The Bookworm Beat 12/5/14 — “Now It All Makes Sense” edition, and Open Thread

Woman writingA fellow conservative and I spoke last night about the primary emotion driving limousine liberals’ politics: Their politics announce to the world that each is “a good person.” It’s an extension of that saying that “conservatives view liberals as misguided; liberals view conservatives as evil.” The unspoken corollary to that last thought is that liberals are therefore good.

Which leads one to a question: Why do liberals need to use their political identity to define themselves as good (as opposed to being evil)? My best guess? God.

People who are traditionally religious keep their politics in harmony with their religious beliefs, but it’s their relationship to God that matters when it comes to determining in their own minds whether they are good or evil. As long as they are consistent with God’s mandates, they really don’t care about Mrs.-Smith-up-the-hill’s opinion or about Joe-the-teacher’s opinion.

Liberals, however, tend to be less God-oriented. Even when they profess faith and a belief in God, they work to conform God’s word to the Democrat party platform, not vice versa. For liberals, the marker of innate goodness isn’t fealty to God, it’s fealty to the political party that is the “not evil” party. To them, it’s spiritually important to be in harmony with Nancy Pelosi and Edward Kennedy (PBUH).

And now back to our regularly scheduled round-up:

Rolling Stone backs down from the UVA rape story

It’s always fascinating to see how quickly the dominoes pick up speed once they start falling. Rolling Stone began by taking over the news cycle with a horrific story that seemed to prove definitively that Southern white men and Southern white institutions are irreparably evil. In the beginning, just a few voices started saying “Are you sure the emperor is wearing clothes?” but that gave courage to more and louder voices. And today, Rolling Stone caves:

Several key aspects of the account of a gang rape offered by a University of Virginia student in Rolling Stone magazine have been cast into doubt, including the date of the alleged attack and details about the alleged attacker, according to interviews and a statement from the magazine backing away from the article.

It’s gotten so bad, even the protagonist’s friends are caving:

A group of Jackie’s close friends, who are sex assault awareness advocates at U-Va., said they believe something traumatic happened to Jackie but also have come to doubt her account. They said details have changed over time, and they have not been able to verify key points of the story in recent days. A name of an alleged attacker that Jackie provided to them for the first time this week, for example, turned out to be similar to the name of a student who belongs to a different fraternity, and no one by that name has been a member of Phi Kappa Psi.

I would guess that “Jackie” either has a political agenda or is a mentally disturbed young woman.  If the former, she should be pilloried; if the latter, she should be treated.

But is it bad for the Jews?

The old joke used to be that, no matter what happened in the world, a Jew’s first question would be “But is it good for the Jews?” In an era that has uncanny hallmarks of the mid- to late-1930s, the question Jews ask today is “How bad is this going to be for the Jews?” After all, no ones first guess upon hearing about Ferguson — a black man shot by a non-Jewish police officer — would be that the Jews would get blamed. But sure enough, they did. Richard Baehr explains.

The world burns and Obama blames the Jews

In the same vein as the Ferguson/(non-existent) Jewish connection, Barack Obama has once again turned his eyes to the Middle East to attack his favorite scapegoat: Israel. Everything I could say about this would be trite and obvious. I’ll quote two of my favorite writers instead. First, John Hinderaker:

Russia is gobbling up much of Ukraine. China is putting growing pressure on its neighbors in East Asia. ISIS is chopping the heads off Americans. Syria’s government continues to slaughter thousands of its citizens. Iran is working feverishly on a bomb and running circles around our negotiators. Boko Haram is wreaking havoc in Nigeria. Hamas is raining rockets and missiles down on its neighbors. And the Obama administration reportedly is mulling the imposition of sanctions on…Israel. Why? Because Jews are building homes in Jerusalem.”

