it is largely centered around r values. Your kid isn't going to be forever converted to leftism because she watched Moana. Still, it's a sign of the mindsets of the people who make children's movies these days, and it's good to know about the subtle signals kids are receiving. My daughter loves Moana, but not nearly as much as the Lion King. I'll take that. There's nothing wrong with a movie praising Polynesian culture. This blog has already shown remorse at the destruction of the Hawaiian nation by global capitalism and democracy. They certainly deserve their own Disney movie, at the least. Still we must be mindful of the cultural signals being sent out to our littles, so that we may counter them. In this case, the Polynesian culture has been co-opted to deliver a lesson in favor of r-selection, even though their nation was destroyed because other people envied their resources. Moana was a story for r-selection, but reality a lesson against it.

Our Marxist Allies?

Serious question, prompted by a couple posts that have sprung up in the last couple days. One is from the ZMan, whose post The Corporate State reminds us that the bulk of the thought policing and stifling of free speech going on these days is done not by a Orwellian tyrannical government, but by global corporations. This isn't necessarily true in the entire western world. In most of Europe, and even Canada, people are actually sent to jail for their sins when they dare to express disapproval for a protected class of people. (Such as by stating a dislike for immigrants.) In America you won't be jailed for saying those things, not yet anyway, but the left still has great capacity to deplatform those speakers, unperson them, and destroy their careers. Twitter, while private, is something of the national commons. On Twitter one can make assassination threats and say the most vile things about white people and still keep their little blue checkmarks, while prominent right-wingers are kicked off at every opportunity. One made a game out of it, making new accounts and seeing what ridiculous things he could be suspended for. Eventually he resorted to just posting picture of puppies. (Puppy complacence is genocide.)

The second post was written in response to a column that appeared in the Independent recently by an old-school Marxist who defends the Alt Right and Steve Bannon. The blog post was called Marx Would Line Today’s Leftists Up Against the Wall and Shoot Them which fairly well gets the entire point across. If you ever read the Communist Manifesto - which is freely available online and not really that long - you'll be struck by two observations. First, at how much of the modern left comes straight out of the Communist Manifesto. The book is all about class struggle and oppression, and the modern left is absolutely obsessed with oppression. And second, at how much of the modern left stands in stark contrast to the ethos of the Communist Manifesto. Instead of class warfare, they focus on identity warfare. (We refer to them as Cultural Marxists, but a better term would be Identity Marxists.)

In Marx, there was oppression, but their was a clear bogeyman: the bourgeoisie, what we'd today call the global capitalists and global corporatists. (Or for short, just globalists.) The Communist Manifesto actually bemoans the destruction of national identities and the erosion of the patriarchy by globalist influence. Can you believe that? Marx was a white supremacist and a misogynist, at least by the modern left's attitude towards such opinions. They have taken the oppression dynamics from Marx but turned around allied with the bad guy! Especially since Obama took office. That's when things really changed. Before Obama, the left held protests against American imperialism, rioted at NWO meetings, despised the EU, and railed against cronyism. Now they defend all those things! Just another example of the ol' libtard switcharoo, as I call it. And as the Republican Party is being taken over by anti-establishment conservatives, the left is becoming even more unhinged in their defense of such things. There is nothing in the current environment that could please Marx. Look at all the welfare. We call it socialism, but it's not truly Marxist, it's just democratic governments bribing their voters. It's socialism where people yield power to the state instead of gaining it. Under Marxism the people are supposed to take control of the means of production. (From economic power comes political power.) Instead the corporations are taking the means of production, and they are using their positions to exert political power. Look at Twitter policing political discourse, and all the Congressmen on the corporate dole. The left never even tried to account for the fact that their candidate was somehow worth nine figures.

It's strange to say, with as much as we rail against communists around here, but true Marxists are our natural allies at this point. We have the same common enemy, and share some degree of their complaints. The question is, how many genuine Marxists exist these days? The left today somehow managed to select the worst aspects of socialism and global capitalism and combine them into a single soul-crushing nation-wrecking cancerous ideology. Marx looks pretty decent in comparison.

