Mountain Dreamers
Brig, Soren and Reidar,
Do you remember Patrick Sweeney from Chamonix? He is an other father we met there, and he has written an excellent book on how to use “fear” to make yourself great and happy. It is on your kindle. I love you. Papa.
A social media group called “Black Lives Matter Global” is calling for the rape and murder of white people.
The Telegram “BLMglobal” channel, created in June last year, is urging their followers to “Hang the white man” and “Expel the white devil,” explaining:
“We don’t want reparations, we want revenge.”
June 13 is your mothers birthday
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
Your Papa is such a man. I will bring down the tyranny in our family by refusing to lie. You can see the eyes of the tyranny right here. Zero truth, 100% lies in those eyes.
Brig, Soren and Reidar-
Your mother is certainly capable of this. She can threaten you, brainwash you, and convince you to kill me. She is that manipulative- the evidence is very clear from all of her fraud, delusional lies and panic attacks (see her medical certifacts. Beware- Do not believe your mother. She is high-functioning in public, but lacks any empathy. She will do anything to avoid facing her own fear of inadequacy. Including killing me, or you.
The Alienating parent- who has custody- kills the other parent, to get TOTAL alienation.
The full espisode is here.
You are ‘BASED’
When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago, “Let the lie come into the world. Let it even triumph. But not through me,” that was based. Not participating in transparent lies or mass delusion is based. Doing so against the madness of the following crowd is based. Nearly everything that it means to be based is either contained within or predicated upon this one trait of character.
Solzhenitsyn wrote those words as a result of his observations living in what may have been the most brutal tyranny of human history: Stalin’s USSR. That simplest of refusals—the refusal to lie on command, or even to fit in—is, in the end, the summary of his observations of what kind of people had what it took to resist a totalitarian regime. Keeping your head down while you hope the unconscionable blows over, say, so you can keep your job but none of your dignity, is not based.
Being unwilling to lie, which is to say being based, is what set Solzhenitsyn’s various heroes apart from the weakness of character, cowardice, and greed that allowed others to survive, if that’s what it can be called. Solzhenitsyn’s brilliance was in observing that, in the end, this trait of character—the willingness to resist lies, be yourself, and tell the truth even when people won’t like you (or will kill you) for it—is one of the small number of necessary characteristics to grind true tyranny to a halt. The other, if you want to know, is laughter. Both of these things, mixed in the right proportions and applied in the right circumstances, make what it means to be based.
Solzhenitsyn’s time in the USSR under Josef Stalin was extreme, but it was not unique. China, Cambodia, and other places saw similar, or even perhaps worse, depending how one counts untellable horrors. While “it could never happen here” is a bit of wishful thinking applied to the question of whether the Nazi regime could ever be repeated in the United States, the ideological conditions and general cowardice that enable these sorts of catastrophes have already come knocking at our door. Their reception has been, from those with the power to answer, troublingly warm.
Though, for the moment, better conditions generally prevail in our day-to-day lives in our teetering Western liberal democratic republics, we have also found ourselves in yet another period in human history when the many millions believe—or at least pretend to believe—outright, transparent lies about the nature of reality, both social and material. What’s more, our elites and the institutions they command have taken the repetition and promulgation of these lies as sure marks of both status and, believe it or not, sanity. That is, once again the lie is coming into the world, and we have been forced to ask ourselves: will it triumph?
That’s an open question, and its answer depends, in turn, upon the answer to the more personal question Solzhenitsyn answered firmly in the negative. Will it come through me? The fate of the future of Western Civilization and Mankind may well hang in the balance of how that question gets answered, and by who, and how many. That is, its answer depends on how many people are willing to get based and stay that way.
The risk is in a peculiar way perverse. If lots of us get based, there’s very little risk to any of us. On the other hand, if only a few of us do, the risk is immense. It’s the prisoner’s dilemma writ large. If a few get based and most don’t, I lose my skin where you might not. If a lot get based, there will be some damage, but it will be minimal. The trouble is that everyone’s self-interest calculation looks straightforward: getting based is a fool’s errand. This misunderstands both the stakes and the truth of the situation. Going based en masse breaks the spell and eliminates the danger. Failing to do so will bring ruin upon all but a few. Put more plainly, you should take the radicals running this show seriously when they say “liberals get the bullet too.”
To me, then, there’s just one option. It’s time to get based and help other people get based. It’s time for based nation. It’s time for a based movement.
Before we begin on such an ambitious venture, however, the origin of the term “based” should be addressed forthrightly because it is profoundly limiting and, in fact, something that prevents being properly and fully based. The term arose online in talking about various ideas that might justify biological racism and referenced being unafraid to say those things because they are politically unfashionable. It arose in being intentionally, and often crudely, politically anti-correct. It arose, frankly, in crowds rightly identified as being “alt-right.” One could say it has expanded from there into something mostly more commendable. I contend something further: that these new early adopters of the mentality were merely re-inventing, typically crudely, something that has been known since time immemorial, while lashing out at the absurd and illegitimate powers of our absolutely ridiculous day. Forget all that edgelord garbage. The Declaration of Independence was based as hell and still is, and no sane person could mistake Thomas Jefferson for some douchey shitposter just looking to rile up some Libs.
