Article by Gary Gindler in The American Thinker

The Beasts Smell Blood

China and Russia are aggressively raising their stakes against Taiwan and Ukraine.  Why?  Just take a sober view of Biden's America, at war with itself.  China and Russia came to a pragmatic conclusion: America in 2021 has neither the desire nor the courage nor the political will to protect itself and its allies.

It was under Biden that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline work continued.  It was under Biden that the preparations for the seizure of Taiwan by China entered the final phase.  Under Biden, China's seizure of the South China Sea, suspended by Trump, is close to completion.  Under Biden, both Russia and China decided on something that was simply unthinkable under Trump — they forced preparations for open aggression against neighbors.

Trump, at the end of a dinner with the Chinese leader, three months into his presidency, fired 60 Tomahawk missiles at Syria.  Everything was organized so no one doubted that the missiles were intended for China and Russia's leaders, although they were fired into Syria.  A year later, in February 2018, a platoon of American Rangers defeated a battalion tactical group of Russian mercenaries in Syria.  Of the 500 people, few survived, and all 27 tanks and armored vehicles were destroyed in a four-hour battle.

Both China and Russia immediately realized that, with Trump, the guy who brought down a billion dollars' worth of missiles while sweets were being served, it was necessary to remain within the bounds of decency.  Under Biden, no one is going to remain within these bounds.  On the contrary, Beijing and Moscow are well aware that Biden is a temporary, accidental person in the White House, and it is necessary to strike while the iron is hot.  Under Biden, Beijing's and Moscow's expansionist plans are destined to come true.

Russia and China are united against a common enemy.  China's #1 territorial objective is the capture of Taiwan.  Russia's territorial task #1 is the seizure of Ukraine.  Trump was an insurmountable obstacle to their aggressive plans for four years.  Putin has taught the world that he is amassing troops on the border with Ukraine every spring.  But with each escalation, nothing happens.  More precisely, nothing happened during the Trump era, but with Biden, it can explode.

Trump gave Ukraine the opportunity to arm and strengthen its army for four additional years and arm itself not with outdated Soviet equipment, but with modern NATO weapons.  How did Ukraine use these four additional years?  It's still unknown, but somehow, Trump is one of the most hated American presidents in Ukraine today.

The situation in Taiwan is spectacularly similar to the situation in Ukraine.  In Taiwan, there is also an influential group that seeks Big Brother's wing.  Big Brother for Taiwan is Beijing; for Ukraine, it is Moscow.

The hackers traditionally referred to as "the Russians" attacked the control system of a 5,000-mile pipeline on the U.S. Atlantic coast.  Why?  They knew full well that under Trump, the answer would be so dire that it's better not to even try.  But under Biden, there may not be an answer at all.  The "Russians" reasoned, quite soberly, that the shutdown of the pipeline plays into the hands of Biden and his entourage, who are likely to use this episode to advance their Green New Deal.  (Note that Joe Biden shut off more pipelines in three months than all the cyber-attacks of 2021 combined, pushing America's gas prices to a six-year high.)

And so  it has happened — the Biden administration openly distanced itself from this problem, stating that the cyber-attack was not against the United States, but against a private company, so let this private company figure it out.

At the same time, we should, as in most cases, use the word "Russians" in quotation marks because nowadays, any schoolchild can change his I.P. address at will.  Hackers almost exclusively use other counties' I.P. addresses to deflect suspicion from themselves.  As a matter of fact, most professional hacking resembles Russian matryoshka dolls — a false flag operation encapsulated in yet another, more extensive false flag operation.

It's not only Russia and China that are moving.  Palestinian terrorists have also begun to stir.  The Fuehrer of the Palestinian Terrorist Authority demanded from Biden that the United States overturned President Reagan's 1987 decision to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization as a terrorist organization.  Mahmoud Abbas has been waiting a long time — he was silent under both Obama and Trump — but it was under Biden that Abbas raged.  Moreover, he demanded this not just anywhere, but from the podium of J Street — the anti-Semitic Jewish organization of America, the Jewish assault battalion of the Democrat Party.  It sounds as though the construction of the first Iranian nuclear bomb is ahead of schedule.