The Prophecy of the Triggering

Apologies for the slow output. I've had a computer issue.

One of the lessons we've learned in the last couple years that would should make sure not to forget is that antagonizing the left is a worthy goal in and of itself. We learned the lesson from many angles. Writers like Vox Day theorized that leftists always project. Thus, their constant insults and and accusations reveal their own weaknesses. Trump goaded the media into producing massive media coverage for himself, fueling his presidential victory. The heroic autists of 4chan showed that the left couldn't be reasoned with, but memes carried enormous persuasion potential. Their recent "It's Okay to be White" campaign has been brilliant. These are the key lessons to take away from the wildly successful and highly unexpected emergence of the non-establishment right.

The media attack Trump for being petty. I sometimes feel inclined to agree with them. There was recently a video where Trump met with children of the White House Press Corps. I believe they were dressed up for Halloween. He spent most of the time berating the press. A couple jabs were okay, but it seemed excessive. I'm not much for politicizing children, and after things like that you can understand why some people dislike him.

More recently, Trump took the opportunity to hijack a ceremony honoring Amerindian military veterans to jab at Elizabeth Warren for crafting a fake Indian ancestry to get employment advantage. He's not wrong to do so, but at that particular time, it seems a little crude. And that's the difference between regular people, and Trump, who seems to act on a whole different level.

Shortly after the election, Anonymous Conservative - who analyzes politics through psychology and the effect of the brain's amygdala - predicted that in the coming months liberals' amygdalae would become so agitated that many would only find relief by dropping out of politics altogether. He also suggested that Trump would become increasingly popular through his term and that by the 2020 election many would have no memory that they were ever rabidly opposed to his candidacy. The strategy he proposed was to keep relentlessly driving away at their amygdalae. If I were Trump, I would have relented. I wouldn't be able to make those constant petty jabs. He does. He's the relentless madman. And it's working. Here was Keith Olbermann's tweet right after the incident.

He's quitting! Of course he makes an excuse, but this doesn't end Trump, who has referred to Warren as Pocahontas many times already. This hasn't ended his presidency; it's ended a rival. Olbermann is a liberal nut job and has been increasingly unhinged in the last view months. Someone made a collage a while back of his tweets, and it's just manic profanity, beneath even the dignity of this lowly blog to publish. We've been expecting him to snap. Well, now he's quitting. AnonCon was right. And so was Trump. His insults seem unnecessary, but only when you don't understand how this political war is being waged at a psychological level. Whether Trump is intentionally shorting their circuits or he just comes at this naturally is immaterial. The results are the same either way.

Here's another example from today.

When Pelosi and Schumer didn't attend a meeting called by the president to discuss North Korea's latest display of nuclear aggression, he re-arranged the chairs so that their seats would be clearly visible on the television broadcast. Can you imagine McCain or Romney pulling such a stunt? Of course not, which is why they lost to a limp-wristed communist. Was it childish? Pelosi sure thinks so.

Trump made sure everyone knew that Pelosi and Schumer skipped the meeting, then Pelosi turned around and made sure everyone knew that Ryan and McConnell attended. What a dunce! To most of his supporters, the fact that he'd relegate Ryan and McConnell to "props" is just icing on the cake. The cost of all this? Trump appears petty. Okay, so be it. But that's nothing new. And it's a relief. Because they said he was a Nazi. Compared to Nazi, petty is pedestrian.

Being petty costs Trump nothing. He is driving his enemies to defeat, at almost no cost. He drives them mad and saturates their bandwidth. In the latest Project Veritas video (consider donating to them this Christmas season) a Washington Post employee admitted on hidden camera that the organization is constantly distracted from other things by it's need to respond to Trump. This is insider confirmation that Trump is indeed Saturating the Media Bandwidth. The media is the primary weapon of the left and they are hindered from their agenda of destroying America because they just can't stop spewing Trump hatred, and he keeps handing them all the petards they can get their hands on. So far the prophesy is holding up nicely. He is driving his opponents off the field entirely.

