Tag: Evil Bastards

Actual Meanings

Deep Thoughts

I have to admit that I’ve missed Jeff Goldstein’s Protein Wisdom these past few years — Jeff was one of the First Wave of bloggers, and his writings were always interesting, not to say educational.

As is his latest post.  Witness:

At its essence, stakeholder capitalism is Marxian capitalism run through a lens of business ethics. It is the attempt to maintain authoritarian control over capitalism by forcing upon the Invisible Hand a Velvet Glove, then using that glove, which hides an iron fist, to pound the world into adopting values that both assert and maintain its worldview. It is Theory applied to markets, marketing, wealth creation and management, and an overall globalized ethos of required and policed “virtue,” with the end goal being — as it always is under the discourses of cultural Marxist thought — power: who has it, who controls it, and who uses it for their own ends most effectively and ruthlessly.

Seldom have I seen varied metaphors blended so seamlessly into a single argument.

And the well-stated zinger:

In the stakeholder capitalist system, investors aren’t — or at least, they shouldn’t be — solely interested in profits driven by production and consumption. And this is because to the stakeholder capitalist, itself a euphemism for collectivist corporatist, “it is well proven that our current form of Capitalism is inherently unsustainable because it requires endless growth on a planet with finite resources.”

Of course, none of this is “well proven” — the history of shareholder capitalism suggests the opposite, in fact, as innovation has led to the production of more and more out of less and less — but whether this is or isn’t the material case is incidental to those who are working on this inorganic worldwide paradigm shift commonly known as The Great Reset.

Read the whole thing, because it’s protean.

The “Clean Vs. Dirty” Thing

Conservatism, Essays, Marxists, Wokism

One of Jeff Goldstein’s fine statements in Maybe I’ll be there to shake your hand (as discussed in the above post) is this one:

The Global Elites behind BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, the WEF, the WHO, the UN, et al., have never liked that presumptuous, barely-credentialed nobodies, can get on planes and travel the globe, just as they do. They never accepted that the filthies can eat a fine rib eye, or drive a nice car, or own a comfortable home — and not have to rely on their largess, or answer to their diktats.

For those who missed the allusion to “filthies”, here’s its foundation:  another Jeff (Tucker) wrote a brilliant piece called Clean vs. Dirty: A Way to Understand Everything, and here’s its basic premise:

It is possible to understand nearly everything going on today – the Covid response, the political tribalism, the censorship, the failure of the major media to talk about anything that matters, the cultural and class divides, even migration trends – as a grand effort by those people who perceive themselves to be clean to stay away from people they regard as dirty.
…
They don’t want pet waste on their carpet, thus comparing ideas with which they disagree with a nasty pathogen. They are seeking to stay clean.
In this case and in every case, they are glad for the government to operate as the clean-up crew. It’s dirty ideas and people who hold them they oppose. They don’t want to have friends who articulate them or live in communities where such people live.

And the reason they don’t want to deal with people like Tucker Carlson, Ann Coulter, Elon Musk or, for that matter, any unwashed scum with uncomfortable ideas supported by incontrovertible evidence and/or historical precedent — the reason is that their own worldview is based upon theory and (they think) altruism.  The thing about both theory and altruism is that these are clean philosophies — their motives are pure, you see — and they hate to see those cherished ideals get messed upon when some Unwashed (like, for example, me) points out that their climate “science” is based upon shaky data and wishful thinking, while their predictive models are hopelessly in accurate and cannot form the basis of social or political policy.

The Cleanies likewise hate it when someone lowers income tax rates, because revenues will be “lost” — except, of course, that anyone with the slightest knowledge of history (never mind economics) can point out that when tax rates are cut, tax revenues increase, in some cases massively.

But those messy, messy realities sully the purity of their philosophy, so best to ignore — or better yet, suppress — those dirty realists.

Of course, the reality I’d like to impose on them is fairly simple:

…but no doubt, someone’s going to have a problem with this Occamic proposition.

It might, however, be the only solution — messy though it is.

Tuckered Out

Media Assholes

I see that the Dirty Digger has fired Tucker Carlson because reasons (you pick ’em;  they’re probably all correct).

Best comment so far:

No real reason to watch Fox News anymore, even though I only ever watched Tucker and Gutfeld — and Gutfeld’s not enough to hold me.

At the beginning, Roger Ailes was asked by Murdoch what he was going to bring to Fox News, to which Ailes is reputed to have answered, “Half the market” — and then he did just that.

Now, of course, it’s Fox’s turn to wave good-bye to that half of the market as Fox News turns into CNN Lite.

So long, Murdochspawn.

Now THIS Means War

Literature, Two-Minute Hate, Wokism

Okay, now it’s time for the pikes to be sharpened:

The light-hearted escapades of Jeeves and Wooster have become the latest victims of the seemingly relentless march of literature’s word police. 
PG Wodehouse’s books on the pair’s aristocratic misadventures have been identified as having what the publishers describe as ‘unacceptable’ prose. 
The comic novels have had passages cut or reworked for new editions by Penguin Random House, as well as trigger warnings added to warn readers of ‘outdated’ themes.

If any body of literature can be classified as “completely harmless”, that would be the collected works of P.G. Wodehouse, quite possibly the world’s greatest-ever humorist.

In fact, the only group of people who could lay claim to being offended by Wodehouse’s writings would be the British aristocracy, whom P.G. universally skewers on the point of his razor-sharp wit.  And they wouldn’t, because as one toff reportedly said, “Every single character in Wodehouse resembles a member of my family”.

But let us not giggle, because there is serious work to be done…

Bastards.

Vandalism

Anarchist thugs, Eco-Crap

We know that of all the games played in the world, snooker is the worst offender, environmentally-speaking.

Okay, if it isn’t, then how would one explain this activity?

One’s initial reaction to this little silliness, of course, runs to hanging or impalement.  But snooker’s a gentle game, so I think a gentler punishment is called for, something not as extreme.

So if we all agree that flogging is appropriate, then the only remaining question is:

How many strokes? 

Your recommendations in Comments.  I’ll open the bidding at 50.


…and seeing as there are female vandals involved, let’s not forget #MeToo:

It’s only fair and equitable.

Lies Upon Lies Upon Lies

Eco-Crap, Two-Minute Hate, Watermelons

Thanks are owed to Jack Hellner at American Thinker  for taking the time to do what I’ve been too lazy to do:  cataloguing all the climate lies of the past fifty or so years.

I’m reminded of Hitchens’s Razor, that statements presented without evidence can equally be dismissed without evidence.  Trouble is that the Climate Charlatans have repeatedly presented evidence, except that the data themselves have been not only fallacious but outright lies, fabrications and distortions.

So… when can we begin the mass hangings and firing squads?