Now we can begin. To be based, simply enough, begins with being willing to speak your mind and state objectively true facts about the world even when people don’t like you for it. It means neither lying nor apologizing just because the crowd expects you to, least of all under the absurd implication that doing so makes you more virtuous and brave. It is the refusal to be concerned with what other people think of you when you’re being yourself and the recognition that it doesn’t even make sense to apologize for being true to yourself and your values, telling the truth as well as you can see it, or making a joke, even a bad one. In judo and jujitsu, base is what keeps you from getting thrown, swept, or flipped. Having base is based.
Being based means tolerating most of what’s done in good faith or to lighten the mood. It’s being real with lots of room to play. It elevates the worthy without falling into the indulgent trap of “celebrating” the ordinary, mediocre, and fake. It includes forgiving the trespasses of others when they aren’t rooted in malice and being unwilling to be a doormat when they are. It also means being sensitive but never hypersensitive. When you’re throwing a tantrum, you’ve definitely stopped being based.
Put another way, fitting to our contemporary circumstances, being based is the opposite of being Woke. Woke is wholly intolerant of everything but itself. It, because it is cynical of every motivation, it never acts in good faith. It brings down every mood and celebrates the worthless and the ugly so long as these take no shame in themselves for being worthless and ugly. Woke forgiveness is impossible because, to the Woke, forgiveness would justify the sin. It demands absolute conformity and tolerates no dissent. It defines hypersensitivity, elevates it as a virtue, and, as a result, is always throwing a tantrum.
Obviously, Solzhenitsyn wasn’t writing about the Woke in The Gulag Archipelago, but what he was writing about was another species in the same totalitarian genus. He was writing about people who, due in large part to their ideological commitments, had become “conscious” of a pseudo-real distortion of the world that we otherwise all must share. The lies he admonished us not to live by might be different lies in specific, but they hold up the same sort of regime in general: a tyranny simultaneously doomed to fail and, according to the preposterous theory informing it, unable to fail. The lies serve this intolerable contradiction, and, in the end, so does the censorship, the gaslighting, the caprice, and the murder, by the tens of millions, if necessary. According to Solzhenitsyn, the one remedy to this sort of incomprehensible (and avoidable) tragedy is to, in a word, get based.
There are, in the end, only two things that can tear such a regime down, and they are, as it happens, interrelated. They are the two most powerful weapons against tyranny in the human arsenal: telling the truth, including by refusing the lie, and laughter. Both are based, and to win both are necessary. While Solzhenitsyn tells us that the whole of a tyrannical regime can be brought down in the end by a single person repeatedly telling the truth, the fact is that the USSR that tyrannized him actually fell when its subjects—for citizens they were not—began to laugh at it. So, where being based begins in a certain stoicism, it’s the most based when it’s stoicism with a sense of humor.
Humor isn’t necessary but is the key to being truly based. Absurdity must be exposed, and no acid is more corrosive to the absurdity of tyranny than laughter pointed in its general direction. So, while being based begins with being unapologetic in yourself and the truth, whatever anyone thinks, it does this ideally while being funny. Power, as it happens, abhors a laugh, at least when it’s not based (based power abides). The more seriously anything takes itself, then, the less based it is, and, in turn, the less able to withstand the based it can be. Voltaire was based; John Oliver is an asshole. This is why the left can’t meme. Meme culture is based. The left is not based. (All your base are belong to us, indeed.)
In a very real sense, being based means being able to roll with the joke and knowing that when someone can’t, it’s on them. The based don’t apologize for jokes because they understand that, simply enough, the only people who would demand an apology for a joke didn’t get it—and that’s not at all based. Jokes are meant to dissolve pretense, and there’s nothing more pretentious in the world than asking someone to take back a joke. Some jokes aren’t funny, and in that case, all that’s needed is to let them fall flat.
This isn’t to say, of course, that being based means being disparaging. Far from it. That’s an earlier and more pitiable iteration of based. As noted above, the based are a tolerant lot, unless it’s of pretense, unfairness, cruelty, or bullshit. Disparagement and bullying aren’t cool—and thus they are primary modes of the Woke—so they sure as hell aren’t based. Jokes are subversive. Jokes erode power everywhere it is abused. Jokes burn off the dead wood and leave what’s green, what’s authentic, untouched. Being based includes understanding the difference.
In fact, the subversive humor of being based is what makes being based so open instead of being closed. It is by its very nature irreverent and sometimes crude, but it always punches up, as they say. It is, after all, based, meaning being planted squarely on the ground. In that regard, being based means recognizing the plain fact that life is, on the balance, a comedy rather than a tragedy, and the more pretentious and unaware those in power are of this fact, the funnier their absurdities become.
To strike a more philosophical tone, being based means having common sense in a postmodern context. Like it or not, “Postmodernity” is the name for the time in which we live. It’s a time of images, corporate gloss, and a certain imposed detachment from the real. If you’re Woke, you think this is a weapon. If you’re based, it’s funny as hell, and, let me tell you something, brother, we’re not going to hesitate to drop our best memes from the top rope. The politics of parody are infinitely lame against the relentlessly subversive power of kayfabe. The cream, after all, rises to the top. You may not like it, but you have no choice but to accept it.