Who is Outing the Pervs?

Something big is happening in The Cult right now. Leaders are being deposed by sexual abuse / harassment claims in two of the three major liberal institutions. (Media and government, with academia being the third.) Those destroyed in the past few weeks have included some of the biggest players in that world, and all rumors are that there's more to come. What is going on here?

The most apparent answer is that these men are just paying a debt that has naturally come due. It's an open secret that Hollywood is run by perverts and pedophiles. It makes sense that accusations long held secret would snowball if they ever got started. Once some women came public about Weinstein, and he was under the gun, it was much easier for many women to come public. But we're seeing it spread other places. An NPR talk-show host. A long-standing Democratic Congressman. It's entirely possible that outing former harassers has just become the trend, but the timing is a little suspect. Why now?

Anytime powerful people are exposed for hedonism we should at least raise an eyebrow because much of the elite are tied together by their hedonism. There is a world of evidence out there, much outed by Alex Jones who even managed to go undercover at Bohemia Grove, and confirmed to a fair degree by the Podesta emails, that the powerful engage in lewd sexual acts and occult rituals. That is the loyalty pact. Not only do they signal their allegiance by engaging in such silly deeds as worshiping Moloch or participating in mock cannibalism rituals, but they make themselves vulnerable. Each in the circle can be trusted, because anyone who gets too far out of line can be destroyed by the others. Think of Bill Clinton flying on Jeffrey Epstein's Lolita Express plane to his private island. Everyone knows what happened on those flights. He indulged in underage prostitutes. Epstein no doubt has substantial evidence. Thus he has power over Clinton, one of the most powerful people in the world. The elite power structure is welded tight with those kinds of leverage relationships.

So, again, anytime someone powerful is exposed for hedonism, we should raise an eyebrow. Was this coincidental, or were they outed by someone else powerful? So there are a couple other theories that must be considered here. One is that the liberal power elite are imploding. The Democrats are largely evicted from power in Washington, and they are spasming in their death throes. We can only hope. Another possibility is that they are being done in from the outside. Who could have surveilled the power landscape, probed for weakness, gathered the necessary evidence, and is now using it to crush his enemies? Could it be Trump? Our instincts tell us he isn't that savvy, and that he's too new to the game, but on the other hand we've learned never to underestimate him. We're just speculating at this point, but the thought that Trump is playing serious political hardball behind the scenes and using their own internal leverage against them is, well it would be political jiu jitzu on a level we've never seen before. 

That might just be too good to be true. Either way, we'll still get to enjoy watching the scumbags drop like flies.

Live and Let Die?

A commenter on one of the blogs linked on the sidebar said that today is a sad day down in Australia because a gay marriage referendum just passed 60%-40%. Another commenter responded:

Why is that a sad day? Marriage is a commitment between two people. What difference does it make what sex either of those two people are? And just exactly why is that any of your business at all?

It's a seductive argument. It's also a quintessentially libertarian argument. Of significant note is that it's an argument at all. We're so used to "debating" liberals that we almost get surprised having to combat opinions that have any rational merit to them. Liberals are infuriating, but eventually taking the time to explain all the ways they are wrong gets boring. Libertarians are in a higher intellectual weight bracket, so let's beat up on someone our own size for a change, huh?

Before we get into this, I'd ask the readers here to take a minute and think about this comment. Do you agree with it? Disagree? Try to craft a counterargument in your own head. If you read this blog regularly it's likely you disagree, but can you explain why? I'll take my stab at it below.






The comment isn't quite an argument, but it's close. An argument consists of a claim supported by evidence. In this case, the claim is that one should not care who gets married. The evidence is that no one who is not gay married is affected by gay marriage. That's not technically evidence, it's more of a claim in and of itself, but it works. We shouldn't expect him to prove a negative. He can't prove we aren't personally affected by gay marriage, but he can challenge us to provide countering evidence and, if none is provided, his original claim holds. Let's take up his challenge.

