Living By Lies — America Can’t Breathe

Guest post by David E.

Since the 1990s, political correctness has grown stronger. The penalty for contradicting the political left and their fantasies used to be just social opprobrium in certain circles and not being seen as the trendiest at certain dinner parties. But now it can get you fired. You are free to speak, but the leftists are free to be rude, yell at you, deny you service on their platforms, and bar you from the many institutions they control.

Daniel Greenfield is a rising independent US journalist with a fearless eye and a clever turn of phrase (emphasis added):

A Soviet citizen goes to the dentist. He lies back in the chair. The dentist tells him to open wide.

“But I’m afraid to open my mouth,” he replies.

The old joke has a new resonance in the age of lockdowns and masked pedestrians, cancel culture and self-criticism sessions when Americans are the ones fearful of opening their mouths. Fear is the common denominator. A nation has spent the year holding its breath. And waiting.

Americans used to laugh at Soviet anecdotes without really understanding them. Now Americans are too afraid to laugh because they are coming to understand them all too well. …

Woke dystopia rising:

2020 is one long Soviet anecdote in which the only people allowed to disregard social distancing by gathering to protest in the thousands and tens of thousands do so to complain about their oppression. It’s a mock dystopia in which corporate CEOs berate their employees about their privilege and fire anyone who won’t confess their privilege, and government officials and agencies lecture the people they rule at length about the terrible evils of systemic racism.

Speech is violence and violence is speech. Throwing firebombs is in the First Amendment, but saying All Lives Matter is literally killing people. The only people who don’t have privilege are the ones who have special privileges. Criminals have a right to be safe from the police, but people don’t have a right to be safe from criminals. Public safety is now about keeping criminals safe from the police by defunding the police so that no one except the criminals can be safe. …

Living by lies:

The real news is what’s read between the lines of the lies. What people say is the opposite of the truth. At struggle sessions, academics and executives confess that they’re racist to prove that they’re not racist. The only people who can safely claim not to have privilege, have that privilege. No one at work will admit to voting for President Trump, but someone must have.

The more speech is banned, the more worthless is the speech that is still allowed.

Polls become useless when people are too afraid to tell partisan pollsters the truth. Democrats and their media demand censorship of social media to protect the integrity of democracy from the speech of the demos, and then are caught by surprise when they suddenly lose elections. …

Did the Soviets somehow win the Cold War?

American tourists visiting the USSR noticed the tension, the invisible weight, the closed faces of the people they met. To the Russians, Americans seemed an open and free people. Freedom was not just a legal condition, a matter of elections and constitutions which on paper the Russians had. Being truly free meant not even being able to imagine the loss of freedom.

Now it’s Americans who walk the streets, when they dare, their faces closed off, invisible weights bowing them down, wary that anything they say might end their careers and lives. Hundreds of millions of people have been cut off from their families and thrust into a national conversation mediated by giant monopolies set up to enable the informants of cancel culture. …

Your masters are whomever you are not allowed to criticize:

Everyone, from top athletes to corporate executives, knows that they have to kneel and mouth the words. And the little people holding down jobs at some Fortune 500 company that assigns Robin DeAngelo as mandatory reading know it better than anyone else.

The danger of course is that if the US Democrats — who are currently more politically extreme than ever before — regain power in the US, they will change the system so they will be entrenched in power for the foreseeable future. This happened in California in the 1990s. As the saying goes, what happens in California spreads to the rest of the US, then to the rest of the West.

Climate skepticism is already banned from polite discourse among the ruling class. On current trends, it will soon become socially unacceptable everywhere, then illegal.

Is this the last time we are going to hear anything like this from a US President? (Be sure to stay right to the end.)

 

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42 comments to Living By Lies — America Can’t Breathe

  • #
    MCMXLIII

    …What people say is the opposite of the truth. At struggle sessions, academics and executives confess that they’re racist to prove that they’re not racist …

    Neatly put.
    Tucker Carlson had a guy on, a Lebanese immigrant, who stood up to the real racists outside his store.

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      MCMXLIII

      The term ‘struggle session’ is an allusion to the self-denunciation sessions used by communist totalitarian regimes, particularly Maoist China, to intimidate and control.