To put that somewhat more seriously, the difference between being based and being Woke is the difference between laughter and shame. Comedy and satire have always had incredible subversive potential against illegitimate power because they get those seduced by that power to laugh at themselves for being a bunch of rubes and fools. That makes them based. Shame has no subversive potential. It’s the tool of tools and scolds. It bends people only to a certain point, and that point is precisely the moment at which they finally laugh. This is why based will always defeat Woke. Because Woke is dumb.
The subversive world of the based is one of pushing boundaries so that the arbitrary and pretentious ones fall even while the real ones are allowed to stand. In this observation is all the difference between humor and shame and thus all the distance between based and Woke. Humor washes away the absurd in a tide of laughter and leaves behind what’s real and what really matters—that’s based. Shame doesn’t. It just knocks everything over in its ridiculous attempt to prove that it’s the only thing that isn’t absurd—so not based; totally cringe, in fact. That is, humor is gentle while shame is crude, and humor is alive where shame is afraid to live. This is why the based roll with the joke. This is why the Woke laugh at nothing. It’s because they have no base.
Tyranny is knocking, and we need to get based. Solzhenitsyn told us what it would take to stand up to the end of the world, and what it boils down to is being based—and being based for our times. Our times are absurd, but this doesn’t diminish the threat. Still, in the end, there’s nothing new under this yellow Sun, and, as ever, the truly absurd cannot possibly abide people who completely refuse to take them seriously. The future, then, belongs to the based., not to the clowns. That future is ours because the future is based.
Freedom is ours for the taking. The lies are coming into the world, and, for the moment, they have begun to triumph. Lord, though, are they funny. Being based is little more, then, than a laughing refusal to be pushed around by the preposterous. It’s a refusal to go along with the crowd when the crowd has gone mad. While many people seem to realize that there is some problem, only the based realize not only that its safer and healthier to break away, but that it’s also hilarious. The based aren’t about to live by ridiculous lies because they’ll be too busy laughing the bottom out from under them.
Brig, Soren and Reidar-
The criminalization has already begun for anyone who a asks a question. And intellegence comes from exactly from asking questions. It is not about being right or wrong, it is about the willingness to ask questions.
One of the hallmarks of totalitarian systems is the criminalization of dissent. Not just the stigmatization of dissent or the demonization of dissent, but the formal criminalization of dissent, and any other type of opposition to the official ideology of the totalitarian system. Global capitalism has been inching its way toward this step for quite some time, and now, apparently, it is ready to take it.
Germany has been leading the way. For over a year now, anyone questioning or protesting the “Covid emergency measures” or the official Covid-19 narrative has been demonized by the government and the media, and, sadly, but not completely unexpectedly, the majority of the German public. And now such dissent is officially “extremism.”
Yes, that’s right, in “New Normal” Germany, if you dissent from the official state ideology, you are now officially a dangerous “extremist.” The German Intelligence agency (the “BfV”) has even invented a new category of “extremists” in order to allow themselves to legally monitor anyone suspected of being “anti-democratic and/or delegitimizing the state in a way that endangers security,” like … you know, non-violently protesting, or speaking out against, or criticizing, or satirizing, the so-called “New Normal.”
Naturally, I’m a little worried, as I have engaged in most of these “extremist” activities. My thoughtcrimes are just sitting there on the Internet waiting to be scrutinized by the BfV. They’re probably Google-translating this column right now, compiling a list of all the people reading it, and their Facebook friends and Twitter followers, and professional associates, and family members, and anyone any of the aforementioned people have potentially met with, or casually mentioned, who might have engaged in similar thoughtcrimes.
You probably think I’m joking, don’t you? I’m not joking. Not even slightly. The Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution (“Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz”) is actively monitoring anyone questioning or challenging the official “New Normal” ideology … the “Covid Deniers,” the “conspiracy theorists,” the “anti-vaxxers,” the dreaded “Querdenkers” (i.e., people who “think outside the box”), and anyone else they feel like monitoring who has refused to join the Covidian Cult. We’re now official enemies of the state, no different than any other “terrorists” … or, OK, technically, a little different.
As The New York Times reported last week (German Intelligence Puts Coronavirus Deniers Under Surveillance), “the danger from coronavirus deniers and conspiracy theorists does not fit the mold posed by the usual politically driven groups, including those on the far left and right, or by Islamic extremists.” Still, according to the German Interior Ministry, we diabolical “Covid deniers,” “conspiracy theorists,” and “anti-vaxxers” have “targeted the state itself, its leaders, businesses, the press, and globalism,” and have “attacked police officers” and “defied civil authorities.”
Moreover, back in August of 2020, in a dress rehearsal for the “Storming of the Capitol,” “Covid-denying” insurrectionists “scaled the steps of Parliament” (i.e., the Reichstag). Naturally, The Times neglects to mention that this so-called “Storming of the Reichstag” was performed by a small sub-group of protesters to whom the German authorities had granted a permit to assemble (apart from the main demonstration, which was massive and completely peaceful) on the steps of the Reichstag, which the German police had, for some reason, left totally unguarded. In light of the background of the person the German authorities issued this “Steps-of-the-Reichstag” protest permit to — a known former-NPD functionary, in other words, a neo-Nazi — well, the whole thing seemed a bit questionable to me … but what do I know? I’m just a “conspiracy theorist.”