Let's generalize his statement a bit. What we're talking about is ethics or morality. The underlying principle is that one has complete license so long as they don't directly harm another. That is the core of libertarianism. But what about indirect harm? Does one have complete license if it indirectly harms another?

It is not easy to quantify the effects of morality on civilization. Take Rome for example. It is largely believed that late Rome's decadence led to its fall. We can't be for sure to what degree that behavior contributed to collapse. Maybe Rome was doomed to fall anyway because it was over-extended, and the morality of the people was of little consequence. To know for sure, we'd need many Rome-like examples, and an approach for quantifying morality in ancient civilizations.

Another approach is to make analogies to domains where we can make measurements. Instead of morality, let's look at intelligence. One's intelligence is correlated to one's economic success. Few would contest such a notion, and statistical analysis supports the claim. Here's the key question: does the intelligence of others affect one's outcomes? Does national intelligence affect personal wealth? It would seems so, but the degree to which it does really is surprising. The correlation between average national IQ and personal wealth is six times higher than the correlation between personal IQ and personal wealth. That is remarkable. One's success is more tied to the attributes of the nation than one's own personal attributes. It's better to be a dummy in a smart nation than the Einstein of the idiots. Those of us living in America surely note the phenomenon. Thus, when someone chooses to be less intelligent, it does harm us, albeit indirectly.

To round out the argument, we must make the case that wealth follows national morality in the same way that it follow national intelligence. We can look at history to settle this one. The question should be, did nations that rose to power tend to have strong or loose morals? This is so obvious it hardly needs to be discussed. Look at the great powers of last century. America, Russia, Japan, Germany, England...all rose with strict moral codes. It's amusing that so many Americans these days like to mock Victorian-era prudes, yet those prudes built the advanced civilization they so frivolously disregard today. And in no great or wealthy civilizations in all history was gay marriage remotely tolerated. Even in the closest example, the Athenian empire, where homosexual behavior was common, it was in temporary arrangements between men who still married women and raised children. If gay marriage gives a national advantage, then why was the behavior shunned by nearly every culture and civilization?

Darwin answers the question pretty easily. Civilizations tend not to permit gay marriage because it tends to lower the chances of success. It's as simple as that. Libertarianism and liberalism both assume we live and die as a collective of individuals, rather than as a society, despite all evidence to the contrary. The best they can claim is, but now things are different! It's possible they're correct. Maybe technical advances are so profound that they negate the hard lessons our ancestors learned over many thousands of years of trial, error, and death. It's possible, but it's also very risky to assume human societies are that much different than they ever were.

The Left Keeps Cultural Cohesion With Minimal Cost

The last post discussed how the left, having been brutally contradicted over the past year or two by reality, almost seem to invite humiliation on themselves, in a masochistic sense. The theme of that post was something to the effect of they aren't even trying anymore. This post will look at it from a slightly different perspective, which is they don't have to try.

Societies benefit from cultural cohesion, and engage in activities to maintain that cohesion. Throughout most of history those cohesion behaviors have tended to be religious or at least superstitious. Societies developed priestly castes to enforce the cultural cohesion. That cohesion gave the nation a survival advantage. They were able to punch above their weight versus tribes that were less united. But those cohesion behaviors carry a cost. In the very first book of the Bible we are given the story of Cain and Abel making food sacrifices to their diety. That is quite a cost. Less food means fewer people can be fed; a smaller population means a weaker nation. The benefits of cultural cohesion must have outweighed the energy costs. This should be a familiar event for those familiar with the work of Dr Joseph Tainter. Societies adapt complexity to solve problems, which comes at a cost in energy.

