Visiting Column #65 -- The Weaponization of "Domestic Terrorism"

It has become fashionable these days, or at least "fashionable" as defined by network news and its slavish adherents, to use the term "domestic terrorism" in a peculiar way. 

Now, you and I would not apply any additional strictures to its meaning, I would assume. Terrorism is the intimidation of innocent civilians to advance a political position or narrative, and the domestic version of it is simply its location -- i.e., here, the once good-old U.S. of A. But it appears that the mainstream media seem to think that it applies solely to the events of this past January 6th. 

To remind ourselves, the night before that, actual terrorists had left a couple bombs outside the offices of the two political parties in Washington, DC; then as President Trump was speaking to a large crowd on the 6th, some people went over to the Capitol building even before the president got to the part of the speech where he asked them to go over peacefully (the word he used), and some of them -- despite the exhortations of others of the protestors to avoid violence -- started breaking into the building. 

Since then, there has been plenty of terrorism going on in our country; however, it is being ignored, whether in Portland, where federal buildings were burned, or Minneapolis or elsewhere, ignored by the media, who seem to use the term "domestic terrorism" to apply to the events of January 5-6, exclusively. It is obvious to the casual observer that Portland doesn't count. 

The narrative that the big bad orange man is evil and responsible for all that is wrong in the world, well, that is not supported by the fact that the domestic terrorism in our cities, before and since January 6th, the riots and burning of federal property, has been the work of Antifa and BLM terrorists (what else can you call them?), and since former President Trump is the enemy of the media, and "the enemy of your enemy is your friend", well, the media are inclined to do what they do best, and ignore the terrorism of the left. 

Of course, although the media are really good at ignoring stories that don't fit their leftist narrative, just ignoring the leftist terrorism is not enough. No, they need to co-opt the narrative entirely by using the term "domestic terrorism" to refer to January 6th, solely -- and then ignore everything else that happens that is actual terrorism (not that the 6th wasn't, of course, although it's still not clear all of whom were involved) is ignored. 

The media are really good at weaponizing words when it suits them, and why not? Their job is to sell clicks, to get eyeballs on their screens, TV and otherwise. It is clearly not accuracy, reliability nor, particularly, comprehensive reporting. And here they have weaponized the term, "domestic terrorism", by simply applying it here but not there. 

We know what they're doing, but we can do little other than starting our own media. We know that the 2020 election was corrupt as a 1925 speakeasy, or pretty much anything in Chicago, because we saw a procession of election workers testify to what happened in at least five states. But the media narrative is that "no court found anything wrong", even though no court actually got to the point of hearing evidence or testimony ... yet. 

It's not just the terrorism that is being weaponized. It is the reporting on it that has. I can assure you that the actual domestic terrorism that is going on here in the USA is not what is being described on air. 

Gotta fit the narrative, you know.  

Copyright 2021 by Robert Sutton Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #64 -- Who Can Do "Cultural Appropriation?"

I'm sure that many of you who are regular readers might recall this column, one of the most popular in the series, dealing with the topic of "cultural appropriation."  As you'll remember (but please read it if you haven't), the topic was a bunch of spoiled college students at the very leftist Oberlin College, who were complaining about the authenticity of ethnic foods the cafeteria was serving there.

Someone mentioned the column itself not too long ago, which got me thinking about the topic of cultural appropriation.  Now, mind you, I have a pretty fixed opinion on the subject.  "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", the saying goes, and when people from one culture enjoy the food, or attire, or other attributes of another culture, it is a good thing.

Unless, of course, you are white.

Now, I don't suppose there is an actual thing that is "white culture."  There certainly are characteristics of, say, Italians, that are very specific to Italians, who are white, but are foreign to Irishmen, who are also white.  Barbecue is an American southern thing, but lots of southerners are not white, of course.  

Country-western music?  Maybe that is (or was) a white southern thing, but Russians, who are white, don't get it at all.  I think you get the idea.

But there certainly is one thing that weirdly unites all those white folks, including those mentioned above, and all the Serbs and Croats, the Norwegians and Newfies, the Scots and Greeks and Turks as well.

We are, according to the leftists, not allowed to appropriate the attributes of other cultures.