According to Al Jazeera, the German Interior Ministry explained that these querdenking “extremists encourage supporters to ignore official orders and challenge the state monopoly on the use of force.” Seriously, can you imagine anything more dangerous? Mindlessly following orders and complying with the state’s monopoly on the use of force are the very cornerstones of modern democracy … or some sort of political system, anyway.
But, see, there I go, again “being anti-democratic” and “delegitimizing the state,” not to mention “relativizing the Holocaust” (also a criminal offense in Germany) by comparing one totalitarian system to another, as I have done repeatedly on social media, and in a column I published in November of 2020, when the parliament passed the “Infection Protection Act,” which bears no comparison whatsoever to the “Enabling Act of 1933.”
This isn’t just a German story, of course. As I reported in a column in February, The “New Normal” War on Domestic Terror is a global war, and it’s just getting started. According to a Department of Homeland Security “National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin” (and the “liberal” corporate-media propaganda machine), “democracy” remains under imminent threat from these “ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority” and other such “grievances fueled by false narratives” including “anger over Covid-19 restrictions.”
These Covid-denying “violent extremists” have apparently joined forces with the “white-supremacist, Russia-backed, Trump-loving “Putin-Nazis” that terrorized “democracy” for the past four years, and almost overthrew the US government by sauntering around inside the US Capitol Building without permission, scuffling with police, attacking furniture, and generally acting rude and unruly. No, they didn’t actually kill anyone, as the corporate media all reported they did, but trespassing in a government building and putting your feet up on politicians’ desks is pretty much exactly the same as “terrorism.”
Or whatever. It’s not like the truth actually matters, not when you are whipping up mass hysteria over imaginary “Russian assets,” “white-supremacist militias,” “Covid-denying extremists,” “anti-vax terrrorists,” and “apocalyptic plagues.” When you’re rolling out a new official ideology — a pathologized-totalitarian ideology — and criminalizing all dissent, the point is not to appear to be factual. The point is just to terrorize the shit out of people.
As Hermann Goering famously explained regarding how to lead a country to war (and the principle holds true for any big transition, like the one we are experiencing currently):
“[T]he people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”
Go back and read those quotes from the German Interior Ministry and the DHS again slowly. The message they are sending is unmistakeably clear. It might not seem all that new, but it is. Yes, they have been telling us “we are being attacked” and denouncing critics, protesters, and dissidents for twenty years (i.e., since the War on Terror was launched in 2001, and for the last four years in their War on Populism), but this is a whole new level of it … a fusion of official narratives and their respective official enemies into a singular, aggregate official narrative in which dissent will no longer be permitted.
Instead, it will be criminalized, or it will be pathologized.
Seriously, go back and read those quotes again. Global capitalist governments and their corporate media mouthpieces are telling us, in no uncertain terms, that “objection to their authority” will no longer be tolerated, nor will dissent from their official narratives. Such dissent will be deemed “dangerous” and above all “false.” It will not be engaged with or rationally debated. It will be erased from public view. There will be an inviolable, official “reality.” Any deviation from official “reality” or defiance of the “civil authorities” will be labelled “extremism,” and dealt with accordingly.
This is the essence of totalitarianism, the establishment of an inviolable official ideology and the criminalization of dissent. And that is what is happening, right now. A new official ideology is being established. Not a state ideology. A global ideology. The “New Normal” is that official ideology. Technically, it is an official post-ideology, an official “reality,” an axiomatic “fact,” which only “criminals” and “psychopaths” would deny.
I’ll be digging deeper into “New Normal” ideology and “pathologized totalitarianism” in my future columns, and … sorry, they probably won’t be very funny. For now I’ll leave you with two more quotes. The emphasis is mine, as ever.
Here’s California State Senator Richard Pan, author of an op-ed in the Washington Post: “Anti-vax extremism is akin to domestic terrorism,” quoted in the Los Angeles Times:
“These extremists have not yet been held accountable, so they continue to escalate violence against the body public … We must now summon the political will to demand that domestic terrorists face consequences for their words and actions. Our democracy and our lives depend on it … They’ve been building alliances with white supremacists, conspiracy theorists and [others] on the far right …”
And here’s Peter Hotez in Nature magazine:
“The United Nations and the highest levels of governments must take direct, even confrontational, approaches with Russia, and move to dismantle anti-vaccine groups in the United States. Efforts must expand into the realm of cyber security, law enforcement, public education and international relations. A high-level inter-agency task force reporting to the UN secretary-general could assess the full impact of anti-vaccine aggression, and propose tough, balanced measures. The task force should include experts who have tackled complex global threats such as terrorism, cyber attacks and nuclear armament, because anti-science is now approaching similar levels of peril. It is becoming increasingly clear that advancing immunization requires a counter-offensive.”
We’ll be hearing a lot more rhetoric like this as this new, more totalitarian structure of global capitalism gradually develops … probably a good idea to listen carefully, and assume the New Normals mean exactly what they say.
Brig, Soren and Reidar-
If you have any doubts about how false allegations destroy people, read on. It is not confined to Politics, or family court. It is the Marxist-Leftist personality types. They are wicked. They are evil.