The Romans kept order through rule of law, effective provincial administration, and through military force. But even they also made sure to maintain cultural cohesion through religion, with magnificent temples and rituals. They paid for those costs through conquest of increasingly distant opponents, and by control of agriculturally productive regions such as Sicily and Egypt. In pre-European America the natives engaged in human sacrifice, notably of children, to appease the gods. Those societies were willing to pay an extreme cost to maintain the priestly caste's imposed social order. It's interesting that the civilizations noted for human sacrifice, the Mayans, Incans, and Aztecs, were the only highly complex nations, who also built great pyramids and monuments. The far less complex, semi-nomadic tribes of North America aren't know for their human sacrifice. We can reasonably suppose that previous complex societies of North America, such as the one that built the burial mounds in Cahokia, also engaged in human sacrifice or similarly costly cohesion behaviors. It's also likely that the incurred costs contributed to their collapse. But that's something of a truism. All costs contribute to the collapse.

Non-religious societies have their own cohesion behaviors. Japan is enormously cohesive, and largely non-religious. They are kept in line by social expectation and judgment. Think of the Japanese salarymen, who lose face if they come home too early. They must not be very important to come home so early. So they come home late. They dilly dally at work, then head to the pachinko bar for a spell, before finally coming home at a respectable time. The inefficiencies are obvious, but more costly is that households are practically fatherless. The results show, with the "grass eaters" afraid to leave the house and the shocking number of young people who just don't have sex at all. Fatherlessness destroys societies, especially in a place like Asia, where the men are low-T to begin with. Think about it: the Japanese are about the smartest and most conscientious and most orderly people on Earth, and they're headed to extinction if they can't fix their social cohesion imbalances.

America is similar to Rome in that cultural cohesion has been maintained through religion and rule of law, but there are some uniquely American cohesive attributes, such as a social code of reciprocative personal liberty, an ethos of equality, and the conviction that success can be found in industriousness and hard work. Modern secular America has its own quasi-religious rituals, such as the 4th of July and standing for the national anthem before baseball games. There are costs to cultural cohesion in America, with vast resources dedicated to indoctrination, but they fall far short of murdering our own children. Perhaps that's part of our great success. We can suppose the following principle: nations have the greatest survival advantage when they can get the most cultural cohesion for the least cost.

And that brings us to the left. They are their own unique culture defined by r-selected psychologies and an innate rejection of traditional society. There are great institutions enforcing their cultural cohesion in media, education, and government. However, the left don't shoulder the burden for maintaining those institutions; they compel everyone to support them through taxation, requiring educational credentials for employment, controlling information channels, etc. Sort of like with corporate welfare, which engages in Privatizing Gains and Socializing Losses, the left is constantly striving to extract the most gains from national institutions while minimizing the costs to themselves. (Nearly all of Bernie Sanders' platform, save for some anti-corruption rhetoric, follows from this foundation.)

Co-opting institutions with minimal cost isn't their only advantage. The most potent lefty cohesion behaviors seem to bear almost no cost at all, which are virtue signaling and lying. In the last post we examined how the left is routinely embarrassed when their outrage is contradicted by reality. We supposed that they may actually enjoy humiliation. And indeed we see examples to confirm our suspicions, like Antifa's Professor Giraffe, a total lefty nutjob who engages in sexually humiliating behavior. So self-hatred is certainly an aspect. But also we have to note that leftists don't have to be right because they pay almost no cost for being wrong. They're not even trying, because they don't have to. They can get all the cohesion benefits of virtue signaling and lying but incur few of the costs.

Let's look at a recent example. Recently it was discovered that an act of racist vandalism at the Air Force Academy was false-flag vandalism committed by the alleged victims. When it originally happened, the media was on it like flies on fruit. The general in charge gave a wonderfully "virtuous" response which condemned the racism and garnered millions of YouTube views. If it wasn't intended as an attack on Trump, it certainly was treated as one. The media praised it to the moon and back for its moral clarity, in juxtaposition with Trump's morally ambivalent stance regarding the Charlottesville fiasco. To us, it was just incredible. Because after Charlottesville, Trump, who loves to kid and clown, was the only adult in the room. The alt-right & neo-Nazi protesters looked bad, Antifa looked bad, the media and mainstream politicians looked bad. Only Trump had the fortitude to call it for what it was; an ugly event where idiots on both sides were engaging in unacceptable behavior. The left was outraged. Trump is head of America's largest and most powerful institution. America's institution's are supposed to condemn the misdeeds of the right, not the misdeeds of both sides!

