Life With An Abusive Half Of The Electorate – Part III

Posted on August 30, 2018 by Mitch Berg

This week, I started going over the political and social aspects of various personality disorders, viewed through the lense of Shahida Arabi’s excellent piece, “20 Diversion Tactics Highly Manipulative Narcissists, Sociopaths And Psychopaths Use To Silence You”.

Yesterday it was “Gaslighting” – the narcissistic abuser’s way of trying to convince you not to trust your own lying perceptions, mind and memories.

Today, it’s the trait that helped put this blog on the map: Projection:

Berg’s Seventh Law Is In DSM-V. Sort Of: Arabi’s second point is “Projection”; she describes it:

One sure sign of toxicity is when a person is chronically unwilling to see his or her own shortcomings and uses everything in their power to avoid being held accountable for them. This is known as projection. Projection is a defense mechanism used to displace responsibility of one’s negative behavior and traits by attributing them to someone else. It ultimately acts as a digression that avoids ownership and accountability.

Sound familiar?

It’s another term for Berg’s Seventh Law; “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character, humanity or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds.”.

While we all engage in projection to some extent, according to Narcissistic Personality clinical expert Dr. Martinez-Lewi, the projections of a narcissist are often psychologically abusive.

Like, for example, fretting about an “oncoming wave of right-wing violence” (perhaps by tiki-torch-carrying cartoon figures) while ignoring or cheering on gas-mask-clad “Anti”-fa thugs destroying property and beating up peaceful event-goers.

So yeah – of course it sounds familiar:

Rather than acknowledge their own flaws, imperfections and wrongdoings, malignant narcissists and sociopaths opt to dump their own traits on their unsuspecting suspects in a way that is painful and excessively cruel. Instead of admitting that self-improvement may be in order, they would prefer that their victims take responsibility for their behavior and feel ashamed of themselves. This is a way for a narcissist to project any toxic shame they have about themselves onto another.

And yes, it has resonance in the world of Trump (or Bush, or Reagan) Derangement syndrome:

Narcissistic abusers love to play the “blameshifting game.” Objectives of the game: they win, you lose, and you or the world at large is blamed for everything that’s wrong with them. This way, you get to babysit their fragile ego while you’re thrust into a sea of self-doubt. Fun, right?

Fun – and the status quo in our society. Especially here in MInnesota.

Solution? Don’t “project” your own sense of compassion or empathy onto a toxic person and don’t own any of the toxic person’s projections either. As manipulation expert and author Dr. George Simon (2010) notes in his book In Sheep’s Clothing, projecting our own conscience and value system onto others has the potential consequence of being met with further exploitation.

TL:dr version: don’t take their crap.

Tomorrow – “Word Sadal”

Life With An Abusive Half Of The Electorate – Part II: Social Gaslighting

Posted on August 29, 2018 by Mitch Berg

Yesterday, I introduced you to an article. “20 Diversion Tactics Highly Manipulative Narcissists, Sociopaths And Psychopaths Use To Silence You” by Shahida Arabi.

It’s a fairly brilliant piece on coping with people with the variety of personality disorders that are slowly being recognized – sociopathy, narcissism (the two favorite pop-culture “diagnoses” of Donald Trump, among the Trump deranged – which is one reason I’m almost reticent about writing this piece; it’s become “hip” to call people you disagree with sociopaths and narcissists, lately).

But the more I read it – and the more I see the way our nation’s political conversation is going – the more I think it’s a coping mechanism for … well, the rest of us, in dealing with our nation’s socio-political and media ruling classes.

Because my case is this: The behavior isn’t all that different.

Gaslighting: Arabi describes “Gaslighting” as follows:

Gaslighting is a manipulative tactic that can be described in different variations of three words: “That didn’t happen,” “You imagined it,” and “Are you crazy?” Gaslighting is perhaps one of the most insidious manipulative tactics out there because it works to distort and erode your sense of reality; it eats away at your ability to trust yourself and inevitably disables you from feeling justified in calling out abuse and mistreatment.