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        Deano

        I think George Orwell described a similar technique in his ‘1984’ called “Two Minutes Hate” where citizens must express sufficient hatred towards those deemed to be ‘incorrect’. As a kid in the 1960s I had to stand up at cinemas when they ran a short film of the queen while ‘God Save the Queen’ played. They might bring that back soon except, everyone will have to shout insults at her for two minutes.

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    • #

      ‘ I am what I am not, ‘ …er… ‘I am not that which I am’ … or…?

      ‘And the moral of that is — ‘Be what you would seem to be…’ H/t The Duchess in Alice in Wonderland.

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  • #
    Serge Wright

    Thanks for posting David,

    The concept of white privilege is one of the main pillers of woke culture and the new neo-marxist fascism we see burning its way across cities in the USA. However, if you look at the lived experience of white people in Australia, there is very little privilege to be seen from the pages of our history.

    The first white people to arrive here were effectively white slaves, who were sent here to provide slave labour in horrendous chain gangs to build the colony. The subsequent decades following the first fleet were incredibly tough for the early settlers, who struggled to survive in the hostile environment. The 1900s then provided two world wars and a great depression in the first half of the century, where our mainly white inhabitants endured great hardship and poverty and many lives were lost. The second world war saw a vastly more powerful non-white country invade our shores and again huge numbers of lives were lost defending our shores. if not for the rescue by the USA we would have almost certainly become part of Japan, lead by dictatorial tyrants. I think it would be fair to state that in all the years up to the late 1940s, the last thing being considered in the minds of Australians was white privilege or white supremacy.

    The second half of the 20th century saw a huge transformation in our industrial activity, driven by education, innovation and determination. The rapid development in Australia since WW2 has largely been attributed to our education system, economic and political system of capitalism and democracy and our immigration policy, which included many millions of people from non-white countries that helped provide the skill and manpower to build and develop the country to where is is today. The personification of the typical Aussie until recent times has always been “The Little Aussie Battler”, which perfectly describes our classless society built on hard work and a collective sense of being Australian, with modest wealth.

    In attempting to describe and find privilege within society today, which includes white privilege, what we really need to examine are closed-loop cultural and socioeconomic classes within our society, where individuals are provided benefits and status based on legislated birth rights. In this regard, until recently, Australia was a global role model, devoid of royal families, political ruling classes and cultural elite classes, such as found in India. With this seemingly perfect classless society, created from the hardships of our history you would think that our main goal would be to foster and preserve such classless purity, but alas, the new neo-Marxist ‘Woke culture’ arrived.

    In Australia today, being white skinned suddenly means that you are placed last on a job interview list and blamed for the hardships of others. Even historical events hundreds of years past are resurrected and blamed on all white people living today. The rise of the new BLM movement is based on the narrative that only black lives can matter. Even stating ALL lives matter can result in serious consequences within society, because ALL would include white skinned people. On the other side of the class divide, being born of Indigenous origin is now the golden prize for status within our society, with the benefits of free land, free higher education, additional welfare and the preferential right to a job, if you choose to work. The value of being part of this new privileged class is so great, that people who possess even minute amounts of indigenous DNA and yet may appear totally white, will loudly denounce their white majority heritage and declare themselves as wholly indigenous. Even the legal system has been changed to allow overseas criminals a right of citizenship if they can prove they are part of this elite class.

    In terms of where this classed system is heading, we can assume the next phase will be to set up a non-elected house in our parliament where members are chosen based on birth status. Beyond this we can assume that democracy will wither and the rule of law will be reserved for an elite ruling minority and the wishes of the majority will be excluded.

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    • #
      Fuel Filter

      Make no mistake. I’ve been saying this for a long while now (years, really) and now we see it come to pass in all of the West.

      “Your skin color is your uniform.”

      Do NOT doubt this in the slightest.

      Having fled my birthplace of California about four years ago due to the insanity of the government I now live in Arizona, a truly free state with virtually no WuhanFlu BS restrictions.

      Oh, and we are listed as the most gun-friendly state in the Union. We even have open carry with no special license needed.

      Looks like we are gonna need it no matter who gets elected (spoiler alert: It’s going to be Trump, no doubt) the Leftists are gonna go batsh!t nuts. Mark my words. So I’m buying my first pistol and a load of ammo.