Hamas took a long time to prepare, but they realized that they had to hurry, too.  Hundreds of rockets hit Israel just days after Biden complained that in 2024, he would re-duel with Trump.  Even the remote possibility of Trump's return to the White House has forced Hamas to speed up its plans.  A tiny Jewish democratic oasis in a sea of Islamic terrorist groups and Islamic tyrants is being bombed because a significant number of American Jews voted thoughtlessly in last year's presidential election.

It should not be forgotten that the bombing of Israel took place just a few weeks after Joe Biden restored multimillion-dollar funding to Palestinian terrorist organizations.  The basis for this decision by Biden was the fact that Trump had frozen it.

Understanding the causal relationship between "no terrorist financing — no missile attacks" and "terrorist financing — missile attacks" is unattainable for Democrats since it requires a level of intelligence not envisioned by leftist dogma.  If the Democrats had any remnant of their intellect left, they would have asked Hamas, which complains all the time that it has no money for a coronavirus vaccine, where its money came from for hundreds of rockets.

Finally, has anyone noticed a suspicious similarity in how Jewish pogroms under the leadership of Antifa, BLM, or Hamas proceed?  The difference between them is only geographic, not ideological.

Vile creatures around the world fear Trump, but not Biden. Hamas does not fear Biden.  The Palestinian Terrorist Autonomy does not fear Biden.  The Houthis do not fear the Biden administration.  The Revolutionary Terrorist Guard of Iran is also not afraid of Biden. America, in their eyes, is weak and decrepit, just like the inhabitant of the White House himself.

Three months after Biden moved to the White House, suddenly, as if on command, and almost simultaneously, many domestic and international crises have arisen.  Note that all these villains are in quite a hurry.  The weakness of the enemy always reassures those who have sold out to the devil.

Let's say thank you to Biden — now we know for sure what a world looks like in which no one reckons with America.

 

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5 Big Things Wrong With Biden’s Mask-Or-Vaccine Ultimatum

From being impractical to contradicting his own actions to being just plain obnoxious, here's a list of problems with Biden's latest bout of Twitter preaching.

by Elle Reynolds for The Federalist

In his latest act of COVID-19 theater, President Joe Biden tweeted Thursday evening, “The rule is now simple: get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do. The choice is yours.”

His freakishly condescending and out-of-touch messaging is all kinds of wrong. From being impractical to contradicting his own actions to being just plain obnoxious, here’s a list of problems with Biden’s latest bout of Twitter preaching.

1. Biden Has Been Vaccinated For Months and Still Wears a Mask

Biden received his first dose of the coronavirus vaccine on December 21, 2020, while televised. He received the second shot on January 11, 2021, a few days before his inauguration.

Yet he has continued to wear a mask months after being vaccinated, a move that would seem unnecessary based on his latest comments (and common sense). Vice President Kamala Harris does the same, even though she also received her final vaccine dose in January. Not content with one mask, both have often doubled up even post-vaccination, wearing some combination of a paper surgical mask, an N95 mask, and a cloth one.

Further mask-signaling, President Biden and the first lady were photographed — maskless — hanging out with former President and First Lady Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, who are both in their nineties. It was perfectly appropriate to remove their masks, since they were vaccinated. But when the Bidens walked outside from the Carter home, they both inexplicably donned masks again. 

It’s obvious Biden is wearing his mask as a signal, like the Wisconsin bureaucrats who told their employees to wear masks during Zoom calls from home. But it’s signaling more weakness and inconsistency than anything else.

2. His Tone Is Maddeningly Paternalist

“The choice is yours,” Biden says, between getting a vaccine or wearing a mask. No, the choice to get a vaccine or not is mine, period. So is the choice to wear or not wear a mask.

Biden is no stranger to condescension. “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,” he told radio host Charlamagne Tha God in May 2020. 

