Tag: Evil Bastards

So Much For The Ivory Tower

Marxists, Seen On Campus

As universities all over the Western world start to sputter and fail because of funding shortages and bloated, costly bureaucracies, here’s an interesting take:

Universities’ response to the cash crisis reveals their deeper crisis of purpose. Up to 10,000 university jobs are reported to have been cut this year. Yet diversity, equity and inclusion teams seem to have been largely spared the axe. Instead, universities are cutting core academic disciplines. The University of Kent has closed its philosophy department, while Canterbury Christ Church University will no longer teach English literature – a university spokesperson described the course as ‘no longer viable in the current climate’.

Once, it would have been unthinkable for a university not to offer degrees in major branches of learning, such as literature or philosophy. These subjects were taught not because ‘the market’ made them ‘viable’, but because they contributed to our understanding of the word and what it means to be human. That they can now be so readily discarded speaks to an impoverished intellectual climate that universities themselves have helped to create.

Note the emphasized sentence.

What it shows to me is that the so-called intellectual rigor of the ivory tower has faded, if not disappeared altogether.  (I know, I know:  “Wake up, Kim, it’s been going on for decades!” )

As long as universities continue to be regarded as simply an adjunct to the marketplace — i.e. providing certification for careers — then of course the “thoughtful” classes such as philosophy or Shakespeare are going to suffer.  (Of course, certification is probably critical for careers such as engineering, medicine and the hard sciences, less so for law and suchlike.)

Why one would need a B.A. to be a personal assistant or office receptionist, of course, simply underlines the fact that the high school diploma has ceased to be any kind of qualification whatsoever.

And universities are becoming equally useless.  Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of Gramscian Marxists.

Overkill

Anti-Gun Nannies

And then there’s this:

To be brutally honest, a high-capacity magazine ban is kinda pointless when you consider that one only needs a single bullet to commit suicide.

But that only goes to show that apart from being a loathsome, shameless opportunist, this Marxist bitch also proves that there’s absolutely no depth that Gun Control Inc. will not stoop to in order to push their foul agenda.

Bastards.

It’s Worse Than That

Journalist Scum, Politics

In a good post about the latest filth to emanate from the Biden cabal (wholesale pardon of murderers from facing the federal chop), Hugh Hewitt writes:

We will remember “37 out of 40,” and biographers and presidential historians will long note and long record and elaborate on this abuse of power, along with the pardon of Hunter Biden, and all the other outrageous abuses of power. The people around our apparently incapacitated president don’t care at all what history will declare about Biden. Their indifference is purposeful. It’s a display of shamelessness.

They “don’t care at all what history will declare about Biden”  because in times to come, the Marxists and their lickspittle historians will just whitewash events or cause this entire shameful episode to disappear from our history.  Remember, Oceania has always been at war with EastAsia, the chocolate ration has always been 5 grams per person, and shame is an unknown emotion to the Left.

And That’s Why

Entertainment, Wokism

How about this one:

“It’s a Wonderful Life” fans have expressed outrage that Amazon Prime cut a crucial scene from the beloved Christmas classic.

An abridged version of the 1946 film has been edited to leave out a scene that many consider the most important in the movie, which follows the character of businessman George Bailey as he considers taking his own life.

The scene in question, known as the ‘Pottersville scene,’ sees George wish that he had never been born before his guardian angel reminds him that he needs to earn ‘his angel wings.’

In the original version of the movie, George tells the angel that he believes he is worth more dead than alive. The angel then tells George that he does not know all he has done in his life, before showing him a version of a grim world where he never existed.

That’s when George realizes he has a wonderful life and has positively impacted his loved ones, who he is desperate to get back to as the film comes to a resolution.

But in the abridged version of the film on Prime, the moment where the angel tells George he has to earn his wings abruptly cuts to George happily running through the streets after he’s reconciled with his own life — without including what led him to his newfound acceptance.

…and harking back to the title of this post:  this is why I have bought and continue to acquire the DVDs of all my favorite movies (Casablanca, 1984, It Happened One Night, all the Fred/Ginger movies, etc.) and I have a backup multi-format DVD player in case my new one ever breaks.

That way, nobody (e.g. Amazon) can ever take them away from me or “abridge” them.  Just who the fucking hell do they think they are?  The Pope who had all Michelangelo’s nude works defaced by painting over the women’s pudenda?

Fuck ’em all, and the nanny horse they rode in on.

Bastards.

