RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/10/victory_within_reach.html

Victory is such a glorious word.  Anybody who has ever felt victorious knows exactly what I mean.  Those of us who have been lucky enough to grasp it also know that it does not last.  It arrives, fills the soul with a warm sensation of contentment and gratitude, and vanishes almost as quickly as it appeared.  Once the effervescence of victory blows away, those who felt its touch speak of it with reverence.  The word is pronounced more slowly and with more care as the passage of time pushes it deeper into our memories.

I hope President Trump is re-elected in the next couple weeks and that those reading now will feel what I describe above.  Some might say, “It’s just politics,” or “It doesn’t really matter,” or “We never win.”  But it isn’t just politics, it matters a great deal, and winning is only a small component of the 2024 election.  You can walk into a casino, pull the lever on a slot machine, and become a big winner.  But you will not feel victorious.

Why is that?  Because victory is about so much more than winning.  Victory is success in a struggle against overwhelming odds.  It is the completion of a challenge with almost unbearable difficulties.  To be victorious is to push through pain and anguish.  It requires transforming into something greater than you were when you started the journey.  It comes with physical and emotional costs.  That’s why victory tastes so sweet.  It is an exotic fruit that grows on a tiny island in the middle of a vast ocean.  Once you find it, nothing ever tastes the same.

Have we suffered?  Absolutely.  We’ve endured as politicians sent the best blue-collar jobs overseas and manufacturing towns collapsed.  We’ve watched the Federal Reserve print dollar bills on demand, lawmakers jack up the national debt to once unimaginable sums, and investment banks gamble with our retirement savings.  We’ve fought wars for “American freedom” only to discover that the people pushing those wars could not care less about our constitutional rights or individual liberties.  We’ve seen the American dream fade as the cost of living precipitously rises and opportunities for economic advancement disappear.  We’ve witnessed the fracturing of the Union as the federal government intentionally disregards immigration law and floods the country with tens of millions of foreign nationals with little interest in assimilation.  We’ve experienced cartel violence while officials cook the books and lie about crime going down.  Hell, yes, we’ve suffered…but we’ve also persevered.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/10/23/californias-unelected-tyrants/

Democrats claim that the MAGA movement constitutes a “threat to democracy.” Once you cut through their incessant rhetoric on race and gender, the threat the Democrats most fear is that an elected chief executive may actually try to control the executive branch. And when candidate Trump aligns himself with capable businessmen, including Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, government bureaucrats aren’t wrong to be afraid for their jobs along with the repressive policies they’ve imposed.

Voters who still haven’t made up their minds which threat to take seriously—“protecting democracy” vs. “draining the swamp”—should ponder life in California, where Democrats, run by bureaucrats and billionaires, wield absolute power. Decriminalized crime. Record homelessness. Punitive, impossible cost of living. The highest taxes. Failing schools. Fleeing businesses. And a state bureaucracy that is openly hostile towards unsubsidized home builders, oil and gas producers, farmers, loggers, ranchers, manufacturers, and any other productive, job-creating citizens.

If you want to pick one bureaucracy in California that epitomizes the ignorance, fanaticism, arrogance, and corruption that plagues that state, look no further than the California Coastal Commission. Ran by an unelected 12-member board, this state agency has the power to stop virtually any activity they wish if it is within five miles of the Pacific Coast or in the ocean within three miles of land. For nearly a half century, along an 840-mile coastline stretching from Oregon to Mexico, the Coastal Commission has been a capricious tyrant.

One of the most consequential examples of the Coastal Commission’s recent abuse of power was their unanimous rejection of a proposed desalination plant in Huntington Beach in Southern California. This facility would have produced 55,000 acre-feet per year of fresh water from the ocean and had already painstakingly secured permits and approvals from a dizzying array of federal, state, regional, and local agencies. The company attempting to build the plant, Poseidon Water, spent over 20 years and more than $100 million fighting off environmentalist lawsuits and paying for innumerable engineering studies and permit applications. The plant would have been an exemplary model of how to safely desalinate ocean water with minimal environmental impact. But in May 2022, in a 12-0 decision, the California Coastal Commission killed the project.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/barack-obamas-anti-constitutional-lecture/

The Dems are marshaling their forces in the face of Kamala Harris’s waning support from voters. Particularly troubling for them is the loss of a fifth of black men’s support, given that in a tight race it doesn’t take a lot of defections to determine the outcome. So, the Party’s éminence grise, Barack Obama, went to Pennsylvania, a critical swing state, to lecture a group of black men in Pittsburgh.