Now, I have the issue that I'm starting from a position that what the woke left calls "cultural appropriation" is actually a good thing, not something used to make white people feel like we have committed a crime.  If an American girl like Keziah Daum chooses to wear a Chinese dress to her prom, that seems like a really good thing, not only because it is broadening her school's awareness of style, but because it just looked nice.  So I'm not sure what more needs to be said on that side.

But the point is that if the woke left thinks that cultural appropriation is bad, then it has to be a bad thing universally.

Do you want to explain hair straighteners to me then?

There is a reasonably-sized section in the toiletries section of my local supermarket stocked with hair straightening products.  Since all the pictures on them are of people who are black, one can fairly safely assume that the products are targeted for black people, right?  And since black people's hair is generally not straight, but Asian and most white people's hair is, is not fair to call that cultural appropriation?

I suppose that I could add all manner of examples of non-Caucasians habitually doing, saying or eating things that are characteristic of cultures that are of Caucasian.  As I said before, there really isn't a "white culture" but there are multiple cultures with specific attributes that are indeed each made up of white people.

What would a Russian think if a black person did a good job (or a bad job) on a kazatzki, that curious dance with all those kicks to the side that we all associate with partying Russians?  Should that be a no-no, or would the Russians joke with the dancer about there being maybe a little vodka in the dancer's ancestry, and everyone laughing heartily?

I imagine that you get the idea by now.

Cultural appropriation, done by anyone in the imitation of any other culture (i.e., sincerely and without mockery), is a good thing.  If I, a non-Pole, want to eat pierogies, or Mike Tyson wants to wear a lei, or David Ortiz, a native Dominican, dresses up one day like a Punjabi (though admittedly, a very large Punjabi), shouldn't we smile and enjoy what the other culture has to offer?

There is an answer to that.  The answer is "yes."

When I was 25, there was a presidential election, between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford.  One of the candidates (Carter) was celebrating the charms of some community in some city somewhere where he was campaigning, and used the term (unfortunate even then) "ethnic purity", in an attempt to praise the community's attributes.  

He meant well, of course.  But he ended up having to apologize (well, he didn't have to, but the 1976 version of the woke elite forced him to).  Instead, he should have come up with a description of what it was about that community that he was celebrating, and then maybe imitating it, since no one was calling it "cultural appropriation" back then. 

But they are calling it that now.  My point is that we should, or at least call it something.  And then we should recognize that it is actually a good thing.

Even when applied to hair straighteners.

Copyright 2021 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #63 -- It Was Real, Tashi

Back in 2003, our old cat, Chester, passed away after contracting feline diabetes.  He had walked into our lives as a tiny kitten 14 years earlier, back when we lived in the hills on 13 acres of woods full of stray cats.  He had apparently separated from the rest of the litter, and saw our house as a refuge.

When he died, we had moved to the suburbs in Virginia, and had decided he mostly belonged to my mother-in-law, who lived with us at the time.  Because my wife was working at the time, my mother-in-law came with me when we took Chester to the vet that final time, received the diagnosis and the strong recommendation that he be allowed to go to sleep.  We went home without a cat but with many tears.

Tashi's first days with us

My wife and I decided that her mother would be better off with a new kitten, so we found a breeder of Himalayan kittens in the next state and arranged to meet him one Saturday.  We told my mother-in-law to relax at home, that we were going out for a while to "look at mattresses", and came back hours later to an angry old lady, wondering where we had been so long ... until I reached into my jacket and took out a furry little kitten that looked like a tiny koala.

We named her "Tashi", having looked up names in the Nepalese language, and Tashi meant something positive that I can't remember.  I do remember that we knew even then that Himalayan cats are not native to the Himalayan area at all, but are a fairly recent cross between Persian and Siamese cats, blending the furriness of the Persian with the points of the Siamese.

Seven months and loving carpets

Tashi attached herself to us quite well; we never allowed her out of the house, and she learned to get around both upstairs and down as she grew into later kittenhood and got bigger and stronger.  By six months her coloration had developed, to where the little koala nose was now the dark face and the ears, feet and tail had all filled in their coloration.  She didn't have the full furriness of later years yet, but a very thick and healthy coat, and she loved having it petted, as long as you were the right person.

 She almost didn't see those "later years", though.  At about three years old, she developed an indeterminate illness characterized by total lethargy and lack of appetite.  We brought her to the vet, and they tried various remedies and diagnostic tests -- the bill was about $3,000 when we were done -- and still couldn't figure it out.  Finally, he said that they would give her a steroid treatment and send her home. "If it's going to work, you'll know it in 24 hours," he told us.

It worked.  The steroids quickly cleared up whatever was wrong, and a day later she was up and around, healthy and happy and sleeping most of the time like a normal cat.  Of course, there had been the time she ate a twist tie and required an operation to remove it (we stopped using twist ties from then on).  But she was a part of us all that time, a furry, sleeping part of the family.

"Christmas Cat", 2014

Tashi was "Christmas Cat."  Each year, the first night after we would put the tree up, you'd wake up to find her sleeping on the tree skirt under the branches, or looking up from that position as if to say "You got a problem with this?".

That was every Christmas, right through the last one.  You know, it seems odd to feel how connected a cat can be to a family, especially since they really don't do tricks, they sleep a lot, and they decide what they will and won't do, as if they are actually the rulers of the home, which we all know that they are.  We content ourselves with their idiosyncrasies and love them for those consistencies.

Rooting for the Sox over Seattle, 2011

She didn't work for a living, but she did have a knack for finding the nearest laptop keyboard, and God forbid you leave a computer unattended for very long.  You would be very likely to return to work only to find a large furball with a head, sitting on the keys and looking back at you, and wondering what you thought you were doing disturbing her like that.

It didn't have to be work, either.  For a few years, in the evenings I would put the Red Sox games on the laptop while my best girl and I watched TV, and while most of the time Tashi lay on her lap, occasionally she'd waltz over to my side of the couch and plunk herself down on the keyboard.  I'm not kidding, of course, as you can see by the picture at left.

Enjoying her couch bed in January

Tashi turned 17 last Fall, and had slowed her pace down tremendously in her old age, with an arthritic back controlled by glucosamine.  She found fairly reliable places to sleep, although she could still climb up on the couch as needed, including the one we'd normally find her in when we woke up.  

We bought her a bed and put it on the couch.  She typically hated beds, but this one seemed to comfort her more than the others, and she curled up frequently in feline bliss (right), having outlived the typical age for the Himalayan breed by a couple years already.

About a month ago, we started waking to find that Tashi had eaten nothing, or almost nothing, overnight, when she typically ate.  We changed up on the type, shape and flavor of the food, but it was pretty clear that she was no longer interested in eating, and was drinking less than usual.  You know what that means, but you don't want to let yourself think it, and you just can't talk about it.

We moved her water bowl (which she lapped at occasionally), her food (which she didn't touch) and her litter box (which she used as always) all into the sunroom that she now stayed in, laying on the floor.  In the last week, God was so kind; He gave Tashi plenty of sunny days to where she could move herself into the area of the floor where the sun was shining to warm herself.

Other parents might have chosen to bring her to a vet, but this was the seaside Carolina shore home we had brought her to four years ago, and as it didn't appear that she was in real pain as Chester had been, we felt like she should be allowed to go on her own terms, enjoying the sun that God was giving her in her last few days.  Despite her limited mobility, she was still able to use the litter box, still able to sip a little water, and lay in the sun the rest of the time.

Our beloved kitten went to go warm the laps of the angels last Saturday, the 13th.  We buried her earthly remains in the back yard, under a marker that is a sleeping cat with angel wings, and we no longer will have a pet, we have both decided.  While there is no longer cat fur to vacuum up and litter boxes to empty, no food and water bowls to clean and fill, we would gladly trade all the care for a few more years with Tashi.  

But she had loving parents who cared for her her entire life.  She outlived all the targets and as we say, in the world of cat lives, she "won the battle."  

I'm so glad it was we who got to serve her, "La Reina Gattita" as a former cleaning lady called her.   

In coelo quies est.

Copyright 2021 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #62 -- Let Joe Talk, It Can't Hurt

Sorry it's been a while since the last column, but it's been a challenge to identify the stupidest, most hypocritical actions and statements by the left to pick one to expound on.  Suffice it to say that at this point, any concerns I have about my own life are alleviated when I realize that there are people out there concerned about the gender of a plastic potato.

So ... Joe Biden.

There is a bit of "emperor's new clothes" about this.  The con-man magicians are spinning a mystical tale about how this geriatric old fellow, whom we can see no longer can make coherent sentences reliably, is actually the president of the United States, and that he is making decisions behind the curtain and knows what he's doing.

We in the sane half of the country, of course, can see right through the nonsense and realize that the emperor is naked, or at least understand the fiction that Biden knows what he is doing when he signs anything.

So a lot of people were a bit surprised when on two different occasions in the past week, at the end of a short video-cast statement from the White House, Biden stumbled around verbally and said he'd take questions if he was "supposed to", as if someone else makes the rules (hint: his predecessor made the rules).  You could almost anticipate someone yelling "Cut the feed!", and we all saw the video screen changing to a "Thank you for watching" frame.

So clearly the puppet masters running things in the White House these days did not want the guy who is supposed to be the president of the United States taking questions.

But I'd be like, "Let him take questions, who cares?".

If that sounds insane, think about it.  Joe Biden essentially never campaigned.  he stayed in his basement, came out for a couple of debates where he mostly staggered through them, and then was declared to have gotten more votes than Donald Trump in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, an amazing thing, given the effort that had to go into printing up all those curious absentee ballots that made it through the mails both ways with no creases and with machine-filled ovals.

He got sworn in, so I guess he is the president.  We'll let that slide.

All that happened, and not a single court has chosen to assign standing to anyone filing a challenge to any state to actually see evidence to the contrary, evidence of voting fraud.  The left won.

And if they won that, they can win anything.  So what is the harm in letting Uncle Joe take some questions?  They should be thinking about the worst thing that can happen, which aside from vomiting or passing out, would be saying something stupid, you know, like "I actually did grope that teenager."

Because, then would would happen?  Nothing!

Why?  Well, a few things.  First, the press is so far in the bag for Biden that even the worst thing he would say would be missing entirely from all the major networks' evening news except for maybe Fox, missing from CNN, missing from NBC, and on page 1,442 of the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Chicago Whatever-they-print-there.

The press has zero to gain by embarrassing Biden, and there is simply no accountability or consequence for their ignoring what he said, however much it would suggest that he not be in the right job, or the right residence, or his right mind.  They can simply devote their front pages to more important topics, like what guy just broke the ladies' 100 freestyle record, or the gender of plastic potatoes.

The other thing is that the 2020 election literally showed that there is no downside to massive, multi-theater election fraud.  The left now controls the ballot box in much of the country, and as Josef Stalin said so accurately, "It's not who votes, but who counts the votes." Well, he said it in Russian, but you get the drift.

So if it really doesn't matter what Biden does in the course of a "press conference", or whatever rigid structure they'd come up with, then why worry?  He can do the whole thing in Pig Latin, and it still won't make the Evening News.  He can toss lunch on his script, and it wont affect the outcome of a single election next year, because of who is counting the ballots.

Just let him answer a few questions!  He won't even be held responsible for anything he says, even if it contradicts something he said five minutes earlier.  There is no one to hold him accountable.  Those who get their news from the leftist mainstream media won't even know it happened, because they won't be told.

They'll eventually assume it was a made-up story when they finally hear about it, and will discard it as Joe being Joe, and when the next year's elections come up, they'll forget about plastic potato genders and the dissolution of women's sports, and the voting fraud they've been told never happened, and vote for Democrats all over.  

And no, there won't be enough of those votes, but there will be more than enough machine-printed, deceased-voter and illegal-alien ballots to ensure they hold power.

Because, oh yeah, it is all about power.  So let Joe answer.  It won't make a difference.

Copyright 2021 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #61 -- Elections? Well NOW what?

I was doing an Internet search this morning in regard to some topic or other, and one link took me to a page on the Snopes site.

Now you recall Snopes, of course. It is the supposed "fact checker" that we're all supposed to go to to verify this or that tale, or urban legend, or other supposition.  Snopes used to give us what we assumed was a reliable validation or debunking of rumors and stories we'd heard for years.

That was then, of course.

I started to notice during the Trump Administration that the text accompanying the fact-checking in Snopes articles had gotten awfully biased and extremely anti-Trump.  This is particularly concerning, given that not everything associated with Trump is by definition bad, wrong or evil, and if your fact-checking always comes down on the bad, wrong and evil side, you've blown your reliability index.

