Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

Five Under The Fedora Thoughts: Lack of Incentives, But not Everywhere, Dodging Idiocracy, One big grift and Mr. Hoge

Posted: December 18, 2023 by datechguy in blogs, culture, education, under the fedora
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One of the reasons why both antisemitism and the violence of the left continue unabated is the complete lack on incentive to stop doing these things.

As long as laws are not enforced, except against those who fight against such things , they will continue.

In a famous scene in the John Wayne movie True Grit this is illustrated

Society has had enough of the “let him be” and I fear that unless things change quickly citizens themselves will decide to apply the alternate as the norm.

The distinct difference between this stuff happening in areas controlled by the left and places controlled by the right is striking, but not as striking as the number of leftist willing to tolerate all this crap for the sake of fitting in with the right people.

It’s always amazed me how so many people willingly choose hell over heaven but my amazement to that pales before the number willing to choose hell on earth.

I hear Elon Musk is getting ready to start his own university.

This is a smart idea, given what being taught at colleges these day and the attempt to view even math and science through the lens of DEI rather than objective fact it would seem there would be a market for a school that actually you know teaches real skills.

Idiocracy was not a how to guide, but our colleges are lurching toward it.

The degree that all things have become one big grift is really something and the speed that this had taken place has been really something too.

But like most things that are unsustainable they tend to collapse, first slowly then very very quickly.

Don’t Worry, as Cardinal George told you there will be someone to pick up the pieces and start again.

Finally a quick word on the death of Mr. Hoge.

He lived a long useful life and because of this and his abiding honesty bad people tried to make trouble for him.

They not only failed but he mocked them ruthlessly on a regular basis for the rest of his life to make sure they knew he failed, this is what happens when you have someone who has brains in places where most people don’t have places and faith to go along with it.

His tweets were a joy, his post were deep, particular those involving space but having him as a friend was the real treasure.

He gave me the black fedora I have as a gift. Every time I put in on for the rest of my life I will remember him. That’s a better gift that the hat itself.

Everyone dies, my suggestion is to try and live as good as he did.

In America We No Longer Have a Common Decency

Posted: December 16, 2023 by datechguy in culture
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  • Ernst Janning: Judge Haywood… the reason I asked you to come: Those people, those millions of people… I never knew it would come to that. You must believe it, You must believe it!
  • Judge Dan Haywood: Herr Janning, it “came to that” the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.
Judgement at Nuremburg 1961

11 years ago I was credentialed press at the Mitt Romney “victory” party in Boston. After the result became clear I was interviewed by French Radio concerning the result. One of the things I said in the interview is that we were no longer a single American culture but now two separate cultures living in the same country.

Nothing better illustrates this than What we’ve seen from the left in the last 10 days.

Consider: In the last 10 days we have had.

  • Presidents of elite ivy colleges state that it’s a question of “context” if calling for the extermination of Jews on campus is against school policy.
  • The Mayor of a major city hold and defend holding a segregated Christmas party
  • Harvard having a Jewish group remove the menorah each night for fear it would be vandalized and the university’s reputation take a hit (what they can’t afford security)
  • Students at various college campus in fear for their lives at their own schools
  • Complete media silence on Americans being held hostage by terrorists
  • A congressional staffer filming gay porn in the US capital
  • An ivy league college tolerating plagiarism by their president (but not their students)
  • Disruption of Christmas tree lightings all over the nation
  • Large numbers of US students, and faculty publicly defending people currently holding Americans hostage.

There was a time not long ago when none of this would be tolerated by society. They would have been considered violations of common decency and such actions would have led to swift and immediate consequences.

But the truth is and has been for a decade that we no longer have a common decency. We have utility and Marxism and tribalism which means that all of these must be excused because those people practicing these things are on the left and for the left/media/educational/entertainment complex the cause is above all.

And for those who claim the same on the right, remind me which party expelled George Santos even through it shrunk their majority to a microscopic level.

I’m sure there are democrats who see the actions of Senator Carden’s staff member and never thought it would come to that.

Frankly it came to that when the party defended Bill Clinton getting blow jobs from interns and when they Democrat house didn’t expel Gary Studds, the first openly gay member of congress, for banging underage boys at the capital.

Cue Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster:

Eventually the left will discover that Kurt Schlichter warned them years ago: ”Liberals May Regret Their New Rules“

The Dear School of Experience Visits A Survivor of Kibbutz Nir Oz 

Posted: December 15, 2023 by datechguy in culture, Israel, Israel vs Hamas, Uncategorized
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K’Mtar: [Alexander has just dropped an opponent in the Holodeck] Po’tajg! Po’tajg! Finish him. [Alexander drops his bat’leth and walks away. The Hologram Klingon gets up knife ready to kill him from behind] Freeze program. [To Alexander] You should have killed him when you had the chance.
Lt. Worf: Why did you not?
Alexander: I don’t know.
K’Mtar: Look at him! He did not care that you showed him mercy. He was going to kill you.
Lt. Worf: K’mtar, that is enough.
K’Mtar: If this was real, he’d be dead by now. 