Vice President Harris has come off as condescending too, from smirking during the presidential debates to her comments that young people are “stupid” and make “really bad decisions.” Biden’s tweet is only the latest example of the administration’s attitude: that you’re too dumb to make your own decisions and need to be told what to do.

3. His Simplistic Ultimatum Is Impossible to Enforce

For Biden’s simplistic “vaccine or mask” dichotomy to actually be enforceable, he would have to station a vaccine TSA agent at the door of every establishment in America. Want to go to the grocery store? If you’re not in a mask, you better have a vaccine passport handy. Planning to stop at a restaurant to grab lunch? Same thing. Going to church? Better bring your mask or vaccination card. But don’t worry, “the choice is yours.”

Unfortunately, I wouldn’t put it past some in the Biden administration to try such a draconian approach. But it’s utterly impractical and inconsistent with every ounce of freedom or federalism. 

Either Biden means to try imposing such insanity on the American people, or plenty of sane unvaccinated Americans will simply ditch the mask and let everyone assume they’re vaccinated. That kind of personal freedom and privacy sounds fine to me, but it shows how silly and ineffective Biden’s ultimatum is.

4. Does This Mean Kids Too?

Biden’s Centers for Disease Control announced Wednesday it has approved the Pfizer vaccine under emergency use authorization for children as young as 12 years old. Does Biden intend to force masks on preteens ad infinitum unless they also vaccinate?

As of April 2021, 277 of coronavirus-related deaths in the United States were of children under the age of 18. While it goes without saying that each of those deaths is tragic, that represents 0.0005 of all coronavirus-related deaths in the United States, or 0.05 percent.

Forcing children to wear masks indefinitely or get vaccinated is deeply foolish, especially this early in the vaccine testing process. Although the vaccine has been given “emergency use authorization,” it is still not fully approved by the Federal Drug Administration. Taking the shot may be well worth it for older Americans who are more at risk, but the potential unknown side effects on fertility, blood clotting, and more make it much less clear for young people.

5. Does This Mean Masks Exempt You From Vaccine Passports?

Fat chance — the Biden administration’s plan for overreach is far more invasive than his “the choice is yours” rhetoric tries to suggest. Back in March, the Biden White House was already working with corporations to develop a “vaccine passport” system.

Don’t let the president’s tweet fool you into thinking even a mask will save you from soon having to show proof of vaccination to fly, attend mass gatherings, and more. If your freedoms as an American citizen aren’t enough to protect from this kind of government micromanagement, a flimsy paper mask won’t do much.

Tear gas used as pro Palestinian march defies Paris ban

 

Riot police fired tear gas on defiant protesters in Paris who were supporting Palestinians in the Gaza Strip despite a ban on Saturday's demonstration in the French capital.

Marches in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were being held Saturday in a dozen French cities, but the focus was on Paris, where riot police got ready as organizers said they would defy a ban on the protest.

Paris police chief Didier Lallement ordered shops closed around the starting point of the planned march in a working-class neighbourhood in northern Paris after an administrative court confirmed the ban.

Authorities noted a banned July 2014 pro-Palestinian protest against an Israeli offensive in Gaza that degenerated into violence and running battles with police to justify the order against Saturday’s march.

Organizers said they intend to “denounce the latest Israeli aggressions” and mark the fleeing of Palestinians after Israel declared independence in 1948.

“Stop Annexation. Palestine Will Vanquish,” read one poster in a small crowd facing off with police, who blocked off the neighbourhood. Police said water cannons would be used against those who defy the Paris ban.

Protests were permitted in numerous other cities, including Lille in the north to Marseille on the Mediterranean Sea

 

https://www.euronews.com/2021/05/15/tear-gas-used-as-pro-palestinian-march-defies-paris-ban 

 

 

 

The DystopianFuture in Which…

 The Dystopian Future in Which Almost No One Owns a Car

Zachary Yost for Mises.org. 