Is a comprehensive rewrite of history – “our entire history is racist”, “Reagan didn’t really have anything to do with bringing down the USSR” – gaslighting?

Does systematically impugning the motives and morality of those who differ from the narrative – “The NRA is a terrorist organisation”, “‘Whitenesss’ is an existential problem” – qualify?

Absolutely:

When a narcissist, sociopath or psychopath gaslights you, you may be prone to gaslighting yourself as a way to reconcile the cognitive dissonance that might arise. Two conflicting beliefs battle it out: is this person right or can I trust what I experienced? A manipulative person will convince you that the former is an inevitable truth while the latter is a sign of dysfunction on your end.

“All of society’s problems trace back to systematic racism/white supremacy/male privilege” – no matter what the actual parties’ actual beliefs, stories, background and motiovations? That certainly qualifies.

How does one resist?

In order to resist gaslighting, it’s important to ground yourself in your own reality – sometimes writing things down as they happened, telling a friend or reiterating your experience to a support network can help to counteract the gaslighting effect. The power of having a validating community is that it can redirect you from the distorted reality of a malignant person and back to your own inner guidance.

This is true. And it’s something the gaslighters know, too – because they do their darnedest to shut down that “validating community”; it’s why Big Left is doing its best to remove conservative news and opinion from social media, to push the return of regulations like “The Fairness Doctrine”, to jam down “Net Neutrality” and the like; because like any abusive partner, they know that that support network stands between them and complete brainwashing.

Next installment: Projection.

It’s The Cultural Civil War, And We’re At The Battle Of Fredericksburg

Posted on March 6, 2018 by Mitch Berg

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

College Liberals credited with reaching out, attempting to provide safe space, tolerance.

Two thoughts:
First, the lack of outspoken conservatives on campus is not new. When I was in college in 1980, the trend had already begun. I knew of only four of us: me supporting Reagan, Dan (George Bush, Senior), David (Phil Crane) and Matt (uncommitted). There may have been more who voted Republican but they were quiet about it.
Second, if you smack a puppy on the nose enough times, it will learn not to bark. Young Conservative get smacked on the nose by social studies teachers in high school. They get smacked in college classes by leftist professors. They see others getting smacked online, fired for speaking at work (the Google guy), business destroyed (wedding cake baker), physically attacked and beaten (conservative speakers on campus). The lesson is clear – Liberals do not respect me or my rights, they tolerate me only so long as I don’t upset them. Say one little thing they don’t like and boom, the mob will turn on me in a flash and blame me for provoking them. “See what you made me do” isn’t an excuse reserved solely for rednecks in wife-beater shirts, it’s also used by Muslim terrorists and FBI Deep Staters and antifa rioters.
If a college kid joined up at one of these sessions but later found his car keyed “fascist” would it be a surprise? No, because he outed himself, painted a target on himself, brought it on himself. He deserved it.
The only way to increase intellectual diversity on campus is to punish those who act to diminish it. And that’s never going to happen as long as Liberals run the schools.
Joe Doakes

A safe space “provided” by campus “progressives?”

It’s a trap.

Appropriation

Posted on February 14, 2018 by Mitch Berg

“Aliza Worthington” describes herself as “Brooklyn-bred, Baltimore by choice, music snob, history nerd, family-obsessed, friend-dependent, amateur glassblower, passable dancer, & since age 40, a writer”

She may have had a point until she hit that last clause.

Ms. Worthington – a honky – writes a piece in the ever-more-loathsome “Medium” entitled “Black Panther” Is Not For Us, White People“.

I’m gonna stop just short of telling white people NOT to see it. To be clear, I hope this movie makes A BAZILLION GAFLILLION SCHMATRILLION dollars opening weekend, and wins every single award possible. Speaking to my fellow white people, though, can we please consider letting Black people have this joy without us ruining it for them with our presence?

We have ruined, and continue to ruin so much for Black folx.[That’s right. Folx. She is that dumb – Ed] Yes, often just by inserting ourselves where they are rightfully trying to enjoy their greatness in peace, and without our white nonsense.

