“Politicians are like bad horsemen who are so preoccupied with staying in the saddle that they can’t bother about where they’re going.” ― Joseph Alois Schumpeter

In 1989, famous Russian apparatchik Boris Yeltsin visited America. He saw our buildings, our space center, the Statue of Liberty. But what floored him -- made him despondent actually -- was a Texas grocery store he popped into. This worked.

Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America. —Eric Hoffer

“One of the most pervasive examples of this kind of blindness is one that I haven't seen mentioned explicitly. I'm going to call it orthodox privilege: The more conventional-minded someone is, the more it seems to them that it's safe for everyone to express their opinions.

It's safe for them to express their opinions, because the source of their opinions is whatever it's currently acceptable to believe. So it seems to them that it must be safe for everyone. They literally can't imagine a true statement that would get them in trouble.”  –Paul Graham

I don't know why the media never publicize a "Don't resist arrest" message.

But I do know that it benefits them financially not to do so. Some black people might listen to that message. Then no shooting, no subsequent riots, no months of monster click numbers for CNN.

"Pervasive antiwhite antagonism is perhaps the best-kept secret about black inner-city culture."  –Heather Mac Donald, The War on Cops

“Our philosophical motto is not 'I think, therefore I am' but 'He suffers, therefore he’s a victim.'”  -Theodore Dalrymple

"the loss of life is always tragic..."  B S

I decided to tackle the story about Charles Whitman, the famous tumor-having clocktower shooter.  Was he responsible for what he did, or was he acting against his will?

"We are choked with News and starved of History."  –Will Durant

“Saying “people of color” is similar to saying “colored people.” Having racial pride is similar to having racial insecurities. Wanting race exclusive spaces is similar to segregation. Yet people still advocate for one today while being passionately against the other.” -EricsElectrons

Why did Lara Logan move right? I have a theory.

“A neoconservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality. A neoliberal is a liberal who's been mugged by reality but has refused to press charges.” -Irving Kristol

"For my whole life, we have seen nothing but leftist failure after leftist failure, but, importantly, none of this means they're on the verge of being defeated.  Quite the opposite.

Pathogens which make you sick & less fit, are not for that reason on the verge of losing."  -eugyppius1

A Tallahassee individual understands the Will Smith slap because he, too, has the dreaded alopecia.  But alopecia merely means hair loss, bald, or balding.  Some 65% of Americans will have "alopecia" at one time.  What makes this man significant?  The journalist agrees with his view but cowardly hides behind his interview subject.  This is most journalism.

One major frustration of rightists like me is that big tech makes horrible business decisions yet each of these companies remain dominant.  Well, that's how it looked to people fifty years ago, too, and all of them fell apart.  This too shall pass.

The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind small.  –Sextus Empiricus, 3rd century AD

"This is the problem of despotism. It’s why despotism, or even just authoritarianism, is all-powerful and brittle at the same time. Despotism creates the circumstances of its own undermining. The information gets worse. The sycophants get greater in number. The corrective mechanisms become fewer. And the mistakes become much more consequential." -Kotkin

The President of Disney Karey Burke said she had two odd children, and so she wanted to make queer Disney movies the norm. What an odd basis for a business decision.

"We watch this process in the past centuries and especially in the past decades, on a world scale as the situation becomes increasingly dramatic. Liberalism was inevitably displaced by radicalism; radicalism had to surrender to socialism; and socialism could never resist communism." –Solzhenitsyn

I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do –Richard Feynman

Apparently a lot of good and bright people cannot tell a contrived event from a real one.

“I am only trying to call attention to a fact; the fact that this year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practice ourselves the kind of behavior we expect from other people. There may be all sorts of excuses for us. That time you were so unfair to the children was when you were very tired. That slightly shady business about the money—the one you have almost forgotten-came when you were very hard up. And what you promised to do for old So-and-so and have never done—well, you never would have promised if you had known how frightfully busy you were going to be… You notice that it is only for our bad behavior that we find all these explanations. It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired or worried or hungry; we put our good temper down to ourselves.” -CS Lewis, Mere Christianity

??

Our new SCOTUS nominee can't define "woman."  What I can't figure out is why she didn't provide the conventional definition.

The left accuses the right of being simplistic.  But nothing is more simple than saying everything is undefinable.

Certainly, it is a world of scarcity. But the scarcity is not confined to iron ore and arable land. The most constricting scarcities are those of character and personality. —William R. Allen

At Yale Law School, the Office of Student Affairs told students in an email last week that they could “swing by” the office to grab a “Critical Race Theory T-Shirt!” The T-shirt repeated the phrase “reparations & prison abolition” five times. -Aaron Sibarium

"life without meaning is the torture

Of restlessness and vague desire—

It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.” ― Edgar Lee Masters

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-takeover-of-americas-legal-system?s=r

There were odd stories about him; as that when children died he went part of the way with them, so that they should not be frightened. –J. M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy

Mr. Darling used to boast to Wendy that her mother not only loved him but respected him. He was one of those deep ones who know about stocks and shares. Of course no one really knows, but he quite seemed to know, and he often said stocks were up and shares were down in a way that would have made any woman respect him. –J. M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy

When George Burns was 97, he sang that he'd like to "do it again." How lovely.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qyBXrRINxc

Food cost about 18% of disposable income in 1960. By 2013 it was under 10%.

Every child is affected… the first time he is treated unfairly. All he thinks he has a right to when he comes to you to be yours is fairness. After you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but he will never afterwards be quite the same boy. –J. M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy