The Cult of Personality

From the Wikipedia article (Cult of personality): A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods to create an idealized, heroic, and at times worshipful image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise.

 

What we are seeing in American politics is a true cult of personality where Hillary Clinton is concerned.  The sitting president of the United States, Barak Hussein Obama, is heaping flattery and praise upon her, as if she were the embodiment of a saint sent to save us from our sins, and continues to fawn over her to the point of repugnance.  Hillary's political commercials praise her for her untiring and magnanimous work with children, instead of telling us how she is going to fix our economic problems (of which are both insurmountable and incomprehensible).  The reality of Hillary Clinton is being entombed, while the fantasy is being actualized.

 

These facts alone should generate fear and despair in the heart of every person in this country, however, half of the population is pledging blind faith and unquestioning allegiance to both Hillary Clinton and the Democrat party.  The Clinton Cult of Personality has been born.

 

This point was driven home to me in a recent conversation that I had on social media with a woman whom I shall call Liz.  Despite the overwhelming (and still building) body of evidence, Liz has decided that it is more palatable to have a criminal as a president in lieu of someone who she finds personally distasteful.  Regardless of the fact that she'll be voting to put a sexual predator back in the White House; regardless of the fact that Hillary is going to be useless as a president while she is under constant investigation and scrutiny for crimes; regardless of anything, anything at all, Liz shall vote for someone who is representative of everything that the liberals purport to despise.  And Liz will do this with a clear conscience.

 

The Democrat party has lowered itself to the status of a cult - a real cult - no better (and no different) than the cult that followed Jim Jones.  The Democrats are no longer a political party, but have chosen instead a path of brainwashed minions of their cult; altruistic goals no longer a part of their ideology.  They much prefer the cesspool of bought and paid for politicians, politicians who have brought America to its financial knees, over any chance of repairing a broken system in Washington DC.

 

As they say, this fish stinks from the head down.  Or, as George Carlin put it, "Garbage in, garbage out."

 

Of course, it has been suggested that the followers of Trump are no different.  This does not hold true if the facts are taken into account.  The Republican party has been ripped in half because of Trump.  That doesn't happen in a cult.  Nobody is idealizing or worshipping Trump.  We know he's not perfect and we accept that he has said some terrible things.  These are not the reasons that we want to see him as president, though.  What we want to see is an end to the Clinton Crime Family and an end to criminals in Washington DC who have turned our government into their own playground for getting rich at the expense of the people of the United States.  It has to start somewhere and Trump appears to be a good tool to begin the real work of putting this country back on its feet.

 

To fully understand what has happened in the United States and where it has gone wrong, you have to start 240 years ago, when the country was born.  The government was set up for average men to take a political position, for a short period of time, in order to make things better for everyone.  To that end, a financial safety net was built into the system.  These men would be leaving their businesses behind and paid very little for their service, so it was imperative that we ensure they would have a place to stay and that their living expenses would be covered.  It was the least that we could do for those who chose public service over their own needs.

This system worked for 100 years.  This is the system that saw us through the beginning of the country to the end of the Civil War.  There was no federal income tax and the central government was doing its job.  If nothing else, the end of slavery proves that the centralized federal government was still legitimate through to the end of the war between the states.  The states themselves still maintained their sovereign status even though the southern states needed to be closely monitored.  Secession was proved illegal, but this is where our government first gained real power over the sovereignty of the states.

It is hard to say exactly when people began to realize just how much money could be made by using our government as a stepping stone, but the beginnings of the career politician can be seen after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.  For the next 90 or so years, the federal government evolved, up to the days of the Kennedy administration.  Over the course of those 90 years, federal income tax was enacted (originally to pay for the Civil War) and little by little elected members of the federal government were giving themselves raises and benefits and generally making career in politics a reality.  These politicians were also strengthening the power of the central government and building a beast that, at the time, they would have had no idea was slowly taking on a life of its own, like a Frankenstein monster.

Still, the benefits that we were reaping as a nation overshadowed the reality of what we were creating.  Certainly, these benefits were not found acceptable by everyone - benefits like Women's Suffrage, desegregation, civil rights, and so many other important strides forward.  Of worthy note, these strides forward were championed, almost exclusively, by the Republican party, which was started by Abraham Lincoln all those years ago.

But after the assassination of JFK, something strange happened.  The Democrat party started the welfare state and somehow managed to claim civil rights and other progressive policies for its very own.  Brilliantly they maneuvered themselves into the position of being the party for the downtrodden, the disaffected, and the minorities (even though they were the party responsible for the creation of the KKK - the very same party that opposed basic human rights early on).  For all of these reasons, Lyndon B. Johnson is hailed as one of the greatest presidents of all time.

Yes, the party of JFK, a man who once famously said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country", managed to do a 180 degree turn and not only subsidize those who felt powerless, but turned the federal government into the entire country's nanny.  In another coup for the Democrat party, they managed to get all of their followers to believe that they were owed by the federal government and anyone who would oppose such an ideology could be nothing more than cold hearted rich men who were out to destroy the very lives of those who were not rich.

At one time, communities took care of their own.  They didn't need a central government to be their nanny.  If large scale issues became a problem, they had their sovereign state to fall back on.  Again, they didn't need a central government to be their nanny.  But, at this point, the dawning of the career politicians, made a reality over the course of 200 years of government, had to prove, beyond doubt, that the American people could not survive without them.  President Johnson was their stepping stone, and the evolution of politics into the 21st century has set it in granite.

As a point of reference, let's consider the greatest accomplishment of President Barack Hussein Obama - The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).  The entitled progressive liberals, having forgotten that JFK told them not to look to the federal government as their nanny, proclaimed that it was a human right to have free health care.  They voted in the man who they believed would give them that free health care, the care that was their right as human beings.  Rather than actually getting the care they believed they were entitled to, they got a law telling them that if they didn't purchase that which they couldn't afford, the IRS would fine them and jail them if it came to that.

Obama, the eminent Democrat and giver of free cell phones, is hailed as a great president, while racial unrest has reached an all time high under his steady hand at the wheel of this country.  There are so many problems with the 8 years that B. Hussein Obama ruled over the United States, I cannot begin to count them all in this article.  A column for a different time and date (you can count on that).

Hillary Clinton promises jobs.  Hillary promises that she will fix our failing infrastructure and will hire hundreds of thousands of workers to get the job done.  Where, in the world, is that money going to come from?  We are nearly 20 trillion in debt - we are bankrupted.  Just as Obama's promise of health care got him elected, health care in the form of a law telling every American to purchase health care that they cannot afford or go to jail, Hillary's promise will also pack venom that nobody foresees.  This promise is coming from the woman who spent the last 30 years making a living and getting rich off of the tax payers of this country; the woman who is going to take her sex offender husband right back into the White House with her and he'll have a brand new crop of interns to molest; the woman who is in the middle of an FBI investigation and whose closest advisor is the daughter of a member of the Muslim Brotherhood...And I'm only scratching the surface of the life and times of this career criminal named Hillary Clinton.

The Democrat National Committee needs to change its name.  It should opt for The Democrat National Cult.  They'll even be able to keep their initials, the DNC.  Their leader, Hillary Clinton, is morally bereft and ethically bankrupt.  Even a blind man can see that.  The Democrats are a cult and, as Liz so wonderfully proves, they will blindly vote, with unquestioning allegiance, to keep their criminal representatives in power.  That, by definition, is a cult.

On the bright side, we made it 240 years.  Not bad for an experiment in a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.  What a shame to see it end this way.



Racism

The usurpation of a powerful word to retard freedom of speech

 

What is racism, exactly?  There was a time when that word conjured images of crosses burning on lawns, lynchings, and deeply hateful characters in sheets and conical hats.  The use of the word 'racist' was a powerful indictment, while the term 'bigot' was used against people with backwards ideas and silly notions where racial issues were concerned.

 

Times have changed, though.  I see the word 'racist' bantered about as if it were no more powerful than calling someone a schmuck or a jerk.  I see that word used to stifle freedom of speech, for no better reason than the fact that it's a great way to (supposedly) prove somebody wrong.  While I may understand its usefulness in this capacity, I don't understand how a 'racist' has become somebody whose opinion has nothing, whatsoever, to do with race.

 

Still, I was curious.  So I picked up my old dictionary, one that was printed in the 1970s, to find the older meaning of the word 'racism' and what it meant at one time.  This is the full definition:
 

• A belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.

That was the long and short of it.  No secondary meanings, no other nuances - just the belief that one is superior or inferior based on one's race.  In its simplicity, this is a very powerful definition, because it allows people to treat other people as if they were animals, animals that can be lynched and tortured with no ethical dilemma short of animal cruelty.

 

But words and meanings change as time goes on, don't they?  In the early 1900s, 'gay' was happy and jubilant; by the 1970s it was homosexual; and finally, by the end of the 1990s it was used to describe something stupid or dumb (as in, "That's a really gay idea").

 

It can be argued that 'racism' should be the same, that the meaning should evolve.  So, I did some checking on updated definitions for this word:
 

• The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
• Discrimination or prejudice based on race.
• Hatred of another race or races.

The first definition is a rather watered down version of my original finding, the second definition broadens the usage, but the third is fairly straight forward and powerful.

 

Admittedly, I don't care much for this attenuated version of the word, but I have little choice other than to accept the normal evolution of a once powerful word.  I am saddened to see that a word used to describe the lowest of the low has now become a throw-away term for anyone who shows any prejudice of race, to the point that even off colored jokes about people of different races immediately earns the teller the title of 'racist'.  This is a travesty, as far as I'm concerned.  Still, life is full of little travesties like this.

 

The problem that exists with this sort of evolution is that now the word 'racist' has become so feeble that it is used to smear anyone who disagrees with any opinion of any group of people, regardless of race.  Are you against illegal immigration?  Then you are a racist.  Are you against extreme Islam?  Then you are a racist.

 

See how easy that is?

 

This all stems from the progressive liberal Democrat's opinion that anyone who opposes Muslim immigration, even without proper vetting, must absolutely be racist.  It is an epithet that they vomit forth time and time again, whenever their platform on immigration is scrutinized.  They care little that someone may be just trying to closely examine the platform or that their platform might possibly be wrong, only that they now have a word that they can use in order to slander and brow-beat any dissenters into submission.

 

Racism is a word that's root is based in race.  Muslims are not a race.  To suggest that I am a racist when I fully expect people wishing to assimilate into my country, a country that is rife with firearms and easily accessibly weaponry, be vetted to ensure that those people wish to be a part of this country and live in harmony with our laws and people, is a depravity.  I say 'depravity' because I have close family ties to many middle-eastern people.  I further have good friends who are of middle eastern descent.  I don't have any belief that I am superior to them because of my race, I don't hate them because they are not my race, and I sure as hell don't discriminate against them because they are not my race.  Yet, because I am suspicious of the Muslim religion, I am tarred as a racist.

 

So, let's take a moment in silence and say goodbye to a once powerful word, a word that has not been replaced with a more powerful form, a word that carried specific connotations that it no longer does, a word that had a place in the English language that no longer exists, a word that is now dead from overuse and poor evolution.  Also, let's add one final definition to the word, because this new definition precisely describes the word and its usage:
 

• A term used to stifle freedom of speech and prove anyone wrong who disagrees with the progressive liberal agenda.

You were a good word, a righteous word, I'm sorry to see you pass.



Down On the Animal Farm

A modern interpretation of an old allegory

 

Just a short time ago, I was challenged to prove that George Orwell's short novel, "Animal Farm", could be correlated to the United States government and what that government has become.  If you are familiar with the original story, then you know that it was written, specifically, about the USSR and their revolution.  Each character or group in the story is linked to either an individual or group of people associated with the era in which it was written ─ WWII Europe.

 

As an example, Napoleon, a Berkshire boar, of whom is an allegory for Joseph Stalin, enters an alliance with Mr. Frederick, of whom is an allegory for Adolf Hitler.  For a full explanation of the person or group to which these animals (and a few humans) are associated with (if you are unfamiliar with the story), then I would recommend the Wikipedia page on "Animal Farm", which can be found at this link: Animal Farm

 

Now, it must be understood that Orwell's original story is based on a specific historical time, while my interpretation will take place over the course of 240 years (the length of time that the United States has been a nation unto itself).

 

We start with the animals of the farm, having become tired of laboring under their human lords, staging a revolution.  They have little to combat the humans, save their resolve to liberate themselves, but, nevertheless, they are able to push the humans off of the farm and take it over for their own devices.  Here we have the American revolution, taking the country from the British.

 

Rules are then put in place to ensure that all animals on the farm are equal and spoken for in the government that is installed by the victorious animals.  The pigs, being the most intelligent amongst the animals, make the rules and have regular celebratory festivities, honoring their heroes of the revolution.  The rules for Animal Farm are reasonably simple:

1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
3. No animal shall wear clothes.
4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.
5. No animal shall drink alcohol.
6. No animal shall kill any other animal.
7. All animals are equal.

It is here that we see the animals of the farm creating what is analogous to the American constitution or a bill of rights.  At this very moment, all is well on the farm.  The animals now have a working government, a government that will equally protect them and ensure that every animal is treated equally under the eyes of the law.

(Digression 1: There is minutiae in the original story that I shall not touch on here.  A good example is, "In a very little while the animals had destroyed everything that reminded them of Mr. Jones" [p8].  Mr. Jones being the allegory for the British government and the destruction being small things like Noah Webster's revision of spelling words like 'colour' to 'color' to form an American version of those spellings, thus destroying things that reminded us of the British.)

So the formation of the country, Animal Farm (the United States), had begun.  There were problems, like the cows who needed milking but had no humans to do the job. Nonetheless those problems were overcome with ingenuity on the part of the animals (but mainly overcome by the smart ones who were in charge - the pigs).  They all worked together to sort these problems out and they had the pigs to show them the way.  The pigs used the harness room for their meetings in order to ensure that Animal Farm continued to run smoothly and that all animals were represented and taken care of.  In those days the pigs worked together for the good of all, but, as with any scheme of this nature, the power begins to corrupt and some pigs were having a problem with other pigs who didn't share their own, personal concept of what Animal Farm was and what it should be.

The analogy here is reasonably obvious.  The pigs (what will become career politicians) begin to take advantage of the power that they were given.  Slowly, the laws that gave them the position of ruling were tweaked here and there to make the job more lucrative.  We can see this in the rationing of the animals, the pigs taking a bigger share for themselves, because, well, they needed it to ensure that their thinking would be clear and the other animals didn't object (it made sense to them at the time), compared to the career politicians who give themselves raises and more benefits.  It's still early on, so these extra perks that the politicians give themselves make sense to the general populace.  The politicians (not quite career minded individuals, as yet) do attempt to make things better, while still ensuring that they have special perks, are as yet altruistic in their beliefs and meet in a simple place, the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. (not quite the White House and congressional buildings, at this point).

Time moves on and the laws and rules are tweaked.  Things are going well for Animal Farm, even though the pigs are getting the better of things (they get better rations and more milk than the other animals, but they need to keep their thinking clear and this makes sense), but war must eventually break out as a result of the losing side.  The humans strike back and attack Animal Farm again.  The specific causality and reasons mean little, it is only animalistic behavior that requires war to solve issues.  Ultimately, the animals win this war, but at a high cost.  This can be loosely correlated to the War of 1812.  The United States wins the war, but the capitol is burned to the ground.  This brings about the updated capitol, the White House and the congressional building and ultimately the Pentagon.  For the pigs, though, it means that they move into Mr. Jones's farmhouse and start creating more laws and rules that ensure that they (the pigs) remain entrenched as the ruling class (the career politician is born).

(Digression 2: Again, there is a great deal of minutiae to be found, like the dogs being used to enforce the laws, for right or wrong, which corresponds to the FBI and/or the Secret Service, and so forth.  Minor points like this are open to debate and argumentation, but a strong case can be made in favor of the overall points in this article, so I feel I must mention them here.)