As tends to happen, reality had her way. It was found that it was, in fact, false-flag vandalism. Trump's "moral ambivalence" was justified to the maximal possible extent. It was savage karma. Did the media outlets admit the reality, or pay any price whatsoever for their outrageous coverage? Of course not! They doubled down. CNN described the revelation as "unfortunate." Can you imagine that? They found it unfortunate that there weren't, in fact, gratuitous acts of racism in the Air Force Academy! They also argued that the general's words were powerful and true no matter what the specifics of any particular incident. All attacks on Trump are valid, whatever the facts.

No one is going to be punished for any of this, the false vandalism, the hysterical reaction, the complete lack of journalistic integrity, none of it. Generally speaking, political lefties are only punished when they absolutely have to be. In the Giraffe Boy link, the professor was in fact suspended, but for hoping for the deaths of his own students! That's how far they have to go. Even if he is fired, he'll quietly be hired by some other sympathetic college. He'll be fine. They just don't get punished. Look at all we know the Democrats were doing in the election. There were some token firings, but they're all fine. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is still a Congressman; Donna Brazille lost her CNN slot but has a great book deal. The only person in jail is Anthony Weiner, serving a short sentence for, again, soliciting minors for sex. To be punished, liberals have to engage in the most egregious behaviors: wishing for the deaths of their students, getting caught rigging their own election, and pedophilia. Even then, the consequences are minimal or even trivial.

The point of all this, if you're concerned I've run off the rails here, is that liberals get enormous cultural cohesion with almost no cost at all. They are united in hate under a false narrative and when reality rears her head they just scurry along to the next faux outrage. According to our postulate from above, they must incur a survival advantage. They seem to. There is evidence of some long-term costs. CNN's viewership is down; Fox News is leading the pack. The kids coming up in school are pretty conservative for their age bracket. The problem with the long-term is that, in the long-term, the Democrats shift the demographics enough that the lefties and foreigners can outvote the American nation in every national election. We're very close to that point, right now. Saying that there are long-term costs to liberal cohesion behaviors is not very helpful when, in the long term, given the current trajectories, they win anyway.

This post is running much longer than normal, so we'll leave it here, at the statement of the problem, with no suggestion for solutions. The problem is that those who hate us and want to kill our nation maintain cultural cohesion with minimal cost. Right-wing cohesion comes with great risk and cost. This is the number one problem we face. If we don't find a way to change the equation so that leftist cultural cohesion is more expensive than our own, we lose. No matter what else do. We'll address this problem more in another post very soon.

This Wreckage Will Self-Destruct

The Democrat party is a dumpster fire. They have been almost totally ousted from power in Washington by the electorate. The suffered a humiliating defeat at the hand's of a man they routinely depicted as an incompetent bozo. They had all their dirty laundry aired for anyone willing to take a peak. The total embarrassments have been devastating. Here are just a few, of many. They asserted Trump had no real mathematical chance to win the primary or general elections, and he won both handily. They said the electors would throw the election to Hillary, and then she had the most deserters of any candidate in over a hundred years. They gave Jill Stein $7 million for recounts that were to overturn the election, and they actually expanded Trump's lead, thanks to all the voter fraud in places like Detroit. They promised across the board they would leave the country if Trump was elected, and yet no one left. These are just a few examples. There are many more that could be listed.