And second, Rick Moran:

Taken alone, the possible sanctions on Israel are bad enough.  But if the president goes through with it – and then vetos an Iran sanctions bill that will likely hit his desk early next year – what does that say about the president’s Middle East strategy?  A full-bore pivot to Iran while simultaneously turning away from Israel would be a catastrophe for the Sunni Arab states that have been U.S. allies for 60 years.  The only reason I can think of for turning to Iran and away from Israel is that the smart foreign policy thinkers in the administration believe that making Iran a regional hegemon will help keep the peace.

Obama understands that, if you’re the first black president and you’re going to sin, sin big

Once Obama decided that he was no longer obligated to comply with the Constitution, he pretty much set himself free from all laws (which are, after all, for the little people).  If you’re the state and the state is you, and you’ve announced to all and sundry that you’re going to veto in their entirety America’s existing immigration laws, why should you even bother to put that unilateral veto in writing and sign it?

The one thing Obama knows with certainty is that the Republicans aren’t going to do anything to stop him.  Bill Whittle, of course, understands completely what’s going on:

We are allowing Barack Obama to get away with this because he is black. That’s it, and that’s all. To say if he were white he would have been impeached already is a non-sequitur; if he were white a man of his inexperience and radical background would never have been elected in the first place. America voted for him to prove they were not racist, and now we will let him destroy this government for the same reason.

It’s guilt that paralyzes us – this Progressive Obama dictatorship is built on guilt over the original sin of slavery.

It’s guilt – and also fear. That’s why Obama and Eric Holder have been encouraging the Ferguson protestors to stay the course. “We don’t give a fuck about your laws,” said one of them, and the President and the disgraceful Attorney General obviously don’t either. They need Ferguson to remind the American people of what will happen should they decide to hold the first black President accountable to the same rules as the previous forty-four.

It wasn’t the choke-hold that killed Eric Garner

Until today, I hadn’t watched the Eric Garner arrest video.  I did after reading Jack Dunphy’s post, written from a police point of view, saying that the arresting officer did not use excessive force — and, significantly, saying that the video snippet released to the public had too little information to show a deadly choke-hold.

As a wrestler, I’m going to chime in too.  Choke-holds choke people out two ways:  they stop them from breathing, in which case they can’t talk; or they shut down blood flow through the carotid artery, in which case they’re peacefully out in a second — and, if the choke isn’t released soon enough, they’re dead.  The video shows neither of those things:  Garner is talking, which means he’s both breathing and that his carotid artery isn’t restricted.

To the extent the video continues after that brief “choke-hold” moment to show Garner continuing to talk, it’s clear that the choke-hold, on its own account, was insufficient to kill.

What I’ve said doesn’t deal with the fact that an overweight asthmatic might die suddenly from the effects of a ruckus, or that it isn’t ridiculous that we have forceful arrests for selling loose cigarettes.  It just deals with the wrestler’s reality, which is that the choke you see in the video doesn’t kill.

Calm down, crazy suburbanites.  Monsanto will not kill you.

One of the trends that most irritates me on my real-me Facebook feed is the paranoia about Monsanto.  Politically-active libs are paranoid about Charles and David Koch, but all libs are paranoid about Monsanto and its allegedly evil corporate drive to destroy the world’s food supply through genetic manipulation.  Gentle suggestions that humans have genetically manipulated food crops since time immemorial are rebuffed with a wall of “evil corporation” conspiracy theories.

Through admissions of one of their own, however, Abe Greenwald has discovered that, behind the fear and magical thinking lies . . . nothing at all.  Even the paranoid people’s own scientists, when backed away from their extreme conclusions, have to admit that there is no evidence whatsoever that Monsanto is releasing Frankenfoods on the world.

Has your community be mapped judgmentally?

Sadie sent me a link to a funny, funny Tumblr site. People submit “judgmental maps” of their community to the site. I didn’t see a Marin map (the judgment for the entire community would have been “spoiled and rich”), but there was a funny San Francisco map that nailed, pretty accurately some of the neighborhoods in which I lived and learned.