That is because in left-wing political culture, evidence is not needed for accusations to be deemed true and to be used to destroy a person’s reputation built over decades. Just like free speech, they do not believe in due process when it comes to vilifying someone publicly — at all — nor do they recognize the importance of not assuming someone guilty without evidence. They are tyrannical cowards
The leading progressive Democratic candidate in New York City’s mayoral race, City Comptroller Scott Stringer, has had his chances for victory along with his reputation utterly destroyed over the last week. That happened due to allegations from a political consultant, Jean Kim, that Stringer groped her eighteen years ago, in 2003.
Despite no evidence presented that any of this happened, and despite this being the only assault accusation ever voiced about Stringer during his decades in public life, and despite Kim never having once claimed any of this even when she was working for a rival candidate who was ultimately defeated in 2013 by Stringer, and despite the sudden emergence of this accusation as Stringer’s mayoral campaign was surging, and despite evidence showing that Kim was highly misleading in several of her statements, and despite Stringer’s claims that Kim had been his girlfriend for several months accompanied by vehement denials of wrongdoing, numerous leftist groups and politicians who had endorsed him repudiated his candidacy within days of the emergence of this allegation, issuing statements which treat Kim’s claims as proven truth and depict Stringer as a vile sexual predator.
That is because, as has been seen repeatedly, the prevailing mentality in left-liberal politics is that even grave life-destroying accusations are to be treated as true without the need for any evidence. They casually and with apparent glee ruin people’s reputations and lives without batting an eye the second someone utters an allegation of sexual misconduct. And one is required to mindlessly accept such accusations as truth — never ask for evidence if it is true — if one wishes to remain in good standing in those circles and to avoid being smeared oneself as an apologist for sexual misconduct.
To understand what is being done to Stringer, look at the identical smear campaign that Democrats launched in Massachusetts in August, 2020. Congressman Richie Neal (D-MA) is a walking embodiment of everything sleazy and slimy in U.S. politics. First elected to the House back when Ronald Reagan was still President, the Massachusetts Democrat, 72, is now in his 16th House term, and occupies the all-powerful position of Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which controls legislation governing revenue, taxes, social programs, and tariffs.
Neal’s entire career has been funded by large corporations, insurance companies and banks, and that is who he dutifully serves. He has used his immense power to block virtually every piece of legislation that his corporatist funders oppose but which left-wing populists favor. If you’re on the left, and you actually think the political goals you claim are important, there would be few priorities more pressing than removing Congressman Neal from power.
In 2020, the left was presented with precisely that opportunity. Over the past sixteen years, Neal has had no credible challengers in his Democrat-heavy district. But last year, 31-year-old Alex Morse — a dynamic and gay five-term Mayor of Holyoke — announced he would challenge Neal in the Democratic primary. Progressive groups lined up behind Morse with endorsements and donations, and polls began showing him closing in on Neal. This appeared to be one of the best opportunities in years to remove one of the sleaziest corporatists from power.
But then the left sabotaged it. The College Democrats of Massachusetts released a perfectly timed letter accusing Morse of predatory behavior: namely, that he had sought sex with and dated young adults, and had consensual sex with several of them, including students at Amherst where he taught a class as an outside lecturer (such relationships are not banned by university guidelines). When launching these accusations, the College Democrats group also dramatically announced that they had banned Morse from attending any of their events, as if he were some sort of menace. There were no “victims” claiming he had coerced let alone assaulted anyone. But no matter.
Even as Morse denied wrongdoing, the same leftist groups and politicians which had endorsed him — The Sunrise Movement, The Working Families Party, Justice Democrats, Rep. Jaamal Bowman (D-NY) — quickly condemned him and renounced their support, said they were “pausing” their support, or demanded he “make meaningful efforts to repair any harm he’s caused.” They had no need for any investigation let alone evidence: they were willing to endorse a narrative — based on decades of bigoted stereotypes — that a gay man was a sexual predator of young males, even if doing so meant returning Richie Neal back to his perch as Committee Chairman. The local Sunrise Movement group repudiated Morse in a statement that disgustingly proclaimed that “we believe all survivors” and “rape culture runs deep in our society”: rape culture and survivors, for sex between consenting adults.
Industry groups that long supporting Neal began plastering the airwaves with ads condemning Morse as a sexual predator who was exploiting his relationship with young men. And anyone who stood up to defend Morse and demand evidence of wrongdoing was vilified by the left as either an apologist for sexual predators or themselves likely some kind of pedophile. Those are the tactics the left uses to prevent anyone from demanding basic evidentiary support for accusations before they are used to wreck the lives of their targets. As Matt Taibbi observed in defense of Morse, much of this was just an extension of the now-standard left-liberal culture that casts adults as victims based on the flimsiest of claims:
This terror of a world separated into victimizers and victims has already ruined journalism, where a new class of reporters is so locked into the idea that every second of airtime or line of an editorial is an exercise of power that they’ve begun demanding the removal of alternative political viewpoints from their publications — other ideas make them feel literally unsafe.
The flamboyant insistence of these leftist groups that their causes (such as saving the climate) are global emergencies is a fraud, since — based on the vaguest, most dubious and most trivial allegations — they were willing to re-empower one of the worst corporatist obstacles to their supposedly urgent progressive goals. As The New York Times put it: “within hours after the story broke, Mr. Morse went from role model to pariah. Progressive groups said they would stop campaigning for him.”