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      • #
        GlenM

        We’re not so fortunate here as self-defence is most likely illegal now. Firearms are difficult to obtain as John Howard removed the right to own SL weapons. We will do what we can . Good luck!

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  • #
    RickWill

    I was waiting for the Weekend Unthreaded to post this but there was none. As the video gets on to Climate Change, this may not be far from the mark.

    For about 2 years now, I have been trying to understand why tropical ocean surfaces never appear to exceed 305K (32C). I believe I have now nailed that. It is an emergent property of the atmosphere known as CAPE (Convective Available Potential Energy).

    What I have determined is that the maximum CAPE rises with the 4th power of temperature above 277K. That gets close to a brick wall around 305K:
    https://1drv.ms/b/s!Aq1iAj8Yo7jNg2bZUBb60GfpUmGr

    CAPE is the fuel of storms. A cape of 5000J/kg will produce an updraft velocity of 100m/s. That is a severe storm likely to develop into a cyclone/hurricane over water. This is not the sole condition for a cyclone/hurricane to develop but CAPE above 2000J.kg is a necessary requirement among others.

    The feature of tropical storms is that they produce lots of reflective cloud. That cloud reduces the input to wide regions of the oceans for a number of days or even weeks and the surface cools as a result of the storm.

    I looked at the wake of Hurricane Florence in early September 2018. This chart compares the change in the ocean surface temperature from the week before the cyclone to the week after:
    https://1drv.ms/b/s!Aq1iAj8Yo7jNg2fysG93NziCOK9k
    The hurricane developed near Africa and moved across the Atlantic to Florida then turned north. The cooled wake is particularly noticeable near Africa to the mid Atlantic. This clip shows its development in time lapse from satellite imaging:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcYeZMNAbNs

    The other really interesting temperature change over these three weeks is seen in the northern Indian Ocean. 2018 was a particularly intense period for tropical storms in that part of the world.

    The ocean surface temperature cannot get colder than 271K because it forms sea ice. At the other extreme it cannot get above about 305K because severe storms form and reflect solar energy. It does not surprise me that the average SST is close to the numeric average of these two extremes – 288K.

    If you think that climate models would naturally embody the physics that defines the development of cyclones/hurricanes, you would be mistaken. Clouds are just parameterised inputs. They are not coupled to CAPE as they do not have the resolution to produce CAPE values. The inability to produce the emergent features of tropical storms is another of the glaring unphysical nature of said models.

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    • #
      Slithers

      Hi RW, a brilliant deduction!
      Are you able to publish this?

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    • #
      • #
        RickWill

        Willis’s chart confirmed what I have known for a long time – since my days living in the tropics. He also provided the clue I needed to look at the big picture with his comment about “emergent” property.

        I have made a relatively high resolution single column atmospheric model that enables me to determine the maximum possible CAPE for any given surface temperature.

        The model aligns well with other observed data for OLR.

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    • #
      Graeme No.3

      RickWill:

      A hurricane/cyclone is a heat engine. Vast amounts of heat are used to evaporate water. The water vapour rises to near the tropopause where it condenses and much heat is radiated to the stratosphere and away from the Earth’s surface. Of course it leaves a cooler wake behind.

      What you are saying, if I understand correctly, is that the claims of more (and bigger) storms being caused by “global warming” are unlikely, as any heat they need gets fed back out to space.

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      • #
        RickWill

        My point is that ocean surface temperature has a brick wall on the cold side; surface water can never be below 271K because it is solid ice at that temperature and below. Ice insulates the surface and reduces heat loss from the ocean. Ocean surface temperature has a near brick wall at the top end with the storm potential rising to the 4th power of the surface temperature above 277K. At 305K the storm potential is sufficient to drive severe storms that produce dense clouds. Those clouds reflect incoming solar radiation so reduce heat input. These clouds make no difference to the long wave loss because it is already at its peak of about 190W/sq.m due to he high humidity in the lower layers.

        Sea ice and storm clouds both provide powerful negative feedbacks on ocean surface temperature. Both work as shutters within narrow temperature ranges to control heat flow. Ice reduces heat loss while clouds reduce heat input. Ice gets engaged at precisely 271.2K. Tropical storms get engaged at about 300K and become longer and more severe up to a limit of around 305K.