Obama expressed his displeasured with black males’ lack of enthusiasm for Kamala Harris, which seemed “to be more pronounced with the brothers.” Nor did Obama like the “reasons and excuses” for their disaffection with Harris, which one imagines include issues such as inflation, crime, and the chaotic border. With condescending arrogance, Obama sniffed, “I have a problem with that.”

Worse yet, Obama exploited an insulting stereotype that black men are misogynists. Brushing away those “reasons and excuses” that trouble millions of voters of every ethnicity, Obama explained that “Because part of it [male support for Trump] makes me think — and I’m speaking to men directly — part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.”

The blow-back from all sides was swift. “Obama’s remark,” The Hill reports, “have drawn the ire of several prominent Black Americans. Former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner asked, ‘Why are Black men being lectured to? Why are Black men being belittled in ways that no other voting group [is]?’ Turner added ‘she has a lot of love’ for Obama, ‘but for him to single out Black men is wrong, and some of the Black men that I have talked to have their reasons why they want to vote a different way, and even if some of us may not like that, we have to respect it.’”

Senator Corey Booker (D-NJ) agreed on X: “Voting for someone solely based on the color of their skin is a shallow approach that undermines the true value of leadership and character. Judging a candidate on their principles, vision, and ability to lead, rather than rely on racial identity should be the deciding factor.”

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/astringencies/finding-a-cure-for-psychology-anthony-daniels/

Claims to understanding are not understanding itself: indeed, sometimes it is far from clear what understanding would consist of. As the Haitian peasants say, behind mountains, more mountains: that is to say, one never arrives at the final cause of anything. We have to make do with whatever explanations satisfy us, and seem to work, for our current purposes.

There is often a strange disconnection, however, between claims to understanding and the practical consequences of that supposed understanding. For example, the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Washington has sometimes claimed greatly to have advanced human understanding of addiction, largely thanks to itself, at the same time as the country in which it is located has suffered from an unprecedented epidemic of deaths from overdose—of drugs of addiction. The total of these deaths far exceeds that of all American military deaths since the end of the Second World War, two major wars included. One might have thought that this would give pause to those who claim increased understanding, but this does not appear to be the case.

The vast increase in the study of crime has not resulted in the diminution of crime, on the contrary, though it has certainly increased the number of criminologists. Perhaps these two increases—in crime and in criminologists—are not causally related, but it is at least possible that they are. I think it fair to say that criminologists are more likely to concern themselves with the perpetrators than with the victims, and their investigations are invariably exculpatory in effect, undermining justification for punishment. They are also under institutional and social pressure to come up with arcane theories, because there is no point (and no career advancement) in concluding what any drunk in any pub has concluded without much reflection.

One often hears the demand that the fundamental causes of crime should be understood, failing the discovery of which nothing much can be done about it. This is mistaken on two grounds: apart from attributing everything to an unmoved mover, one can always ask what the cause of a cause is, so that the fundament is never reached; but this does not normally paralyse us completely.

Another field of study whose academics and practitioners have made claims to great strides in understanding is psychology. This study too has undergone a vast expansion, indeed out of all recognition. Psychology is now the third most popular subject in American colleges and universities, and no doubt elsewhere as well.

https://swtotd.blogspot.com

“The extraordinary thing was the way in which everyone took it for granted that this oozy, bulging

wealth of the English upper and upper-middle classes would last forever, and was part of the order of things.”

                                                                                                                                George Orwell (1903-1950)

The differences between today and the years preceding World War I are far greater than any similarities. Nevertheless, I worry that the collapse of the Soviet Union 1991, and the concomitant elevation of the United States to global hegemon, has caused complacency toward persistent external threats – a complacency not unlike that which existed in Europe in the first decade and a half of the 20th Century, before the Great War provided reality in its horr

The West has enemies, those to whom liberal democracies represent a threat. The autocrats in China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are fearful of what free speech would do to their positions of power. Democracy is an anathema to ideological authoritarians, be they on the Left or the Right, which is why the United States is portrayed as the “Great Satan” by the zealot Ali Khamenei and his followers, and why it is challenged by all four authoritarian states. Nothing is more fearful to a tyrant than freedom.