Ms. Worthington: do black “folx” (#VomitInMouth) need your help defending their culture?

I’m sure they’ll rise as one and offer their “thanx”.

Or, if you get tickets, and you notice it’s sold out, and some Black folx are outside bummed they weren’t able to get tickets, give your tickets to them and go to Applebee’s instead.

How very, very twee.

It just has to be tough, being both a honky and ˆ”authentic”. Well done.

Ms. Worthington: I’m going to exercise that greatest “white privilege” (I choose to call it “freedom”, and invite everyone of all races to partake in it) and go wherever I damn well want, do what I want, and mock your appropriation of the voice of American blacks. They don’t need your help.

The Hollers Of Fresno

Posted on January 22, 2018 by Mitch Berg

The most impoverished state in the union? Gotta be West Virginia, or Mississippi. Maybe Alabama or Arkansas. .

Right?

Wrong. It’s California. On the way to spending itself into the poorhouse, California has helped create a huge impoverished underclass untouched by the glitz of Hollywood and the sheen of Silicon Valley.

And the story should sound familiar to anyone from Minneapolis or Saint Paul:

Apparently content with futile poverty policies, Sacramento lawmakers can turn their attention to what historian Victor Davis Hanson aptly describes as a fixation on “remaking the world.” The political class wants to build a costly and needless high-speed rail system; talks of secession from a United States presided over by Donald Trump; hired former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. to “resist” Trump’s agenda; enacted the first state-level cap-and-trade regime; established California as a “sanctuary state” for illegal immigrants; banned plastic bags, threatening the jobs of thousands of workers involved in their manufacture; and is consumed by its dedication to “California values.” All this only reinforces the rest of America’s perception of an out-of-touch Left Coast, to the disservice of millions of Californians whose values are more traditional, including many of the state’s poor residents.

With a permanent majority in the state Senate and the Assembly, a prolonged dominance in the executive branch and a weak opposition, California Democrats have long been free to indulge blue-state ideology while paying little or no political price. The state’s poverty problem is unlikely to improve while policymakers remain unwilling to unleash the engines of economic prosperity that drove California to its golden years.

When you have uncontested one party rule upheld by legions of voters dependent on the gravy train, you can get away with keeping those legions in the dumps while you virtue-signal your merry way toward your pension.

Being Evil

Posted on January 12, 2018 by Mitch Berg

Last year, Google’s collective (heh) culture of Urban Progressive Privilege-sotted virtue-signaling intolerance fell onto Google engineer James Damore for the high crime of out that Google, ironically, has a relentlessly PC, virtue-signaling-focused corporate culture. Damore was summarily fired.

This past week, Damore and his team filed their lawsuit

Damore has now answered Google with a legal broadside, and it’s extraordinary. Most people don’t have time to read his entire 181-page complaint, but those who do will find a comprehensive argument that Google’s corporate culture encourages, sanctions, and facilitates an extraordinary amount of abuse against conservative white males.

Artists Conception of a Google staff meeting:

And he has the receipts. Much of the complaint consists of screen shots of internal Google communications and postings on internal Google message boards that would constitute strong evidence of hostile-environment race-and-gender harassment if the the races and genders were reversed. For example, “Googlers” (that’s what employees call themselves, using Google’s silly corporate language) relentlessly enforce a so-called “Googley” culture where employees blacklist conservatives (blocking them from in-house communications), actually boo white-male hires, and openly discuss committing acts of violence against political opponents. The “punch a Nazi” debate is alive and well at Google, and the definition of “Nazi” is extraordinarily broad. In one posting, an employee proposes a “moratorium on hiring white cis heterosexual abled men who aren’t abuse survivors.” In another, an employee advertises a workshop on “healing from toxic whiteness.” Another post mocks “white fragility.” The examples go on and on, for page after page. Damore also alleges (and again, provides screenshots of emails and other communications to support his claims) that managers actively attacked conservative employees, encouraged punitive actions against dissenters, and even awarded “peer bonuses” for speech attacking conservatives.