        Higher sea surface temperature at the tropics results in more severe storms. More severe storms reflect more heat so there is less energy input and the surface cools – very powerful negative feedback.

        Under steady conditions, the atmosphere has a stable layer and a well mixed convective layer above the stable level. Nearly all the OLR occurs within the convective zone. That zone dries out as condensate precipitates into the stable zone below, which becomes supersaturated. Daily condensation is almost constant at 7.3mm; corresponding to OLR of 190W/sq.m across the tropical oceans. The convective layer becomes ever dryer throughout the night and morning to create the CAPE following an afternoon cloudburst. As the surface cools in the afternoon, the stable level of the atmospheric column descends and that means there is a rapid increase in moist air now within the convection zone that ascends rapidly as it is fed by the potential energy. The atmospheric column becomes unstable as the lower density moist air rises into the high density dry zone. This creates storm clouds that result in heavy precipitation. After the storm event, the atmospheric column is again saturated and ready to start the cycle over.

        Cyclones/hurricanes are multi-day events extinguishing the CAPE over a wide area of the ocean and ocean shores. Tropical storms initiate cyclones/hurricanes but they do not exist in the near equatorial zone because they rely on Coriolis force to spin them up and keep feeding them potential energy.

        The key physics involved is drying of the convective zone due to water vapour condensing as it releases long wave radiation and the fact that most air is more buoyant than dry air. So there is dry air above the stable level and moist air below. It only takes a small reduction in surface temperature to reduce the elevation of the convective level into the stable moist zone and that leads to cascading instability as the moist air bursts upwards. The amount of CAPE is directly related to the upward velocity being (2*CAPE)^0.5. So a CAPE of 5000J/kg will give 100m/s updraft – can make BIG hailstones.

        It takes all night and much of the day to produce CAPE. It only takes minutes in the afternoon for the CAPE to be extinguished but that process can drive a massive amount of water into the upper atmosphere. It could be more than 50mm in one storm burst. The amount of excess water available to burst upward is also a function of surface temperature. The hotter the ocean surface temperature, the longer the storm, with it reflective clouds, persists so more heat reflected.

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        • #
          Kalm Keith

          Interesting work Rick.
          It is time to demolish all the old climate science ideas such as the one involving human origin CO2 being the driver of our climate. The attached concepts involving the interaction of ground origin IR and so called back radiation can then be put to bed.

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      • #
        Pauly

        “ The water vapour rises to near the tropopause where it condenses …”

        Not quite correct. Water vapour starts to condense as soon as the temperature cools to the “dew point”. At that point, water vapour has reached saturation. Because moist air has a lower density than dry air, it tends to rise in an unstable atmosphere, cooling as it goes up. That’s how cumulus clouds form. Only some really large cumulonimbus make it all the way to the troposphere, which, at the equator, can be around 65,000ft above sea level, and some of the coldest parts of the atmosphere that can be reached by aircraft.

        Latent heat is being released throughout the troposphere, not just at the tropopause. Which is why Earth’s emission temperature occurs at around 10km above the surface, not the tropopause.

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  • #
    el gordo

    William Happer had the president’s ear, but the Potus has minders who thought it was a risky venture.

    https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/09/why-high-profile-climate-science-opponent-quit-trump-s-white-house

    We should be grateful for small mercies, at least Donald has a smattering of understanding. He knows La Nina is coming, temperatures will fall.

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    • #

      La Nina certainly seems to be coming but also, if the work of Prof. Valentina Zharkova is correct, then we’re at the start of a Grand Solar Minimum (GSM). This GSM is predicted to last 3 solar cycles (about 33 years) and although the impacts won’t be as severe as the Maunder minimum in the 17th century it’s expected to result in at least 1C cooling in average temperatures. If the climate follows the same trajectory as the Maunder minimum then the weather will go apeshit.

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      • #
        el gordo

        Val is skating on thin ice, there is no reason to assume that temperatures are going to fall drastically any time soon.

        https://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_September_2020_v6.jpg

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        • #
          Strop

          I know some people in the markets say “the trend is your friend” but they also say “past performance is no guarantee of future results”.

          If your message is simply don’t assume then fair enough.