As it turned out, reporters Daniel Boguslaw and Ryan Grim, working with others at The Intercept, uncovered conclusive evidence proving that the allegations against Morse were the by-product of a coordinated smear campaign engineered by state Democratic Party officials and opportunistic College Democrats hoping for a job with Neal. One of the conniving little ringleaders even purposely lured Morse into online discussions about dating by pretending to pursue him so that they could then weaponize those chats against him. One member of the College Democrats warned the group that they would be exploiting an age-old trope about gay men as predators, but they did not care. Destroying Morse was their only goal.
Once Grim and Boguslaw revealed the truth, the College Democrats ended up apologizing to Morse. The State Party launched an investigation to determine who was to blame for this filthy smear campaign, and — with Neal safely re-elected — they issued a report admitting the State Democratic Party Chairman broke party rules with his involvement.
But it was just pure luck that, this time, the evidence emerged proving that Morse was the victim, not the perpetrator. Had it not been for a brave student disturbed by what was being done, Morse’s life would have been ruined, forever plagued by false accusations of being a sex pest. Once that truth was reported, these leftist groups — which had not bothered to wait for evidence before trying to destroy Morse’s reputation — re-endorsed him, but by then it was too late. The damage was done. As The New York Times noted, “Political careers usually don’t survive allegations like these.” Neal cruised to victory by double digits, leading The New York Times to pose this question in its headline about Morse’s vindication:
The answer, as it turns out, is a resounding no. It changed nothing. The left is yet again repeating its malicious destruction of a person’s reputation — again, one of their own — based on nothing other than evidence-free, highly opportunistic accusations.
New York City Democrats are currently holding their primary election to select their candidate to run for Mayor. Given how blue the city is, it is highly likely the primary winner will become Mayor. For months, polls have shown two center-left candidates anathema to the city’s progressives — former presidential candidate Andrew Yang and Brooklyn Borough President and police captain Eric Adams — in the lead. The only progressive candidate with any viable chance to win is Stringer, the former Manhattan Borough President and current City Comptroller. He has placed a strong third in most polls behind Yang and Adams, and has been closing in on Adams.
The recognition that Stringer is the only left-wing candidate with a viable chance to beat the two centrists has resulted in a pile of recent endorsements from many of the same progressive groups and politicians who hopped on board the Morse train, including the Sunrise Movement, the Working Families Party and Rep. Bowman. The latest poll shows Stringer in third place, the only candidate other than front-runners Yang and Adams with double digits. All other candidates — including the other two progressive candidates: Maya Wiley and Dianne Morales — are well behind, bunched together in single digits.
But Stringer’s candidacy suffered a likely fatal blow last week when a woman named Jean Kim — who Stringer says was a former girlfriend — claimed that eighteen years ago, in 2003, the candidate “repeatedly groped me [and] put his hands on my thighs and between my legs” without her consent. Just as was true with Alex Morse, this accusation suddenly materialized, said The New York Times, right “as he had appeared to catch momentum….In a number of recent polls, Mr. Stringer had appeared to be virtually tied or just behind Mr. Adams.”
Kim never once, over the last eighteen years since this assault allegedly happened, voiced these accusations publicly — even as Stringer ran for numerous high political offices, winning many elections. In a press conference alongside his wife of eleven years, Elyse Buxbaum, Stringer vehemently denied the allegations, explaining that he had dated Kim for several months many years ago and remained friendly with her until 2013, when she became angry with him when he refused her request for a job in his successful citywide campaign for City Comptroller, and so instead went to work for his opponent, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.
There is zero evidence to support Kim’s accusations against Stringer. No other woman has accused him of similar behavior either before or since. And Kim said nothing even when, after having her job request rejected by Stringer, she went to work for Stringer’s main opponent in the 2013 Democratic primary for Comptroller, where such allegations obviously would have helped Spitzer avoid his ultimate defeat to Stringer.
By contrast, there is evidence to affirmatively create at least rational doubt about whether any of this happened. When Kim first came forward, she claimed she was Stringer’s “intern,” to create the perception that Stringer had exploited a young, deeply vulnerable woman the way Bill Clinton did in the Oval Office with then-22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinksy. That framing predictably caused newspaper headlines all over the city to use this narrative of vulnerability (“Former Campaign Intern Accuses Scott Stringer Of Sexual Abuse, Harassment”) only for it turn turn out that Kim was thirty years old at the time. Kim also denied that she had sought employment with her supposed abuser in his 2013 race, only for Stringer to produce an email she had sent along with her resumé doing exactly that. Moreover, as Substack reporter Michael Tracey documented, Stringer’s accuser “is a registered lobbyist in New York and has a previous business relationship with one of his rival NYC mayoral candidates, Kathryn Garcia (who swiftly called on Stringer to drop out of the race).”
But none of this mattered to the same leading left-wing groups and politicians who instantly abandoned Alex Morse as soon as those allegations emerged. That is because in left-wing political culture, evidence is not needed for accusations to be deemed true and to be used to destroy a person’s reputation built over decades. Just like free speech, they do not believe in due process when it comes to vilifying someone publicly — at all — nor do they recognize the importance of not assuming someone guilty without evidence. They are tyrannical cowards who, sheep-like, jump into line the minute they hear an allegation of this type and repudiate the person accused without the slightest regard for whether he actually did anything wrong. They are too afraid of the recriminations from suggesting that evidence should be required.