Google is a private business? Sure – they’ve got every right to run things any way they want. But we’ve seen what mindless monocultures have brought to most of our major cities; what do you think it’ll do to a company?

Googlers may have special coding skills or may fit seamlessly in the company’s Googley culture, but it’s now plain that much of their discourse represents a special kind of pettiness, stupidity, and intolerance. It’s often fact-free, insulting, and narrow-minded. In other words, a Silicon Valley monoculture produces exactly the kind of discourse produced by monocultures everywhere. While there are certainly kind, courteous, and civil progressives at Google, the existence of the monoculture also enables the worst sorts of behavior.

Read the whole thing.

A Sign You’ve Solved All The Serious Crises

Posted on January 10, 2018 by Mitch Berg

Dogs at Los Angeles’ animal shelters may be going vegan:

The idea was proposed by Commissioner Roger Wolfson, a Hollywood screenwriter who cited research that he contended shows vegan diets “eliminate” many health problems in dogs, which are omnivores. But he said rethinking the dogs’ meals is about far more sweeping matters — the environmental effect of a meat industry that produces the main ingredients in lots of dog food and the ethics of feeding animals to animals.

“We have to embrace the fact that the raising and killing of animals for food purposes must only be done if we have absolutely no other choice,” Wolfson said at the meeting, according to a recording published on a county website. “This is about the long-term survival of every man, woman and child in this room, and all of the people in our lives.”

While “progressives” are all about “science” when it comes to smooching Bill Nye’s hindquarters or browbeating fundamentalists, it’d seem they’re swimming against the scientific current here…:

The city’s chief veterinarian, Jeremy Prupas, was not convinced. In a report to the commission, he recommended rejecting the proposal, saying that it could deprive dogs of sufficient protein, calcium and phosphorus and that it could be inadequate for injured, pregnant or lactating pups. Prupas said he’d consulted three clinical nutritionists at veterinary medical schools, one shelter medicine specialist and a veterinary toxicologist who works with a pet food company. None endorsed vegan dog diets, he testified.

Oh, yeah – and vegan dog food, not unlike vegan human food, costs four times as much as the regular stuff.

Which is all fine, if you’re just playing “government dress-up” with other peoples’ money.

Which is another way of saying “California”.

Although if it passes in LA, look for Alondra Cano to propose it in short order in Minneapolis.

Car Neutrality

Posted on December 18, 2017 by Mitch Berg

SCENE: Dayton, Ohio – 1904. A group of protesters – young activists from Snofe Lakes, California – chant slogans in front of the Leach and Bitwell Auto Company; “Keep The Roads Democratic!”, “What do we want? Road Neutrality. When do we want it? Now!” and “Cars are a Public Utility”. After a few moments, Arthur LIBRELLE climbs up on the soapbox.

LIBRELLE: What we seek is highway neutrality. We demand that the government treat cars and roads as the public utility they truly are. That way, in thirty years, your children will be able to buy a car like this (LIBRELLE points to a 1904 Leach and Bitwell roadster – a two seater with a hand-crank starter that is basically a glorified go-kart with a two cylinder engine and a couple of chairs which lists at $5,000 – which is about $200,000 2017 dollars) – and their children, and their children’s children, as long as California is the capitol fo the horseless carriage industry. Nobody will be able, using just more money, to buy a better car!

(Hezekiah MERG chimes in): But if you treat the budding auto industry like a utility, there’ll be no impetus for someone like, say, Henry Ford or Louis Chevrolet, to respond to the market demand and build a cars that, before long, will be every big as good as the specimen you see here, for a fraction of the price.

LIBRELLE: (Scoffing as the young people from Snofe Lakes laugh uproariously) Oh, it is to laugh! The idea that people from Detroit will ever build cars, or that technology will ever surpass what we see in front of us! No, indeed; let us regulate cars and roads like utilities, that they may ever be as successful as the crown jewel of Los Angeles’s transportation system, our streetcars!