If there's anything we learned from the great Dr Drew of Loveline, it's that people subconsciously find ways to relive past traumas. Such a theory is the only thing that can explain the left's behavior. They aren't even really being embarrassed by the right anymore. They seem intent on doing it to themselves. Have you noticed that we haven't seen any prominent examples of Trump media-baiting with his Twitter account like he did so successfully during the campaigns? Probably because he doesn't need to. He doesn't have to try. All he has to do is be himself, have fun, feed fish, stuff like that, and watch the left implode around him.

Yesterday the media outlets, most notably The Guardian, ran with the depiction of Trump committing an embarrassing faux pas in Tokyo. During a Koi-feeding ritual, Abe gently cast food into the small pond, while Trump, the blundering ogre, gracelessly dumped his whole box of food into the pond, which actually threatens the health of the fish! But the thing is, like all public presidential events, it was videotaped. The depiction was thoroughly debunked within minutes. Both used the spoons to cast food, then Abe dumped the remainder of his box in, and Trump followed suit. It's just boring mundane ceremony. Literally feeding carp. The left created a scandal out of it that lasted but a few mere minutes. We might be tempted to explain the blunder as a result of desperation; the left is so thirsty for any win that they grasp at anything. But this case was so trivially debunked that we have to suspect they actually wanted to be humiliated. Not even a fake journalist could expect the ruse to succeed. We've seen the media stop trying to do real news, and now it seems they aren't even trying to do fake news. One wonders how low this can all go.

There was another terrible shooting this weekend. Anyone paying attention has surely noticed the trend. After every shooting, the left flies into a fury before the bodies are even cold, blaming evil Republicans and calling for more federal gun laws. Even a few months ago they were more careful about it, waiting for some facts before they totally ran with it. But now, after being routinely contradicted, they rush right into it. They must love being wrong so much they just can't help themselves! And the facts in this one sure don't disappoint. The assailant was a convicted domestic abuser, who spent a year in military prison. He was already prohibited from gun ownership by federal law. Not only that, but he was brought down by a civilian who was an NRA member with a legal AR-15. This is brutal karma for the left. Not only were the desired laws already in place, but the shooting spree was ended, not executed, by a lawful gunowner. It's hard to imagine a scenario to more decisively shatter the left's gun-control agenda. They ran right into it.

In more fun news, Donna Brazille has written a scathing book against Clinton, describing how she commandeered the DNC to rig the election against Bernie Sanders. As recently as last week Democrats were ridiculing right-of-center outlets like Fox News for covering fairy-tale Hillary scandals instead of Trump/Russia. They must ridicule their own now, I suppose. And in fact the Clinton camp responded by accusing Brazille of buying into "Russian-fueled propaganda." Isn't this marvelous? Truly enjoyable to watch all of this! I never would have thought that Brazille would come out guns blazing like this. I could see her piling on as it was already falling apart, but she's leading the charge! There were many rumors that Clinton treated Brazille like shit. They must be true. Brazille was constantly humiliated, she was publicly exposed sneaking debate questions, and lost her CNN role over the incident. She wants revenge.

Since the motif under examination here is the Democrats doing themselves in, we really must look at the Mueller probe. We won't really know if the probe is a political witch hunt or a reasonable attempt at enforcing the law until the pieces started to fall. We suspect the former, but let's suppose the latter, for a moment, and imagine that Mueller is all about bagging crooks, whoever they are. If that's the case, then that's the only way key criminals from the Obama or Clinton orbits will ever see justice. Think about it. Trump can't go after them. Recently he received a lot of criticism for spurring the justice department to go after Clinton. The criticism has merit. We don't want things to devolve to the point where each incoming administration starts rounding up political opponents of the previous tenure. There's a lot of conflict of interest for Trump to take some of the desired swamp-draining action. Even if Trump pushed for an independent counsel himself there would be widespread cries of impropriety. But it was the Democrats that set up the independent counsel. While we don't have much reason to trust Mueller, we also note that the left specialize in hoisting themselves with their own petards. There may be a lot of poetic justice ahead for us.