Tags Bureaucracy and Regulation

By this point readers are more than familiar with the previously unthinkable infringements on our traditional rights and liberties due to “health and safety” lockdowns that the state has inflicted upon us over the last year. While thankfully more and more restrictions are being lifted, it is important not to forget the period of veritable universal house arrest that was enacted in many states, in which even the freedom to go for a drive was denied to us. It unfortunately seems inevitable that we will face such scenarios again when a convenient excuse comes along, though I fear that the next time will be even worse thanks to the advent of self-driving cars.

Self-driving cars seem like a truly amazing advancement in human technology. As someone who is not particularly fond of driving, I once followed their development with great interest and hopeful anticipation. However, the advent of lockdowns as an acceptable government policy has shown just a taste of the kind of dangers that would come with their widespread adoption. While they would liberate us from many of the dangers of the road and free up time in which to work or enjoy ourselves on a ride, the price of this liberation is actually an unprecedented level of government control.

Some advocates of self-driving cars argue that their adoption would mean that very few people would actually own a vehicle anymore, and that instead everyone would basically Uber everywhere. Oftentimes such predictions are espoused by people who lament how evil American prosperity is and cringe at the thought of our car culture’s carbon footprint.

It is not difficult to see how this could go very wrong. Can you imagine how much worse government lockdowns would have been at their height last year if the state merely needed to apply pressure to Uber-like ride services to cease general operation to stop people from moving? Ride services would almost certainly be forced to require government-issued documents in order to book a ride in such a scenario, leaving the vast majority of the population completely stranded and unable to go anywhere.

Fortunately, there are many reasons to believe that without massive government intervention America is not likely to willingly let go of its deeply ingrained car culture in favor of ubiquitous Ubering.

However, even if people do own their self-driving cars, the danger remains.

Tesla is a case in point. Unlike a “traditional” car that drives off the lot and disappears into the traffic, Tesla cars are perpetually connected to the internet and Tesla itself. As the pioneer in self-driving cars, it seems likely that other manufacturers will also build around Tesla’s concept, which is itself similar to numerous other “smart appliance” trends in everything from house lighting to fridges, ovens, and washing machines. While this connectivity has great uses, such as allowing repairs to be completed remotely, the danger is obvious.

Customers have complained about having features of their Tesla being removed without their notice or authorization, prompting one reporter to remark that “if someone buys a used car with cruise control, there isn't an expectation that the manufacturer will then arrive and ask to remove it,” yet something similar has already happened. Similarly, Tesla collects vast amounts of data from its cars, which is no doubt useful and needed for continuing to improve the system and work out kinks, but it is dangerously naïve to believe that such data would remain outside the reach of the government if it wanted it.

Finally, the same danger with universal Ubering still remains. Tesla or any self-driving car that would naturally require some level of internet connection can be remotely shut down. As cool as Tesla may seem, the odds are very slim that it would defy a state order to render its fleet inoperable in the name of “public safety” or any other excuse the government may come up with.

Think back to the hysteria of last spring. You are kidding yourself if you believe that people like Governor Whitmer of Michigan wouldn’t have ordered all cars rendered inoperable until “essential workers” were granted permission to drive if such a thing had been within her power.

The picture becomes even more bleak if one thinks of the nefarious uses such control could be used for beyond “public health” lockdowns. What if our current cancel culture craziness were to continue into a death spiral that resulted in something akin to the Chinese social credit system? Such a thing seems unthinkable—“this is America,” after all. But if in 2019 we had been visited by a time traveler who told us that in a year Americans would be forbidden from leaving their homes or going to church and that businesses would be forced to close en masse, we likely would have thought such a person was crazy. Yet here we are.

It is easy to see all the benefits that would come with self-driving cars, but at the end of the day the potential for dramatically increased government control and abuse is horrifying to contemplate.

Author: 

Zachary Yost 

Zachary Yost is a freelance writer and Mises U alum. You can subscribe to his newsletter here.

Anticipate Alinsky-styled Language “Insurrection Deniers” to be Main Element of Current Democrat Narrative

by Sundance for Conservative Treehouse

Promoting the January 6th protest in Washington DC as a “domestic terrorist” event; and promoting the protest as an “armed insurrection” against the U.S. government; is the cornerstone of the Democrat’s 2022 election effort.   If we watch carefully now we will see an increased emphasis on attacking anyone who might downplay the Democrat narrative.

With their back against the wall on failing and catastrophic policy outcomes; with gas prices skyrocketing; and with the economy stalled due to inflation (ie. stagflation), the democrats are all-in with this “insurrection” narrative as a political tool to distract the voting population from merging crisis of bad policy.

If they do not control the politics of the national conversation the Democrats will be crushed in the 2022 mid-term election.  Ultimately their loss of control over the COVID narrative is what has led to the new CDC guidance about masks.  A false premise can only last as long as the reality can be ignored.  With more people awake to the fraud modifications need to be made.

The Democrats are counting on exploiting the false storyline around the Jan.6th protest.  They will work overdrive in the next few days to attack anyone who puts that narrative at risk.  Cue the example:

(The Hill) Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) on Friday began asking Democratic colleagues to sign on to a resolution to censure three House Republicans who tried this week to minimize the severity of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

In a letter to fellow House Democrats, Cicilline said that a resolution will be forthcoming to specifically censure Republican Reps. Andrew Clyde (Ga.), Jody Hice (Ga.) and Paul Gosar (Ariz.) for their remarks at a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on Wednesday downplaying and making false claims about the violent attack on the Capitol.

“These three members dangerously mischaracterized what happened that day and showed more sympathy for the domestic terrorists than the Capitol Police officers who died during the attack,” Cicilline wrote. (read more)

If Republicans were smart they would take this challenge head-on, and start framing the January 6th populist protests as an overreach by an out-of-touch federal government, who view the citizens as dangerous.   However, few republicans have the strength of conviction to stand in front of the entire media complex and push back.

The Democrats are using Liz Cheney, a woman willing to be used for this purpose, to advance that extremist narrative.  Notice how when President Trump noted the “Big Lie” was the fraudulent 2020 election, the Democrats became even more enraged.  Their rage is an outcome of their fear.

Their DNC playbook is very simple: control the language, define the opposition before they define themselves, and keep your political enemy on their heels.  It is the Alinsky model.  However, if the GOP hit back with the same articulated intensity the Democrat narrative would collapse despite the media support.  Unfortunately, the weakness of the GOP is their unwillingness to fight.

Thankfully the Republicans have Donald Trump to lead…

Here Are The Vaccine Incentives Being Offered In Each Of The 50 States

Babylon Bee🐝

All the states are now offering insane, mind-blowing, once-in-a-lifetime offers to get you vaccinated. From lottery prize winnings to burgers and fries, all these prizes can be yours if you just go get the jab.

Want to know what kind of incentive you can get where you live? We've compiled the incentives for each of the 50 states:

Alabama - Free engagement photos for you and your sibling.

Alaska - 50 acres, a bear, and a snow cone.

Arizona - Free T-shirt reading “It’s a dry heat.” 

Arkansas - Free $10 scratch-off and a six-pack of Busch Light.

California - Free U-Haul to help you leave California. 

Colorado - Free bag of marijuana and an industrial-sized case of Doritos.

Connecticut - A crappier version of whatever New York is giving away.

Delaware - 10 free copies of Hunter Biden’s book.

Florida - Entered for a chance to win a trip to Mar-a-Lago where you'll get to kiss Trump’s ring in person.  

Georgia - Free tickets to the MLB All-Star game. 

Hawaii - Grass hula skirt and Mazie Hirono-cancelling headphones.

Idaho - Free bag of potatoes. You can boil them, mash them, or perhaps stick them in a stew.

Illinois - Free bullet-proof vest.

Indiana - Lottery for the chance to play one down of football for Notre Dame this fall.

Iowa - Coupon for a free order of fried butter at Iowa State Fair.

Kansas - Free double-wide trailer and dog that barks constantly.

Kentucky - Enough performance-enhancing drugs to split between you and a horse.

Louisiana - Free house that has never been underwater or anything of the sort.

Maine - Stephen King will autograph your vaccine scar while ranting about Trump.

Maryland - “Got Crabs?” t-shirt and a personal detective to investigate your murder.

Massachusetts - Free bowl of clam chowder and a $5 Dunkin coupon. 

Michigan - Free abandoned house in downtown Detroit.

Minnesota - Free admission to the police academy.

Mississippi - Free all you can eat pass at Golden Corral. 

Missouri - Chance to play starting shortstop for the Kansas City Royals.

Montana - Free buffalo.

Nebraska - Entered into a drawing to win a John Deere T670 combine harvester.

Nevada - $20 free slot play at the Golden Nugget.

New Hampshire - A crappier version of whatever Massachusetts is giving away.

New Jersey - Entry into a drawing to win a house in a state that’s not New Jersey.

New Mexico - Free migrant child.

New York - Free can of mace to fight off handsy governors.

North Carolina - A chance to become one of Stephen Furtick’s disciples. 

North Dakota - Box of 12-gauge pheasant ammo.

Ohio - One free trip through Cleveland in bulletproof Hummer.

Oklahoma - Horseback archery lessons with Elizabeth Warren.

Oregon - Antifa will still burn down your business, but they will feel bad about it now. 

Pennsylvania - Free pin-up calendar featuring Dr. Rachel Levine.

Rhode Island - Whatever Connecticut is offering, but smaller.

South Carolina - Constant IV drip of sweet tea straight into your veins. 

South Dakota - Your face up on Mt. Rushmore.

Tennessee - Choice of either a new set of teeth or tickets to Graceland assuming it’s not considered racist yet.

Texas - Free AR-15 with a cute little cowboy hat on top.

Utah - Three free wives with each injection.

Vermont - Free pair of Bernie Sanders mittens.

Virginia - Invite To Governor Northam’s Next "Antebellum" Party.

Washington - Seat on CHAZ city council.

West Virginia - Carton of menthol cigarettes.

Wisconsin - Signed photograph of Packers QB Aaron Rogers.

Wyoming - Free seat in U.S. House of Representatives.

And even the almost-states are offering incentives:

Washington, D.C. - Every vaccinated person gets to become their own state.

Well? Go get your free stuff!

 

Article by Brian Parsons in The American Thinker

Skills Not Schools: Lessons from the Renaissance

Renaissance education is the foundation of the modern university system. It was based on the concept of the Universal Man or Uomo Universale.  As mankind was the ultimate creation of God, it was man’s job to reach his maximum by continual self-improvement. This idea led to the notion that men should try to embrace all knowledge and develop their own capacities as fully as possible. To be a Renaissance man, one must develop his knowledge base as well as his craft.  Perhaps no person embodies this concept more than Renaissance artist, scientist, and inventor Leonardo da Vinci. In Leonardo, a duality of the mind and hands is found. Out of this ideal, the university and the journeyman education are born.   Yet, rather than striving for this unity of the mind and the body, the education system has juxtaposed these two disciplines in competition with one another.

The modern workforce demands a college degree.  Visit any job recruitment board and you will find it a prerequisite for getting in front of a hiring manager. From the time that students are in secondary school, it is hammered into them that they are either on a college preparatory curriculum track or a vocational curriculum track.  And there is a stigma associated with the vocational track as lesser-than, and for those who can’t muster the academic rigor of the college preparatory curriculum. Real or perceived, this association places a disproportionate amount of value on the college degree. This imbalance of value serves to both distort the job market, as well as to lessen the value of the college degree itself.  As stated in another piece on meritocracy, it is rarity that gives something value. When college degrees become commonplace, they impede one’s ability to differentiate from all other job applicants.

Before the creation of the Stafford Education Loan program in 1965, fewer than ten percent of U.S. adults had a bachelors-level or higher college degree.  As of 2019, that number eclipsed thirty-five percent.  When you factor in only those who comprise the labor base, that number likely rises even more as the lesser-educated labor base retires or exits the workforce.  While one might view this as a net positive for society, it does come with some very real drawbacks.  First, as mentioned prior it devalues the ability of the degree to provide a competitive edge in job placement. Second, guaranteed government funds have served as a cash cow to the public university system that creates perverse incentives for expansion and recruitment.  As such, the cost of a higher education degree has sharply outpaced inflation.

In 1960 a student could work part-time on a $1 per hour minimum wage and afford to pay tuition, room, and board at my alma mater, the University of Georgia.  That same student could work the same part-time minimum-wage job, and still come up more than $10,000 short of their financial obligations today.  The student’s only option is to either take on loans or get a scholarship to make up the difference.  And this debt trend in pursuit of higher education is pervasive nationwide. Student loan debt eclipsed personal credit card debt in 2019, and on average people with student loan debt have seventy-five percent less net worth than those without it. For the university’s part, they have utilized these funds to invest more than a billion dollars in expansion over the last decade.

 Contrasted with this higher-debt college degree is the vocational or trade diploma. Just as the college-educated labor base grows in the wake of a retiring workforce, the vocational and skilled labor base shrinks as students are discouraged from entry and fail to replace an outgoing workforce.  On my career training path, I studied for a year at the local technical college that hosted dual enrollment courses with the local university.  One such course was an entry-level economics course that was simulcast from the university to the technical school.  Throughout the course, the instructor alluded to the emerging U.S. economy as a white-collar economy and noted that the labor base would need to retrain for desk jobs.  This was quite the statement to broadcast into a technical college.  And further down my career path in graduate school ten years later, it was commonplace for the program director to allude to an enormous higher-education bubble and discourage the university degree in lieu of skilled labor.

Skilled vocational labor has seen a limited but renewed focus by proponents such as "Dirty Jobs" television personality Mike Rowe and his organization, Mike Rowe Works.  Shining a spotlight on the value of vocational trades and their low-debt, low-barrier-to-entry is a necessary counterbalance to the pervasive belief that a college degree should be a requisite for employment. It’s not just the low barrier-to-entry that makes skilled labor an attractive pursuit, the high demand for this labor creates extremely competitive wages. The entry-level hourly rate for a pipefitter is around $22 per hour, which is $5 per hour more than the equivalent entry-level teacher’s salary with a four-year degree. With twenty years of experience, the average teacher’s salary rises to just over $59,000 per year, while the average seasoned pipefitter eclipses $78,000 per year.  While there are trade-offs not mentioned here, the average teacher will enter the workforce with significantly more student debt.

Tangible benefits like wages and demand are not the only attractive qualities of skilled labor. There are very real and intangible benefits of it, such as the value of personal production.  Renaissance philosophers believed that men were made in the mold of a creative God; we create because God Created. There is a very real fulfillment that arises from the act of creation, and it is no coincidence that the Bible begins with Creation. Observe craftsmen upon completion of a project as they scrutinize their work and you will witness the picture of a Creative God, who on the seventh day marveled in fulfillment of His Creation.  Vocational training is neither lesser than a college degree nor contrary to a fulfilling career. There is a valid argument to be made that skilled labor is the perfection of a whole person, and our Renaissance predecessors believed that.

“Everything that is responsible for creating something out of nothing is a kind of poetry; and so all the creations of every craft and profession are themselves a kind of poetry, and everyone who practices a craft is a poet.” -- Plato

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/skills_not_schools_lessons_from_the_renaissance.html

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How Wokeness Works

Wokeness is a political religion with 

sacraments of ignorance, illusion, and hatred

by Lloyd Billingsley for American Greatness

Articles on the “Woke” phenomenon are appearing on every hand and the movement is steadily coming into focus. Victor Davis Hanson, for example, outlines a “Great Awokening,” an allusion to the Great Awakening, a religious movement. In a similar style, “woke” status is a matter of religious conversion and zealotry.  