(The crowd erupts)_.

Cell Neutrality

Posted on December 18, 2017 by Mitch Berg

SCENE: Walll Street, – 1983. A group of protesters – young activists from Slough Fnakes, Vermont – chant slogans in front of the Motorola headquasrters building, wielding protest signs; “Keep Cell Phones Democratic!”, “What do we want? Cell Neutrality. When do we want it? Now!” and “Car Phones are a Public Utility”. After a few moments, Ashton LIBRELLE climbs up on the soapbox.

LIBRELLE: What we seek is car phone neutrality. We demand that the government treat car phones and suitcase phones as the public utility they truly are. That way, in thirty years, your children will be able to buy a mobile phone like this (LIBRELLE holds up a 1984 Motoirola cell phone – the size of at World War II walkie talkie, that cost $10,000 in 2017 dollars plus $1,000 a month and $4 a minute for talk times) – and their children, and their children’s children, as long as Motorola remains unchallenged atop the car phone industry. Nobody will be able, using just more money, to buy a better phone!

(Hank MERG chimes in): But if you treat the budding cellular communiations industry like a utility, there’ll be no impetus for someone like, say, Steve Jobs or Victor Droid, to respond to the market demand and build device that, before long, will not only do everything the phone your holding does thousands of times better, but do it for about one percent of the inllation adjusted cost. Indeed, in 24 years, I predict that non-profits will be giving away phones that are millions of times more powerful per dollar, and criminals will buy them to use once and throw away!.

LIBRELLE: (Scoffing as the young people fromSlough Fnakes laugh uproariously) Oh, it is to laugh! The idea that phones will be a commodity, like Pet Rocks, or that technology will ever surpass what we see in front of us! No, indeed; let us regulate car and suitcase phones like utilities, that they may ever be as successful as the public education system!

(The crowd erupts)_.

Toxic Eunuchism

Posted on November 22, 2017 by Mitch Berg

#NotMe

#NeverDidNeverWill

And #RealMenNeitherHarassNorAcceptGuiltByAssociation

And, for those who insist, #QQQQ.

I mean, as long as we’re communicating via the medium of the hashtag.

The #MeToo campaign is doing for sexual harassment what #BringBackOurGirls did for Boko Haram’s hostages; took a seirous issue and made it into a trite, temporal trifle; an “event” rather than either a social malady or a wartime atrocity, respectively. In 21st century terms, the campaign “raised awareness”, which is a moderne way of saying “generated a lot of shrill chanting, shrieking and marching about, literally and metaphorically, in the interest of waving a bloody shirt”.

Genderquislings: One of the most noxious byproducts of this bloody shirt campaign are the clumps of “feminist men” whose response to this past two months’ Robespierrian orgy of revelation is to throw themselves prostrate before the court of public opinion and demand mercy – for themselves (whatever) and every other man.

I come not to praise them, but to bury them and those who parrot them, especially via yet two more social media chanting orgies, “#YesAllMen” and “#ShutTheF**kUp”.

Among many other vague and morpheus sins of which they’d accuse their fellow guys is the notion of “toxic masculinity”, which in the hands of “feminists” [1] and their male hangers-on quickly turns into a synonym for “masculinity” of any kind.

My reply: They – or the things they represent – are the real problem. Not masciulinity – real masculinity.

Disc-lame-ers: In an intelligent society that debated the merits of an argument, I could omit this section.

But I live in the “progressive” Twin Cities, so I have to treat much of the audience like ambulance-chasing lawyers.

The “First Wave” of feminism was right: Women should be the equal of men in the eyes of the law. They should face no discrimination due to their gender in the work place; they should be paid according to their qualifications, experience, credentials and other factors relevant to the job. They should not have to accept non-consensual harassment and abuse due to their gender.

The “Second Wave” of feminism – AKA “Identity Feminism” – is wrong. Women should also have no advantage over men in family court. Their status as individuals should not be reverted to the Victorian era, where was assumed that a woman’s natural state frail victims (the term “potential victim” is used with a straight face by more than a few modern feminists) that must be protected from the male species, slavering brutes looking to pounce on the defenseless benighted damsels among us.