It is here that we see some major changes being made the laws of the animals.  They have changed as follows:

1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
3. No animal shall wear clothes.
4. No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets.
5. No animal shall drink alcohol to excess.
6. No animal shall kill any other animal without cause.
7. All animals are equal.

These revisions allow the pigs to further rule as they see fit, just as the rules begin to change for the career politicians, who now have several generations of minor changes that make their career all the more lucrative (even though the original government was not set up for citizens to make a career out of politics).  The specific revisions allow the pigs to legally eliminate any animal that attempts to put an end to their reign and further allows them to rule as they see fit.  Do I really need to explain the correlation, here?

Ultimately, one pig decides to take over the government and realizes that he must eliminate another pig to do so.  This is when Napoleon, the strong pig, decides to eliminate Snowball, the weaker of the two.  It is at this very point where specific characters in the story no longer correlate to specific people, but rather become metaphors for the government in general.  The elimination of Snowball can be seen in the assassination of John F. Kennedy where a greater power, the government itself, run by a shadowy group, takes over.  Just as the exact details of what happened to Snowball are obscure and mysterious, so to was the assassination of JFK.  Snowball is made a scapegoat, but this is not exactly true of Kennedy.  All in all, the analogy stands, though.

At this point, the pigs have taken over and what was once an altruistic endeavor has been replaced with a government controlled by people who continue to make laws and rules and regulations that effect the common masses of citizenry, while staying outside of those rules and regulations and laws themselves.  The career politician has come into his/her own.  They have ensured that their pay and their benefits are far beyond the common peasant, and they manage to do it with the blessing of their constituents, just like the pigs managed on Animal Farm.  These career politicians use falsehood and fear to continue to keep their people in line, just like the pigs on Animal Farm.

As we take a final look at Animal Farm, the original rules for Animal Farm have been boiled down to one rule, and one rule only:

1. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

If you need someone to look to for in that simple, single rule, then look no further than Hillary Clinton.  Look at all the mysterious deaths that surround her and her husband.  Look to the fact that Bill Clinton is a sexual predator, protected by his wife, Hillary, and how they managed to skirt any laws that would put anyone else behind bars.  Look to how she makes statements that are nothing more than half-truths to downright lies and how her followers continue to blindly march in lock step, like the animals following the pigs.  And don't fool yourself into believing that Hillary Clinton is the only 'animal more equal than the others', look to every career politician who is making a living off of the back of the taxpayers, the taxpayers who struggle every day to put food on their table and feed their children, while these career politicians, on both sides of the aisle, are clinking their champagne glasses and getting fat, both in body and financially, to the detriment of those who they proclaim to serve.

The final nail is driven home by the final words in the Orwell book, "Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike.  No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs.  The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."  The pigs and humans looked exactly alike, so to do the career politicians and the kings and queens look alike.  Sure, we vote for our kings and queens, but that vote, that single action, is the only difference.  And, really, does it matter which king or queen you vote for?  Is that not the "Grande Illusion"?  To believe that you have a choice when there honestly is not choice at all?  The faces change, but they all look the same.

And that, dear friends, is "Animal Farm" - the perfect analogy for the United States, even though it was written about the USSR.  You know, that's the true irony of it, because it was Nikita Khrushchev who said, "Your children’s children will live under COMMUNISM. You AMERICANS are so gullible. No, you won’t accept COMMUNISM outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of SOCIALISM until you will finally wake up & find that you already have COMMUNISM. We won’t ever have to fight you; we’ll weaken your economy until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands."

I reckon at 19 trillion in debt, Orwell was more of a fortune teller than author.


No Ethics, No Integrity

 

Yesterday, I posted a letter that I had written to Keith C. Burris, an editorial writer (and editorial editor) for The Toledo Blade.  I wanted to do a quick follow up to that letter, since Mr. Burris did, in fact, get back to me on that.

 

He was very quick to tell me that Hillary DID make history because she is the first woman to be nominated as president.  That, of course, is an absolute lie.  Since this is an easily enough researched fact, I must assume that Burris is a liar, since he refuses to admit that, in 1872, Victoria Woodhull was included in the presidential race, running under the Equal Rights Party nomination.  The abjectly pathetic part of this is that she was an Ohioan, and The Toledo Blade is an Ohio newspaper.

 

There are arguments to be made as to the legitimacy of Woodhull's run for president, but, not to be redundant, that is argumentative.  The fact of the matter is that Hillary is not the first woman to run for president, all debate aside.  It is simple fact, regardless of Burris's (or anyone else's) weak disputations.

 

This is precisely why the press is considered to be so very untrustworthy.  People like Keith C. Burris only add to the public's distrust of news outlets.  If you read his article (the link is given in yesterday's post), then you can see how his own, personal opinion colors what he proclaims to be fact.  Unethical, deceitful, and disgraceful are all excellent descriptors of Burris, specifically, and The Toledo Blade, generally.

 

He further whines about the fact that The Toledo Blade is not pro-Clinton.  What a joke.  When voting day comes around, The Toledo Blade always publishes a cut-out part for every reader to take into the voting booth with them, in order to vote exactly how The Toledo Blade tells them to vote.  Any guess on who The Toledo Blade is going to tell them who to vote for as president?  Well, I can tell you who, and, here's a hint, it won't be Trump or any third party.

 

(On a side note, I find it comical how The Toledo Blade is forever proclaiming that campaigning outside of polling places is illegal, while they publish a sheet to tell their readers exactly how to vote - the bottom line is that The Toledo Blade is campaigning right inside the voting booth.  What hypocrisy; what gall; what temerity - talking out of two sides of their faces, but clueless as to why the general populace finds the media to be untrustworthy.)

 

Wake up, people.  Please, for the love of God, wake up.  Open your eyes to what Burris and others of his ilk are doing to influence you to their point of view.  Trying to get people to see your point of view is a good thing, but the way that Burris, the media, and others of their ilk are doing it is dishonest, unethical, and vulgar.

A letter to Keith C Burris

Editorial Page Editor of The Toledo Blade

 

The following letter is a reply to Burris for his article found here: http://www.toledoblade.com/Keith-Burris/2016/07/31/Winners-losers-and-the-Democratic-narrative.html

 

 

(Please note that I am only speaking to the first few paragraphs, because Burris's column can only be read for so long before one begins to wretch and vomit in one's own mouth.)

 

 

Dear Mr. Burris,

You stated that Hillary "made history" at the DNC.  I'm wondering precisely how you meant that.  If you mean to say that she made history because she's the first woman to be nominated to run for president, then you are 100% wrong.  Of course, you can warp that to mean anything, which is what progressive liberals are want to do (e.g. she made history because she was the first woman nominated by the Democrats to be president), so maybe you should be more specific in your claims.

However, based on your claim, I can only take it to mean that she is the first woman to be nominated for president.  She's not.  At least you could get your facts straight, particularly when you are "editor of the editorial page".  Of course, I know I'm being hard on you, since you do work for The Blade and I've never known The Blade to hold itself to a high ethical standard whenever their pundits can attack anyone who disagrees with them and their skewed political stance.

I just get tired of it and sometimes I have to call 'shenanigans' against people, like yourself, who make such untrue claims while being able to cloak themselves in the excuse, "Oh, I didn't mean it like that..."

As for being relaxed and happy, well, you would be relaxed and happy too if the FBI came out and said, "Yep, she's guilty as hell, but we don't care."  Why wouldn't she be relaxed and happy?  She has proved that she is above and beyond any and all laws of this land.  Have you ever heard the quote, "Some animals are more equal than others"?  I hope so and I hope that you have the brain to realize that we've finally crossed into a very real Orwellian world.

Well, don't worry.  She will be coronated queen in 2017 and the career politicians will continue to run this country, just like the kings and queens used to (again, from some Orwell book - the humans and the pigs now all look the same).  Do you honestly believe that the votes matter?  Didn't matter in the primaries, why would it matter now?  Sadly, you, The Blade, the entire Democrat party, and far too many Americans just don't care, as long as you (and they) get what you (and they) want.  The American government 'of the people, by the people, and for the people' is a failure, but, hey, at least we made it work for two centuries - not bad.

I am sincerely yours,