German philosopher Eric Voegelin was on to the idea back in 1938 with The Political Religions. As Voegelin saw it, totalitarian regimes created political cults and modern ideologies borrowed from religious ceremonies and redemptive paradigms. Where people had previously been redeemed from iniquity, they were now to be liberated from oppression. 

Once liberated, their object of devotion was the state, more specifically those who ran it, and in some cases, they could even surpass divine status. As American Communist Anna Louise Strong proclaimed in I Change Worlds, “one must not make a god of Stalin. He was too important for that.” Stalin was about creating a workers’ paradise, a veritable kingdom of heaven on earth. For Voegelin, the woke of his time set out to “immanentize the eschaton.” 

Political religion also deploys its own demonology, a concept charted by French historian Hippolyte Taine, author of Origins of Contemporary France. In his chapter on the French Revolution, Taine wrote:  

Nothing is more dangerous than a general idea in narrow and empty minds. Since they are empty, they would not encounter any knowledge that would be an obstacle to it. Since they are narrow, it does not linger to occupy them totally. Consequently, they are no longer their own master. They are mastered by it; it acts in them and by them; in the proper sense of the word the man is possessed.

The general idea du jour is a classless, socialist society, run by an enlightened elite that has somehow escaped the oppressive conditioning under capitalism. A vast body of work, from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago and Malcolm Muggeridge’s Winter in Moscow to Paul Johnson’s Modern Times and F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (to name very few), documents the failures, deprivations, and mass atrocities of such societies. For the woke faithful, these are forbidden books to be avoided at all cost. So on the key issues of our time, their minds remain empty. 

For the woke, as Orwell explained in 1984, ignorance is strength. To be “woke” is to submit to the dictatorship of the subjunctive mood, a regime of enforced unreality. For example, according to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), “facts don’t matter when you are morally right,” a statement on par with “property is theft” and “Big Brother is always right.” And as Jean Cocteau put it, “the trouble with the modern world is that stupidity has begun to think.” 

The woke seek no exchange of ideas or facts in a debate among equals. For the woke, any adversary must be afflicted with homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia, and so on. 

Government education cultivates narrow minds, so the woke live in a state of permanent occupation. As Taine had it, these zealots are literally possessed, and that dynamic is now on full display. True to form, the first recourse of the woke is to call their adversaries Nazis, fascists, far-Right, conspiracy theorists, and worse.  

The woke religion proclaims people to be evil because of the way they were born, or due to conditions they cannot control. Witness the imputation of guilt for being “old” and “white,” with exceptions for people such as Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Nancy Pelosi. The actions of distant ancestors impart guilt in the present, apart from anything their descendants might have done or said. 

If one contradicts a woke disciple, that can only be due to “white privilege”; but on the other hand, “silence is violence.” Sink or float, in the ongoing woke witch trial the accused is always guilty. For the woke, these sins do not exist in a vacuum. Their purpose is to justify hostile action against the unwoke, and Taine was on to that dynamic. 

“From the beginning, Danton understood the final object and definitive effect of the revolution, that is to say the dictatorship of the violent minority.” So he quickly founded “a tiny independent republic,” packed with “fanatics, hotheads, all available scoundrels,” along with “murderers from the government or the marketplace.” For a modern parallel, recall the riots of 2020.

Antifa thugs created “autonomous zones” in Seattle and Portland, stockpiled with weapons. In cities across the country, rioters torched businesses and attacked unarmed innocents. Rioters murdered retired police officer David Dorn and live-streamed his execution. And so on. The Democrats passed it off as “mostly peaceful protest” and for Joe Biden, Antifa is “an idea, not an organization.” 

And now abide ignorance, illusion, and hatred, but the greatest of these is hatred. With fundamentalist wokeness now the establishment religion, more violence will not be long delayed.