The Collective: How this has manifested during the current sexual harassment crisis has been the notion that “#YesAllMen” are complicit in sexual harassment; that sexual harassment is a side effect of “toxic masculinity”; that harassment, abuse and rape are inextricable from being male. That the world would be a better place if it were more like an anthill – where the women did the thinking and leading and designing, and the men just shut up and did what they were told, and contribute to the gene pool (until genetic engineering obsoletes that, too).

The males who’ve become the leading voices of this orgy of gender-abasement remind me of the people “convicted” of various thoughtdrimes curing the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward who, after weeks, months or years jammed into prison cells and gulags, beaten and sleep-deprived by the Red Guards, abased themselves with almost ritual fervor on film and before crowds, not “begging for mercy” so much as abjuring being worthy of it, before being shot in the back of the head or sent off to be worked to death in the Chinese gulag.

Call them “victims of toxic social work”.

If nobody else will do it [2], then let me be the first to draw my line in the sand and yell “Stop”.

#NotMe

#NoNotAllMen

#QQQQSnowflakes

It’s The Devaluation, Stupid: Matt Walsh had a great piece in the Daily Caller earlier this week, in which he pointed out the real problem: not the presence of men, but the lack of Men:

The problem is not that there is too much masculinity in our culture. On the contrary, there isn’t nearly enough. A man becomes an abuser and harasser of women when he rejects that which makes him a man. He is not expressing his masculinity when he strips naked and struts around in front of his unwilling coworkers and subordinates — a move that seems oddly common among these types — rather, he is expressing his almost complete lack of masculinity.

Not sure if he’s referring to Charlie Rose or Louis CK – and I”m not sure it matters at the moment.

These men are weird, desperate, self-debasing, and effeminate. If you say we should have fewer of those kinds in positions of power, I agree. Let’s have none at all. But we would do well to replace them with men who are actually men. What we need in our society are chivalrous, strong, respectable, productive, and self-sacrificial men. Real men, in other words. Men who protect, provide, and do all of the things that society has always depended upon men to do. If you are that sort of man, you certainly should not shut up, step to the side, or consider yourself “trash.” Our culture needs your input and leadership more than ever.

Of course, the dominant narrative from a good chunk of our society – Hollywood, academia, the educational/industrial complex, is that traditional masculinity needs to be filed down to sized, tamed. Primary schools medicate it; popular entertainment castigates it. Entertainment has combined a relentless, big-budget focus on “girl power” with a near-complete suppression of any notion of giving boys any impetus to be what was traditionally called a “man” – chivalrous, comfortable with but not abusive of his power, driven to defend his family, his significant other and his community, self-sacrificing but optimistic and prone to using his power for good. Those parts of society mock and taunt those notions (until they need a cop)…

…and propagate them with an education system that systematically feminizes boys, a family court system that ensures boys’ only role models as children will be mothers (who most assuredly do serve a role in raising emotioally boys – but not the only role) and that love, for a male, is an exercise in self-destruction, and an “entertainment” industry that seems to have taught half a generation boys that pornography is sex.

In other words – if you want to create the stunted, anti-masculine caricatures that are Harvey Weinstein, Charley Rose, Al Franken and Louis CK [3], the modern education, entertainment, academic and social justice systems are the most efficient possible factory to create more of them.

The only “Toxic Masculinity” is the stunted variety of caricatured, one-sided, immature, hollow “Masculinity” hat Identity Feminism demanded, and that the feminized Education system and Academy, and Hollywood delivered.

#NotMe: Well, I’m done.

If you want to signal your virtue by gender self-abasement, expect me to mock and taunt you with the derision you deserve.

If you think the way to achieve equality for women is to beat down men, expect me to punch back twice as hard, and do whatever my feeble best is to lead more men – not males, mind you; men – to do the same.