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      • #
        Graeme No.3

        There was a lot of volcanic action a few decades before the Maunder Minimum, indeed decades of cooler weather before. Samuel Pepys noted warm summers in the Restoration year and in London in 1665 & 1666 (the year of the Great Fire). After that things got pretty bad** until 1710 (The Year of the Big Freeze remembered decades later).

        ** One estimate was that the winter of 1695 killed a third of scottish highlanders. As these were the types who derided the son of a chieftain for making a pillow of snow while he slept on bare ground during a raid, it would seem that the weather wasn’t good.

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    StephenP

    Endemic racism and white privilege doctrines seem to be the modern equivalents of the Roman Catholic doctrine of Original Sin.
    There is no way to avoid it, you are stuck with it.
    At least the Roman Catholics allowed the concept of forgiveness, whereas the other doctrines seem to have the aim of total destruction of jobs, reputation and maybe even eventually lives.

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  • #
    UK-Weather Lass

    Thanks for a very interesting post.

    In my relatively small community pf a couple of hundreds of thousands or so the infection rate of SARS-CoV-2 has very slightly risen in September from the low achieved in July. It seems we have some kind of herd immunity whatever that may mean. Given the dramatic and draconian policy changes we have seen locally and our inability to test everyone simply and easily in suitable local venues it suggests that we are now heading for a ‘normal’ ‘flu season but with abnormal measures in place in all our health facilities and much fear and anxiety in our chattering classes ruling overwhelming sense and sensibility and adding to the problems.

    I see little mental toughness and resolution of the kind needed and I see a media fanning the flame of the particular streaks of weakness we wimply cannot afford to have as a species. That is what alarms me. It is the chattering classes that are in denial.

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      Graeme No.3

      The infection rate (or the test results) have risen substantially in the UK and other countries in Europe, yet the number of deaths remains low.
      Either the virus has mutated to a much less dangerous form or more people are resistent, either by “herd immunity” or by previous exposure to coronavirus outbreaks, or the test is giving false readings. It will be shown by the coming winter in Europe.
      Curiously, the lockdown hard and early approach might turn out to be a failure when Australia discards quarantine in 2012 as winer approaches.

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  • #
    Another Ian

    Might be somewhat O?T BUT


    Boots
    October 5, 2020 at 12:53 am

    Ezra wins twitter tonight…

    @ezralevant
    The only vaccine I’d consider taking is Trumpacillin.

    https://twitter.com/ezralevant/status/1312933849035407365

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/10/05/october-5-2020-reader-tips/#comment-1361526

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    Jojodogfacedboy

    The subversion of truth and facts is by our own collective governments.
    At any time, they could have warned their citizens instead of being collective puppets.
    That then would open the Pandora’s Box of reassessing government policies to facts and the many errors generated in the past, mostly in the education field.
    You can’t have that..our scientists made errors? Impossible…
    So now we have this mess today.

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    reformed warmist of logan

    A CRY FOR HELP

    Where have all the adults in the room gone? …
    … I am sick of all the bullying!
    – And I want my Momma!!

    (If that’s not one of the hugest ironies that you’ve ever heard, I’ll skip the full length of Brisbane’s Queen street Mall in my boxer shorts!!)

    The Political Correctness obsession of the last 30 years, has now morphed into today’s B.L.M. & Cancel Culture.
    Throughout the western world, from the Fortune 500 companies, down to the local independent super-market & individuals, everyone is bullied into compliance.
    If someone falls foul of the alleged majority view, then they are instantly condemned to the modern-day equivalent of a leper colony.
    Oh, you think this is an over-reach, please consider this following important excerpt:–