As a result, within days of Kim’s accusation about what happened in 2003, many leading left-wing groups announced they were withdrawing their support for Stringer. Worse, they issued statements in which they took the truth of these accusations for granted — exactly as they did to Alex Morse — and in which they all but accused Stringer of being a predator and sexual abuser.
Left-wing state legislators such as Julia Salazar, followed by Rep. Bowman, withdrew their endorsement. The climate group Sunrise Movement’s New York chapter announced that they “stand with and believe survivors of violence of any kind, and that includes Jean Kim,” and demanded Stringer “enter a victim-informed restorative justice process, contingent upon Kim’s desires.” Praising “Kim’s brave testimony recounting her trauma,” the group said it “immediately rescinds our endorsement of Scott Stringer and calls for him to drop out of the race for Mayor of New York City.” In its announcement rescinding their endorsement, the Working Families Party condemned Stringer because, they said, he “failed to acknowledge and consider his responsibility” for the harm he caused — in other words, they were un-endorsing him because he had the temerity to deny that this actually happened.
Do you see what is glaringly absent from these tribunals? There is no recognition of even the remotest possibility that the person may be wrongfully accused, innocent of what they are alleged to have done. In their orgy of self-righteous recriminations and ritualistic denunciations, that thought never enters their mind, nor does any requirement of evidence. Even after these same groups endured the humiliating spectacle of having ratified a bigoted and coordinated attack on Alex Morse as a sex predator only for them to have to have to reverse themselves and re-endorse him, they have learned nothing from that travesty because this is the predominant ethos of left-liberal culture.
It should go without saying that none of this means that Stringer is innocent. Just as the accusers should not be presumed to be truthful, the same is true of the accused. Sometimes accusers lie and sometimes wrongdoers falsely deny wrongdoing. The point — which is only controversial in contemporary left-liberal circles — is that some convincing evidence is required before it is fair and just to destroy someone’s reputation and treat them as guilty.
These are far from the only examples. The left did exactly the same thing to Nancy Pelosi’s progressive 2020 challenger, the Pakistani-American Shahid Buttar. When unproven allegations emerged from several white women that Buttar was guilty of sexism and mistreatment of his staff, the left immediately sided with the white women, concluding that it would be better to send Pelosi back to her position as House Speaker and thus abandoned Buttar’s campaign.
In July, The Intercept published an irresponsible article that gave voice to these allegations against Buttar, only to go back weeks later and quietly insert major new paragraphs that called into serious doubt the credibility of Buttar’s main accuser (an inserted note at the top of that article now simply states: “Editor’s note: This article was updated to include additional context around the allegations made by [accuser] Elizabeth Croydon.” Several of Buttar’s supporters accused the women of using racist tropes against Buttar. One said: “The Democratic Socialists of America San Francisco are about to ruin the political career of a Brown Muslim man based on no evidence at all because a bunch of mediocre Karens complained he was mean to them.”
Needless to say, when the stakes are high enough, progressives kick this framework of presumed-guilt and Believe-Women to the curb. When Joe Biden was the presumptive nominee against Donald Trump, they quickly vilified his accuser Tara Reade as a mentally unwell liar — just as they did in the 1990s to the group of women who accused Bill Clinton of various levels of sexual impropriety, including rape. When something like the presidency is at stake, female accusers of key Democratic male leaders are to be mocked and destroyed, not believed.
That is because there is no discernible principle at play. It is only about power. Why was the highly educated Christine Blasey Ford to be believed with no evidence in her accusations against Brett Kavanaugh, and why is Stringer’s accuser, political consultant Jean Kim, to be believed, but Reade was not, even though she had more evidence of contemporaneous complaints to support her allegations?
But the far more important point is that any culture that is willing to destroy reputations and lives based on totally unproven accusations is one that is inherently corrupt and unjust. The ability to destroy someone’s life with nothing more than an uncorroborated claim voiced more than eighteen years after the alleged incident is a power with which nobody should be trusted.
World War 1 AND World War 2
were caused by German belligerence. They could be called the German Wars. I don’t think history or warfare was halted in 1945.
By George Friedman –Open as PDF
On May 8, 1945, Germany formally declared defeat in World War II. As others have said, there was one war in Europe that began in 1914 and ended in 1945, with a 20-year truce in between. Both wars pitted Germany against France, Russia and Britain with increasing involvement of the United States. It is not an overstatement to say that it was a war of Germany against the rest of Europe, with lesser European powers scattered in minor coalitions with one side or another. The wars began in the deep structure of Europe, but they were initiated on a broader scale by Germany and ended when Germany surrendered. The two wars might collectively be called the German War, laying the groundwork for asking how much of the Germany that was crushed in 1945 remains today. It’s therefore safe to say that 76 years ago, the Germans collapsed and, with that, the European war that began in 1914.
Germany did not unite as a country until 1871. The unifying principle was not religion or culture, as there were significant variations, but a common language that enveloped a common myth of the German past, a myth quite at odds with its reality. Emerging from this complex mix was a single powerful reality. Germany created an extraordinary economy. It passed France quickly and then surged past Great Britain, becoming the economic powerhouse of Europe.
The economic surge threatened to exhaust German raw materials, turning the country into a hostage of its suppliers. It was also exhausting the appetite for German goods in Europe. There were scant markets in play, but Germany was forced to both look beyond Europe and box European competitors out of Europe’s markets. That problem was not economic but political, and the political problem was ultimately military.
Max Weber, a famous and still admired sociologist, said during unification that Germany had become a nation-state too late. France and Britain had empires from which to draw. Germany had only Europe. Thus, he said, economics dictated that Germany secure its own empire. He did not mention that the good parts had been taken, the rest were of lesser value, and empire therefore meant war. His thinking became common, and Germany began building a navy.
Europe was attentive to but not horrified by German unification. It was stunned at the speed at which Germany became an economic power, but most saw ways to take advantage of it. But as it became Europe’s dominant economic power, and as it began to modernize its military, concern grew. Germany sought to create a continental alliance. The Austro-Hungarians bought in but were not the key. Russia, with its vast resources, ultimately said no. France and Britain were not prepared to be Germany’s junior partners.
Germany understood the military panel. Russia, France and Britain were reaching clear understandings. A simultaneous attack by France and Russia, accompanied by a British blockade, would break Germany. The only counters to this were to curb their economic and military power, thereby reducing the military threat but leaving them dependent on the others’ goodwill – never a good position to be in. Alternatively, the Germans could take military action, forcing at least one of the three powers to capitulate. Its choice was to crush France, execute a holding action against Russia, and then deal with British naval power at a later date. The key to Germany’s reality is that if alarm over its economic power grew, the pressure on the triple alliance to act would grow, and Germany would lose its agency. Therefore, it executed its plan before the others could strike. Germany would have won, I think, if it had made a deal with Russia. Instead, it was forced to fight three armies, and it lost.
The description of World War II is the description of World War I. It was the same war. Germany surged economically after Hitler came to power. It had a need to expand, and the same coalition of forces – Russia, France and Britain – were potential enemies. Political solutions were tried, but the same need to avoid a two-front war trapped Germany into the same strategy. After various political maneuvers, it attacked France, this time defeating its army, occupying it and forcing Britain off the Continent. It then attacked Russia, once again underestimating the Russian ability to survive defeats and casualties that would break other countries. And totally left out of the equation was the United States, so great that Hitler declared war on it, forcing it into war.
May 8, 1945, found two significant powers in Europe, neither of which were fully European. One was the Soviet Union. The other was the United States. Germany was no longer a united nation-state but an occupied territory. Its economy was a wreck, its military not fully under German command.
In 1989, nearly 120 years after the first unification, Germany reunited. Its economy, surging before and continuing to surge after reunification, is today the leading power in Europe, particularly now that Britain has left the European Union. Germany has learned from its past. Its strategy is not to maintain military force. It searched to find a basis for working with the Soviets. Its historic competitor, Britain, is out of the EU, and the economic alliance of which it is only one member pivots around German economic power. Germany has sought to avoid the threat of war while dominating Europe by making certain that Russia is not hostile and that France doesn’t seek alliance with it.
Some 76 years after its surrender, Germany is again the economic pivot of Europe and the fourth-largest economy in the world. It underestimates no one, but the truth is that no one underestimates Germany. Britain has seceded from the German-led union. Russia courts Germany, and the Germans have mastered coyness. France searches for its place in the sun, which is often blocked by Germany. And the United States lurks in the distance happily indifferent to Europe’s problems.
Each had a mortal fear of the other. Now each has mild unease. And geopolitics is not shaped by good intentions, of which there are many. May 8, 1945, was certainly a comma in history. It remains to be seen if it was a period.
She doesn’t look like child abuser? does she. Neither does your mother.
She operated a Social Media account called @MotherhoodEssentials!
An influencer mom who accused a Latino couple of attempting to kidnap her kids in a California Michael’s store has been charged with giving false information to the police stemming from the December incident, BuzzFeed reported.
Mom influencer Katie Sorenson went viral in December after she accused a couple of attempted kidnapping but the Petaluma Police Department at the time said investigators found no evidence supporting Sorenson’s claims.
Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office confirmed to BuzzFeed that Sorenson was charged with two misdemeanors and is scheduled to appear in court on May 13.
Sorenson claimed in videos posted under a now removed @motherhoodessentials post that the couple, later identified as Sadie Vega-Martinez and Eddie Martinez, had followed her in and around the store and made comments about her kids on December 7, 2020.
Shortly after Sorenson posted the videos online, police said in a press release that Sorenson “provided another account of the event that included significant information that was not shared with the Petaluma Police Department on December 7th or before her video was posted to social media.”
Sorenson also alleged that Martinez attempted to grab her stroller and told investigators she was willing to testify to that and wanted the couple prosecuted.
Vega-Martinez recognized herself in CCTV footage police released asking for information on the incident and came forward to cooperate with police, the Daily Beast reported.
“I couldn’t believe it. It’s like we’re literally guilty of being brown while shopping,” she said at the time.
The couple then accused Sorenson of racial profiling because they were Latino and called for her to be prosecuted.
“Do you really think it’s okay to go online and be racist and make stories about a family?” she said at a rally.
Following news of the charges, Vega-Martinez told the Petaluma Argus-Courier: “We’re very happy with the news. It’s a nice step toward justice. It gives you hope.”