If your response to discrimination against women is to promote discrimination against men, expect me to point out the obvious; you’re just passing around more discrimination.

You have rotted the society enough. Hell, it may be too late; you may have killed it already.

I don’t care.

Continue reading →

Crucial Yet Irrelevant

Posted on November 15, 2017 by Mitch Berg

As we head towards another round of off year elections – including an awful lot of Democrat-controlled cities – a piece of re-usable narrative that is rapidly becoming a hallmark of the Trump age is starting to break out again; the notion that voting – or more precisely, “expecting your vote to affect anything”- is “irrational”.– where “irrational” is defined as “your vote may not be the single vote that decides the election.

An expectation that seems, itself, a tad irrational.

Bear with me, here.

It popped up over the weekend before last on Minnesota public radio, on NPR’s syndicated “New Yorker Radio Hour”

Big Left has thrown out that particular notion in a couple of election cycles now – the idea of that voting is irrational and to the point of bizarre because one single, solitary vote it’s not the one that will determine the election. Which, if you follow it to its logical conclusion, leads to the supremely undemocratic idea that the only vote that doesn’t matter it’s the one that negates all other folks – the “vote” to overthrow democracy, consent and elections, and seize power for its oneself. Which, if you’re cynical – also supremely realistic – about Big Left, which seem to be their goal..

So far, the narrative seems to be about trying to deflect away from the idea of illegal voting. Especially if it illegal immigrants voting.

The narrative goes like this; given the irrationality of a voting, why would one risk capture, prosecution, conviction and deportation over a vote that, in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t matter at all.

(Of course, it’s nearly impossible to convict anyone of illegal voting – and in the cities where illegal voting is most likely, illegal immigration is a pretty safe bet as well.

Which speaks to my theory – which is almost a Berg Law, I’ll have you know – that Big Left doesn’t even bother trying to tell the truth to its own people; the gobble up any crap that I slept in front of them. Because we all know it’s almost impossible to get arrested for voter fraud; it’s almost an unprosecutable crime, especially in any “progressive” – run jurisdiction – like Minnesota.

So there’s no need to tell all of those lavishly funded nonprofits that are busy getting out the vote, pushing to allow eagle illegal immigrants the right to vote, and to clear allA chance to win for us election integrity as “racist”. The people who run Big Left don’t believe it either.

It’s just aimed at people who take democracy, the franchise, and the notion of “government by the consent of the governed” seriously.

Glad we were able to settle that..

Virtue Laundering

Posted on October 18, 2017 by Mitch Berg

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Suppose you’re a politician who accepts campaign donations. Turns out, one of your donors is a bad egg. What do you do with that money?

If you keep it, you are guilty by association. If you give it back, the bad egg will donate it to your opponent to use against you.

“After the Las Vegas shooting on October 1, State Rep. Erin Murphy, a fellow DFL candidate for governor, called on [Rep. Tim] Walz to return the $18,000 in campaign contributions he has received from the NRA over the course of his political career. Walz agreed, and plans to donate the funds to a veterans’ organization.” Nothing against veterans, but why them? Why not victims of the Las Vegas shooting?

The Democrat National Committee received $300,000 from accused sex abuser Harvey Weinstein. It will forward $30,000 of that money to Emily’s List (supports candidates who favor abortion rights), Emerge America (trains Democrat women for office) and HigherHeights (supports Black women running for office). Basically, Democrats are forwarding the money to their own constituencies. Why them? Why not a group working with survivors of sexual assault? And why only tithe 10%, how is that enough to purge their guilt-by-association when others must return all the money?

If the money is so tainted that you are stained the moment you touch it, then forwarding the money to a favored group doesn’t cleanse you of the stain, it makes you a middleman helping spread the stain to others. Either keep it or give it back, but don’t try to convince me that money-laundering makes you righteous. That’s just insulting.

Joe Doakes

They’re OK with that.