    “Many Americans live in a constant state of fear – not necessarily a fear of violence, but from having their lives and careers destroyed at the most (critical) moment, and for the most trivial reason.
    a) A recent headline read: “Disgraced MFL., NFL. announcer Thom Brennaman resigns from Reds broadcasts after using an anti-gay slur.” Brennaman was a 33-year veteran as a broadcaster, and a single three-letter word starting with “f” and ending in “g”, said over a hot mic. Was all it took for his career to collapse.
    b) NBA. announcer John Focke was suspended for a tweet about the Charlotte Hornets victory over the Denver Nuggets, where he typed the “n-word” instead of “Nuggets”. The media instantly targeted him for extermination, arguing that Focke deliberately wrote the racist word because he’s racist. How could anyone think an NBA. Announcer would intentionally destroy his career and deliberately make himself unemployable in the industry forever? Considering those two words only differ by two letters, and both of those letters are right next to each other on the keyboard, it’s more than plausible it was only a typo. (or auto-spell checked).
    c) Hockey announcer Jeremy Roenick is suing NBC. News for firing him, allegedly because he’s a straight white male and a Trump supporter, who needs to make room for diversity. Considering the hostility towards Trump within the media, Roenick’s allegations are undoubtedly possible.
    d) ESPN. fired tennis commentator Doug Adler for describing Venus Williams’ strategy as the “guerrilla effect”. Cancel culture leftists immediately demanded Adler’s termination for associating a black tennis player with a gorilla. Of course, many leftists cannot discern the difference between the words “guerrilla” and “gorilla”. ESPN. executives are aware the word “guerrilla” is not new in the tennis world, but they fired Adler anyway. In his wrongful termination lawsuit, Adler said: “They killed me, they made me unemployable. They ended my career; they killed my reputation, my good name”. Adler went on to say, “they effectively branded me, my character and my reputation for the rest of my life.”
    The left’s infatuation for destroying the lives and careers of anyone who offends them is not limited to sports broadcasters. Still, so many examples within a tiny industry should illustrate the extent of the problem.
    Every day, Americans walk on eggshells, glancing over their shoulders before sharing their opinions. This fear is not exclusive to Republicans. I’ve worked with many Democrats who have shared the same concerns in the corporate world and speak with extreme caution before disclosing that they don’t believe gender is a social construct, or some other fundamental truth the left would destroy them for saying.” 1
    Everywhere you look the social narrative has been, and is continuing to be, increasingly (mis-)directed by bullies.
    [Bully, most often known to be: A person who is intentionally physically, or emotionally cruel to others; esp. to those who are weaker or have less power or privilege.]
    Clearly this has been happening for quite some time now.
    I am in my mid-fifties, and perceive that this trend has been happening mainly since the end of the “post-war era”, which of course also coincides with the “swinging 60’s”.
    Main-stream media has been a driving force for much of this.
    Equally clearly, this has been getting worse every few years, esp. this century.
    Plainly social media has had a large part to play in this.
    Now when I say everywhere you look, it is literally EVERYWHERE!!
    Obviously we are all “time-poor” in our results-focussed jobs/lives, but I will try and be as brief as possible, by mentioning only seven very critical areas:–
    1. Gender quotas
    When Gail Kelly was the head of Westpac (from 2008 to 2015), I am sure the last thing she would have liked to have heard any of her co-board members whisper is, “She only got this role because she’s a woman”.
    Can anyone else see the “Elephant in the room” here?
    A lot more women have been graduating from Australia’s universities in my lifetime – and in many disciplines, more-so than men.
    Over the coming one to two decades many more women will be moving to senior roles, but this is not rocket science and it will happen organically.
    (It is even possible that the over-exuberance of quota-ideology may even retard this occurring.)
    2. Trans-gender politics
    Why does it not seem to bother a lot of parents that with the current lax laws, it is now allowed for an adult male (20, 35 or 65) to patronize a ladies toilet, where girls as young as five or eight will also patronize.
    The construct of gender fluidity and its normalizing, will lead to many more social problems in the coming years.
    3. Gay marriage
    During the time of the gay marriage plebiscite, people lost their jobs for holding a contrary view.
    To this day I have not seen one survey of gay people on this subject.
    The concept of gay marriage of itself may not necessarily be a bad thing.
    But what many people fail to appreciate, inc. many people in the gay community, is that people with much more on their agenda have hi-jacked the standards of “The common man”. (Imagined sexist reference intended.)
    The subsequent “add-ons” of these people might include; paedophilia, polygamy & bestiality.
    4. Climate emergency
    During the Australian federal election last year, a t.v. journalist at channel 10 lost his job for simply asking the then opposition leader, Bill Shorten, for more detailed costings on Labor’s energy policy.
    Has anyone ever stopped to ask those on the left side of this debate for a “Cost-Benefit Analysis” of the huge impost they so casually seek to employ on all the people of the world.
    Needless-to-say, this impost is especially on those in the advanced countries, and yet surprisingly, just as negatively affects those that are not!
    5. Covid-19
    In the fog of war, the first casualty is the truth. The effects of Covid-19 on the global economy this year, have been of “war-like” proportions.
    Every death is a tragedy, and this is something that plainly has universal acceptance.
    However, given that the global ratio of lives lost this year to total births last year is … 1:92, it’s not drawing too much of a long bow to say that most of the governments of the world have over-reacted! 2
    (Especially given that some governments’ actions actually made things far worse, eg. Democrat-run cities like New York confining affected elderly to nursing homes instead of hospitals.)
    This ratio in Australia is far lower … only 1 Covid-19 death for every 445 births or immigrants in 2019. 2
    6. Black lives matter
    There are far more whites killed by American police, or blacks killed by other blacks, than there are blacks killed by police.
    But yet the entire focus of both main-stream and social media is on the latter.
    7. Cancel Culture
    The world today is a place of beauty and wonder, where over eight billion people live, and half to three-quarters of them (depending on which metric one chooses to use) enjoy a lifestyle that our fore-bears of 300, 200, yes even 100 years ago could only dream of!
    Yes the explorers of centuries past would fail many/most character tests of our modern-day world views, but that does not make them bad people.
    Furthermore, many good deeds of the by-gone days are shamefully over-looked!
    For example, nearly all those who shrilly condemn the song “Rule Brittania”, are blissfully ignorant that in the 1700’s over 1500 sailors of the British Royal Navy lost their lives while trying to stop the (Atlantic) slave trade!