The Impossible Dream

Communication, Politics

Like many people, I’ve been amused by Leftists all over the U.S. squealing about how they need to combat “right-wing” podcasters like Joe Rogan by setting up competitive podcasts which express those views of the Left (as though the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune,CNN, CSNBC, CBS, ABC and NBC weren’t sufficient outlets for Leftist agitprop  already).

Clifton Duncan has one such take on this silliness:

They can never build “their own Joe Rogan.” The notion is ridiculous–not just because it evinces their tendency toward top-down control, but because their cult renders intellectual, political and philosophical exploration outside of narrow ideological parameters impossible. These people have psychotic meltdowns, blacklist peers, and cut off relatives over politics. They’re incapable of empathizing with anyone outside their congregation. For all their fetishizing of credentials, their masturbatory exaltation of their educations, they’re violently allergic to intellectual curiosity–how on earth COULD they “build” their own Rogan, or a Lex Fridman, whose curiosity and openness are part of their brand?

Well, yes;  all that’s true, and more besides.

But beyond their genetic inability to create a competitive “voice” lies one inescapable truth:  they can create all the podcasts they want, but they’ll only ever generate an audience of a few hundred thousand people (roughly, the equivalent of the NYT subscription base and/or CNN’s viewership).

I remember when Rush Limbaugh died, the Left was ecstatic because, they thought, the field was now open for radio shows like the leftist Pacifica to capture the radio audience for the Left.

Never happened, did it?  Because most Americans don’t buy into their shit.  Want proof?  Of the top dozen or so talk radio shows in the U.S., Sean Hannity alone has just over 14 million weekly listeners, and a huge percentage of the talk show audience listens to the likes of Dan Bongino, Mark Levin, Hugh Hewitt, Dana Loesch, Mike Gallagher, Glen Beck, Brian Kilmeade and Mike Berry at their various time slots during the day and night.  (You can’t combine them because there is considerable overlap in the conservative audience, who might listen to four, five or more shows during any given week.

The sole Left-wing radio host in the top dozen is Tom Hartmann (of Pacifica) whose midday show attracts some 7 million listeners per week, compared to his midday conservative competitors Dana Loesch and Dan Bongino, whose combined audience is more than double that, at nearly 17 million.

And just to be clear on the numbers:  Nielsen/Arbitron admits candidly that their numbers severely understate rural listenership, and always have.

Somehow, I suspect that farmers and country folk (mostly conservative) greatly outnumber any hippie communes out in the sticks.

So yeah, while the Left may have a systemic problem in putting together a non-traditional media voice, the principal reason they’re always going to fail is that Leftism per se  is hugely disliked by and abhorrent to the vast majority of Americans, FJB’s 81 million “voters” notwithstanding.  And the social adjuncts to Leftism (high taxes, gun control, uncontrolled illegal immigration, LGBTOSTFU and Big Government, to name but some) are each individually just as unpopular as Socialist government in toto.

Long may it ever be so.

Nothing New

Anarchist thugs

Christopher Rufo examines the modern Zeitgeist with respect to the murder of that healthcare company executive in Manhattan, summarizing it as “left-wing nihilism”.  (It’s a long read, but a very good one.  Moreover, the topic deserves more than bullet points and bumper sticker aphorisms, so I urge you all to go over there.)

The only issue I have is his description of the condition as “nihilism”.  It isn’t;  it’s anarchism.

And once you realize that, then the parallels between the late 19th century in both Europe and the United States will become immediately apparent.  (For those who want to see that for themselves, I urge you — and not for the first time — to read Barbara Tuchman’s The Proud Tower  for an outstanding analysis of the anarchist movement of that period.)

Simply put, then, the growth of anarchic movements in the West was and is a manifestation of desperate social frustration by young people, and the assassination of politicians, public figures and (back then) royalty was, if you like, simply an inchoate and largely-indiscriminate striking out against authority.  The reasons could be any of a number — hatred of the ruling class, hatred of big business, hatred of the police/army and so on — and just anyone in authority could be a target, whether “justified” or not.

The trap we need to avoid is that of accommodation and empathy towards such anarchists.  Those all very well in dealing with small children, but when adults strike out with such viciousness and violence against society’s laws, they should be treated no differently from rabid animals, and destroyed.  (Small wonder that the Manhattan murderer is going to face federal charges as well as state charges;  New York state set aside the death penalty, you see, but the federal government hasn’t.)

And if they executed Timothy McVeigh for his murderous action, this little bastard Mangione deserves no less.