Yet other threats consume the media, particularly so-called “threats to democracy,” by which Progressives mean the re-election of Donald Trump to serve a second term; the flood of undocumented immigrants; abortion; and the threat of climate change. Largely ignored, as well as enemies abroad, is the imminent threat of financial default because of unending federal budget deficits that have grown our debt, as a percent of GDP, from 33% in 2000 to 121% in 2023. It is a trend that was aggravated by the long period of extraordinary low interest rates following the 2008 credit crisis. Nevertheless, all threats should be taken seriously. Democracy is fragile. It can fall to enemies from within or without. Allowing possible terrorists into our country, along with known criminals has consequences for our citizens. Abortion, in my opinion, was best described by President Clinton – it should be “safe, legal, and rare.” As for climate, Earth and the solar system are not eternal. At some point they will cease to exist. Will man be the cause? I don’t know, but I suspect not. The best way to improve the environment is to promote economic growth. And reckless government spending will negatively impact our standards of living.

https://www.aol.com/finance/14-reasons-bosses-quickly-firing-130000679.html

What’s to Become of Gen Z?

Bad news for recent college grads — your bosses aren’t fans. A survey found that 6 in 10 bosses gave Gen Z employees the boot this year — and 1 in 6 companies are now hesitant to hire Gen Z employees. Why are bosses so unimpressed with the latest generation to join the workforce? As you might expect, it’s complicated.

They Lack Initiative

As you might expect from a generation that grew up during a pandemic, many employers are finding that some Zoomers aren’t prioritizing work. While previous generations assumed they’d have to shine (and spend plenty of time) in the office to impress the boss, Gen Z has had a crash course in learning that life is short. But that lack of motivation or initiative is referenced as a problem by 50% of the employers surveyed.

Lack of Professionalism

Considering that many Gen Z employees had internships over Zoom and may lack extensive real-life office experience, this may not come as a surprise. Not surprisingly, colleges like Michigan State University are offering students classes on how to behave and even write a work-appropriate e-mail.

Poor Organizational Skills

Roughly 45% of bosses say organization is a problem for Gen Z hires, likely because so much of their time is spent on phones —  a remarkable 7.2 hours per day.

Poor Communication Skills

Even Gen Z workers admit they have a hard time drumming up conversation with coworkers. A full 65% of them admit they aren’t great at communication, according to a recent Harris poll.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/10/the_challenges_of_utopian_thought_in_a_complex_world.html

The phenomenon of children inventing imaginary friends is a well-documented and common occurrence in early childhood development. These imaginary companions are often endowed with idealized features, representing perfection in both character and behavior, and serve as companions in a fantasy world. However, as children grow and begin to form relationships with real peers, this phase of imaginary play typically fades.

In contrast to children, adults do not fabricate imaginary friends, but they do engage in the construction of grand ideals on a much larger scale. Rather than ideal companions, adults often imagine ideal societies — utopias in which human existence is perfected, and harmony with nature and fellow human beings is absolute. These utopian visions have historically shaped political and social ideologies. For instance, Karl Marx, while critiquing the utopian socialists for their collectivist fantasies, proposed a “scientific” theory for the construction of a communist society. In Marx’s vision, at the highest stage of communism, society would be free of class distinctions, inequality, and the state itself. Private property, conflicts, wars, and even the economic systems of commodity-money relations would cease to exist, and work would be driven by the common good, with individuals receiving according to their needs.

However, this utopian vision was not without its stipulations. To achieve such an ideal society, Marx advocated for the world dictatorship of the proletariat, a transitional phase in which the working class would mold the unconscious masses into a new kind of human being — one so ideal that it is reminiscent of Plato’s conception of ideal forms.

The new human being in Marx’s utopia would embody an ideal, perfect in nature, harmony, and cooperation. Yet, history has shown that those who resisted this transformation were quickly “crossed off the lists,” metaphorically and often literally, as the march toward communism pressed on. The tragic consequences of this pursuit were felt most acutely in the Soviet Union, where ordinary citizens, caught in the throes of communist ideology, cynically referred to their political and ideological leaders as “Kremlin dreamers.”