    Clearly I have demonstrated how our daily life is starting to be critically threatened by many, and most of those should know better.
    So please, can people please try and be a little more adult, and next time one is tempted to have a knee-jerk reaction to maintain the status-quo on a given topic, remember that the view you gravitate toward maybe that of a bully that’s view is very likely 180 degrees from your (& your children’s) best interests.

    1.Written by Bode Lang, AmericanThinker.com, 29/9/20, “How Trump can Connect with Moderate Democrats”.
    2.A combination of Worldometers.com & Wikipedia

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      Strop

      During the Australian federal election last year, a t.v. journalist at channel 10 lost his job for simply asking the then opposition leader, Bill Shorten, for more detailed costings on Labor’s energy policy.

      What was his name? I don’t recall hearing that he lost his job.

      I do recall that a worker up in QLD was laid off for asking Shorten about Labor proposing hit workers there with higher taxes.

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      Kalm Keith

      🙂 🙂

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    Gerry

    Rod Dreher has a book warning of the rise of “soft totalitarianism” where freedom of speech gets slowly eroded by PC types taking over the universities, NGOs, government departments and agencies, the media and the courts and tribunals ……it’s already happening but will probably pick up pace if Trump goes down …..”Live not by Lies”

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    Deano

    This is one of my hobby horses. Thanks for raising it.

    Workplaces are now being used to enforce dogma via their ‘People and Culture’ departments. Originally simply known as the ‘personnel officer’, these positions have been infiltrated by the left and gone from being simply another wing of administration, to powerful policy makers using threats of public embarrassment to scare management into agreeing with their lefty propaganda promotions.

    We should start boycotting businesses that allow this misuse of power to bully employees and suppliers out of their rights to free expression.

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    Habby

    You said “The danger of course is that if the US Democrats — who are currently more politically extreme than ever before — regain power in the US, they will change the system so they will be entrenched in power for the foreseeable future.”

    So tell me about the unseeming haste of the Republicans to appoint Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

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      Richard Ilfeld

      It is simply a matter of observation that in jurisdictions where progressives gain control, they immediately work to perpetuate their hold on power, this priority
      exceeding all others in governance. It is true internationally, as well in numerous US cities where they have had control for generations, and a few states as well.
      Usually the forms of democratic governance are retained, but the “risks” of an opposition victory are minimized. Techniques include, but are not limited to:
      Vastly increasing the civil services, as guaranteed votes.
      Nationalizing industries, as guaranteed votes.
      using a mob to intimidate the opposition.
      Making essentials like food and energy and medical car scarce and rationing same based on political orthodoxy.
      Creating a bogeyman enemy and basing election on emotional opposition to the falsehood.