Star Trek TNG Firstborn 1994 via chakoteya.net

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.

Ben Franklin Poor Richard Almanack 1758

Yesterday I talked about the problem of Gaza post Hamas, over at the daily links at Elder of Ziyon I saw this story and video that emphasizes that problem, a story that is both heartbreaking and maddening

“We thought that Palestinians are good people. All they want is peace and prosperity,” Lahav told the Washington Free Beacon in an interview from a hotel in this Red Sea resort city where she and most of her community were temporarily relocated. “It’s just that Hamas is forcing them to be in this aggressive situation.”

When terrorists first shook the door of her safe room on Oct. 7, Lahav was sure that she and her 22-year-old daughter were about to be killed. But a makeshift lock she had fashioned out of an oar and a vacuum cleaner thwarted three separate break-in attempts. The women lay in the darkened room for about 10 hours listening to sounds of automatic gunfire and grenade explosions. At one point, they heard a group of teenagers robbing their house.

Later, Lahav learned from other Nir Oz survivors that Gazan women and children as young as 10 years old had followed Hamas terrorists into the kibbutz, looting, helping the armed terrorists, and apparently enjoying themselves.

Here is the video

It’s heartbreaking because better than one in four of the people in her Kibbutz were killed or kidnapped. But it’s also maddening because this woman is in her 60’s and the evidence during her entire life has been that the Palestinians have wanted them dead, have cheered when terror attacks had taken place and only saw the Israeli peace camp as useful idiots to be exploited.

Yet it took the slaughter of her neighbors for her to learn this lesson and the only reason she and her daughter lived long enough to learn that lesson was that her makeshift lock held out.

How many of her neighbors would still be alive today if they had learned that lesson before Oct 7th?

And let’s ask two more important question to folks here in the states, questions whose answers I believe are just as clear:

  1. How many of those protesting in the streets today in NYC, DC and elsewhere would kill the Jews they encounter here if they thought they could get away with it?
  2. Is there any reason to believe they would or will stop with the Jews when they are done

I submit and suggest that the answer to question 1 is “Yes” and the answer to question 2 is “No” and the only reason you will not likely see this happen in the US is that the citizens of this country are the most heavily armed civilian population in the world today, possibly in history.

Which explains why the left wants us disarmed.

May Israel grow wiser from these event and may the west profit from this horrible example. Finally to those who don’t think this could happen here, I wish you the best of luck, may the dear school of experience never take residence in your town.

Update: She wasn’t alone in her naïveté and her reeducation

Reverse the Religions in this Story and it’s National if not International News OR DaTechGuy’s 3rd Law of Media Outrage Strikes Again

Posted: December 13, 2023 by datechguy in culture, media
Tags: , , ,

Here is a story you likely won’t see on CNN

Police said a Nashville family is facing charges after police say they beat their son who recently converted from Islam to Christianity.

Nick Kadum, 57, Rawaa Khawaji, 46, and John Kadum, 29, were all charged in the incident.

Metro officers were dispatched to Amber Hills Lane on Tuesday to do a welfare check on the victim, who is a juvenile. When officers arrived, the victim appeared disheveled and cut haphazardly, police said. The victim had a scratch on the back of his right hand and several lumps on his face.

The victim told police his father, mother and brother attacked him because he had recently become a Christian and they are Muslims, who were disappointed in his change of religion, according to an arrest report.

“He stated (his mother), along with his brother and father, repeatedly punched him and spat in his face,” an officer stated in the report. “He stated his mother then took a knife and scratched the back of his right hand with it. He stated his family, including his mother, demanded he recant and say he was a Muslim.”

Now if the parents and family doing the beating and wielding the knife were Christian then CNN would be making this national news if not international news. You might even see protests on the streets in foreign capitals.

But alas they are Muslims so DaTechGuy’s 3rd law of media outrage applies:

The MSM’s elevation and continued classification of any story as Nationally Newsworthy rather than only of local interest is in direct correlation to said story’s current ability to affirm any current Democrat/Liberal/Media meme/talking point, particularly on the subject of race or sexuality.

thus this remains local news barely worth the short story that Nashville 4 gave it.

#Unexpectedly of courseTM

In fairness, Jesus did explicitly say this kind of thing was not only part of the job description

Brother will hand over brother to death, and the father his child; children will rise up against parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by all because of my name, but whoever endures to the end will be saved.

Matt 10:21,22

But part of the plan

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword. For I have come to set a man ‘against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s enemies will be those of his household.’

Matt 10:34-36
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