Of Goals And Means

Posted on October 6, 2017 by Mitch Berg

Two incumbent Minneapolis city councilbots, and five challengers with decent chances of winning, said they can see a future without a Minneapolis Police Department:

Asked, “Do you believe that we could ever have a city without police?” two incumbents and five serious challengers running for City Council answered “yes.”…Those who did and said they believe “we could ever have a city without police” were Bender, Ninth Ward Council Member Alondra Cano; Phillipe Cunningham, who’s running for council in the Fourth Ward; Jeremiah Ellison, who’s running in the Fifth Ward; Janne Flisrand, who’s running in the Seventh Ward; Ginger Jentzen, who’s running in the Third Ward and Jeremy Schroeder, who’s running in the 11th Ward.

Let’s be clear; even the candidates (mostly) say this is in the realm of imagination, if not fantasy:

“It’s aspirational, but it’s way aspirational,” said Council Member Lisa Bender, who said yes to the question. “We have a very long way to go before we would approach public safety without police.”…”The question wasn’t, ‘Do you promise to eliminate MPD by the end of your first term,’ it was ‘Can you imagine a city without police,’ ” said [long-shot candidate Phillippe] Cunningham, who’s running against Council President Barb Johnson…

Now, let’s be frank; a society without the need for police would be a good thing, from a conservative perspective. And it can, and has, worked; in the old west, before the idea of “police” had migrated out from places like New York and Boston, communities did in fact police themselves. Of course, they also governed themselves – without the need for Minneapolis-style city councils and bureaucracies…

…but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Here’s the problem; part of it is that it’s a spitballing fantasy.

Part of it is that, being not merely DFLers but DFLers to the left of Betsy Hodges, they’re putting their faith in the wrong institution to bring this utopian vision about:

[Several of the respondents said] they were describing an ideal future in which inequality and racism are eliminated and government policy has solved many of the social problems now handled by police arresting and imprisoning people.

Uh oh.

For starters, government policy is behind most of the social problems facing Minneapolis, especially the North Side; from the warehousing of the poor in places like North Minneapolis, to the inertia of the police reform process, to the artificial hikes in the minimum wage and immigration policies that have made entry level work impossible to get for too many poor youth, most of the problems trace back to City Hall, the State Capitol, or DC.

But here’s a more troubling part:

Prosperity without order is impossible (even if it’s enough “prosperity” to pay taxes to support a leech-like bureaucracy like Minneapolis’s); freedom without prosperity is meaningless. If you think that’s an idle bromide, look at Detroit, Camden or Stockton.

So something has got to keep order. Sometimes – like in small towns out west, or in the Old West example above, or in areas where natural disaster has swept away government at least temporarily, that order is kept by the people agreeing on some basic rules to live by, and some simple means to enforce them.

In this day and age, in the big city, it’s a police department, a prosecutor’s office, a judicial system, a corrections system, and a parole and probation system, and the bureaucracies that recruit, train, advise, pay, and take care of all the above after they retire, and the bureaucracies that do the same for those bureaucracies.

What could be worse?

One of the study’s designers answers:

“Police reform doesn’t actually work,” [survey organizer, designer and artist Ashley] Fairbanks said. “We need to radically re-imagine what policing will look like in our community.”

And all those roads seem to lead, according to any of the councilpeople, to policing attitudes, not behavior. To eliminating badthink.

In other words, they’d get rid of the guys in cars patrolling for speeding tickets, and replace them with thought police.

Bonus Sign of the Apocalypse: And in this survey, one of the voices of practicality, of feet-on-the-ground common practical sense, of dealing with the “now” rather than fantasizing about the indeterminate future, is…

…Alondra Cano?

Cano said right now she actually wants a greater police presence in the Ninth Ward, which includes several neighborhoods along East Lake Street.

“The solution is not really no cops, but it’s more how do we get rid of homelessness, how do we get rid of commercial sex exploitation, how do we get rid of chemical dependency?” she said. “Then you start alleviating the pressure that a lot of police officers feel to address these very deeply rooted challenges in our community, which they themselves know they’re not going to be able to solve.”

Given Minneapolis’ electorate’s state of mind these days, that might come back to haunt her.