      These progressive jurisdictions always become debt ridden, as there is not much of a mechanism to form capital and not much profit potential in private investment.
      They usually have an elite oligarchy that lives very well, but a brain drain of the upper middle class, if mobility is permitted. If it can be stopped it will be, as
      many will wish to leave.

      From Venezuela to Chicago to California to the Old Soviet Union to New Jersey the patterns are the same. The US constitution has been a brilliant document to retard the process, but it is becoming a dead letter in progressive hands; individual’s freedoms are not a prime characteristic of their regimes.

      The constitution specifies that a sitting president shall appoint a justice with the advice and consent of the senate. Without exception, presidents have made the appointment, and without exception the senate has made its decision. It is likely also true that without exception, the party not in power has disliked the outcome; were “unseemly haste” not available to you as a complaint one is certain you could find another. “Outside the legal mainstream” is always a good fallback.

      Elections still have consequences. Let us hope they remain fair, contested, and continue to do so. When this ceases, life gets much worse.

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      Fuel Filter

      There is no “unseemly haste” whatsoever. That’s a red herring. The Democrats are bitching about it only because they don’t want her on SCOTUS adjudicating any possible election fraud cases brought before them as in the 1980 election (Bush vs. Gore). They know damn well she’d decide the case based on constitutional principles, not thru some ideological lens like Ginsberg always did.

      The Republicans have the votes to pass her out of committee as it stands right now with no Democrat input whatsoever (i.e. there is, strictly speaking, no need for “hearings”) but they are gonna hold them anyway but with a strict limit of two weeks, which will piss off just the right people, no doubt (heh).

      Pay no attention to the men behind the curtain. She’s a shoo-in.

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        Howie from Indiana

        Bush vs. Gore was 2000

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          Fuel Filter

          Don’t know what made me write 1980. Brain-fart, mebbie? What an idiotic mistake!

          Hope that doesn’t brand me as some know-nothing moron. Thanks for pointing that out.

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            Fuel Filter

            I’d like to point out something of an error in the first graph of the article, above.

            “ Daniel Greenfield is a rising independent US journalist…”

            Daniel has been writing for decades. He has been pointing out the hypocrisy, errors and evil of the Left for as long. He founded FrontPageMag.com with a couple of others about a decade ago. There is also an indispensable associated resource on the same site, Discoverthenetworks.org (it may be .com) that digs deep into groups and individuals on the Left and exposes them for what they are (their funding, their real agendas, histories, etc). It has literally thousands of entries. It an encyclopedia of the Left. I urge all here to check it out.

            He also has his own blog SultanKnish.com which he posts to on a regular basis.

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        Serp

        I remember being shocked that the supreme court halted the ballot counting in that 2000 election; at that time I had only a rudimentary understanding of how the US conducts elections but I daresay twenty years later I’d be shocked all over again were that decision replayed.

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    tom0mason

    Much has changed, so much has stayed the same …
    .
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXBswFfh6AY

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    Fuel Filter

    Jo: Thank You so much for this post. The folk is OZ really need to keep up with the political news here in the States. It gladdens me when I see you post something about PDJT or some salient fact about my country.

    What happens here trickles down to you guys pretty damn fast and I’m so thankful you see that.

    Please keep up your work in this area and, of course, with your main thrust as well.

    I may have missed it, but have you posted about that idiot/lunatic CA Guv Newsom mandating that all cars sold in CA be electric by 2035?

    And he can’t even keep the lights on due to “mandated rolling blackouts”?!?

    Anyway, thanx again.

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    graham dunton

    So what is really behind all of this?
    If this is not proof enough, it is the deep state, meaning the world wide banking mafia. That is orchestrating this.
    2020-10-06-jandj.m-covidplus- senator Richard Black, in discussion with Jimmy and Joanne Moriarty- It discloses so much more than the coronavirus pandemic
    Circulate widely
    This will open up, with senator Richard Black, in discussion with Jimmy and Joanne Moriarty. It discloses so much more, than the coronavirus pandemic!
    Public video download links
    ret._state_senator_richard_black_joins_jimmy_joanne_moriarty_to_discuss_the_coronavirus_pandemic_360p.mp4

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