When I reviewed the Snopes link that my search had sent me to, I noticed a few other links they were advertising between paragraphs, links to what I assume were either well-advertised pages or popular search results.

One had to do with the attacks on the U.S. Capitol building last month, perhaps as to whether a particular person who had been arrested had actually been a registered Democrat.  Exactly what the article was about, though, isn't my point.  I clicked.

My point is that in the text of the article, the references to the attack were simply over-the-top anti-Trump, suggesting that he had inspired the attacks (despite the recording that clearly show his reference to "peaceful" protests, and ignoring the fact that the bombs planted outside the two parties' headquarters had been put there the previous day, before Trump said anything).

They were so anti-Trump, in fact, that they included curious references to the concerns about the election day ballot counting in multiple states, in the sense of their calling it a lie about widespread voter fraud.

Now the extra-harsh language about the allegations of voter fraud were bizarre for a site that claims to be the be-all and end-all of accurate fact-checking.  For them to say that President Trump had no grounds to complain about widespread voter fraud is one thing, but to describe the claims as being unfounded in very strong language is quite another.

I say that because I watched, literally end to end, the testimony before state legislative committees in five states -- Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia -- describing the observations of witness after witness, all of whom pointed out where very similar efforts were undertaken in each state to corrupt the legitimacy of the ballot.

Each was a full day-long hearing, and for the most part the witnesses were only given five minutes to describe what they saw.  That makes for a lot of witnesses in the day, if you do the math, or even if you don't.

What did they describe?  Poll-watchers being prevented from observing signature checking, or from observing ballot counting, or from observing pretty much anything, being kept far away from reading distance.

They described thousands of ballots showing up without having been folded, as legitimate absentee ballots would have had to have been in order to be in the envelope they would have been sent out in -- if they were legitimate.

They described thousands of ballots being machine-printed rather than filled in by hand, which renders them invalid -- but they were counted, even though only the presidential vote was filled in, apparently alerting exactly zero election officials to the concern.

They described serious issues with voting technology that was provided through the courtesy of the wonderful, generous, benevolent souls who turned Venezuela into a fourth-world country.

They described batches of ballots -- and video confirmed this -- being run through counting machines multiple times, but only during a period when observers were sent home and couldn't see what was going on, having been told that no counting was to take place before the next morning.

They described similar midnight gaps where these states, and no others, were shut down from doing actual counts.

They described severe harassment and eviction of Republican poll watchers.

Was each one of them lying?  That's a lot of lying, especially given that most of those who were confined to a five-minute testimony period submitted more detailed versions of their testimony under oath in written form, under penalty of perjury.

Not a single court has accepted jurisdiction to hear any of that testimony; it has all been done before state legislatures because the courts refuse to grant standing to any of the dozens of plaintiffs to press their case and find out what really happened.  But Snopes, well, they summarily dismiss all of that collective testimony because, you know, Trump.

So here's the thing.

Trump isn't likely to run anymore; although I wouldn't put anything past him, it doesn't seem likely.  But there will be a lot of elections in 2022 and especially 2024.  The Senate map is favorable to Republicans both years, and 2024 is a presidential year.

The whole election fraud issue described in detail by witness after witness in state hearings worked.  They got away with it, and the geriatric fool in the White House is prima facie evidence that it worked.  

The left got away with it; they couldn't guarantee enough actual living, voting citizens would vote for their propped-up mannequin, so they made sure that between deceased, non-citizen and Xerox votes, they'd win.

They got away with it once.  What is going to stop them in 2022?  What would a Democrat/leftist-run House, Senate and White House do to investigate the 2020 election?  What would that bloc do to ensure that the USA can trust future elections?

I do not trust future elections one bit.  I do not trust the Republican end of the Swamp to do one thing to fix the problem, because to concede that the 2020 ballot wasn't perfect is to agree with President Trump, and they don't want to do that (with few exceptions).

Now what, indeed?

What kind of representative democracy can operate without the faith of the voting public in the mechanism of the ballot? Not this one.

I will go and vote, because I refuse to be an example for others who agree with me, to take any other tack.  But I will have not a shred of trust in the process.

And that stinks.

Copyright 2021 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton