Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

Joe Rogan, Salman Rushdie and Chancellor Kent or what freedom is.

Posted: February 9, 2022 by datechguy in culture, opinion/news
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I’m old enough to remember when the Fatwa was put on Salman Rushdie for his book The Satanic Verses.

Unlike today when phrases like “freedom of speech” are routinely redefined to suit whatever agenda the left happens to have that day in 1989 the idea of the A death sentence being publicly demanded for an author for writing a book a particular Ayatollah didn’t like was rather new and there were plenty of free speech advocates who loudly proclaimed such actions a travesty.

Much to my shock at the time there was also considerable pushback from some in the west those who attacked Rushdie. It was the beginning of what we are seeing today.

At the time I was outraged (and still am at the bounty still on his head) and considered buying the book in response to said threats. but then it hit me:

What is the difference between buying a book I don’t want in response to Islamic threats and not buying a book I do want in response to Islamic threats?

The answer: THERE ISN’T ONE. Either way I would be allowing a bunch of savage barbarians to drive me to an action I had no interest in doing. The essence of freedom is the ability to do something if one chooses or not. So I asked myself a key question: If there was no FATWA on Rushdie would I had any interest in buying this book?

The answer is and remains no.

I haven’t bought the book, I have no interest in buying the book and I don’t see myself buying the book in the future…

…but I have the RIGHT an the ability to buy the book and that right is worth fighting for.

And that brings us to Joe Rogan.

I don’t have a subscription to Spotify and never had plans to get one before the Joe Rogan business.

I am not one of the millions of subscribers who listen to Joe Rogan. I’ve listed to a clip here and there but I have little interest in his podcast in general and had no plans to listen to jump in and start listening.

When the attempt to censor his came out I was as you might guess outraged. I don’t like the idea of people trying to force someone off the air because they don’t like what he’s saying or who he is interviewing.

You can’t have freedom of speech and if you don’t have freedom to listen. I think the attempt to take away that ability to listen is unamerican totalitarian and frankly evil and the people who are pushing that need to be fought because just like redefining words didn’t stop with “marriage” censoring speech and the ability to listen won’t stop with Rogan.

All that being said you can’t have freedom to listen without the freedom to not listen and as much as I want to make sure he has a platform so the people who want to hear him can do so I have no interest in joining that crowd because I freely choose not to.

Some might object saying that is it my moral duty to listen to jump in, perhaps I will like it, perhaps I would be this harkins back to one of the best statements in history concerning this type of thing.

Chancellor James Kent, author of Kent’s Commentaries, and one of the most influential American
legal minds of all time, had a personal story that illustrates how foreign this impulse is to American law. According to Kent’s grandson: [He was] waited upon by a temperance committee and urged to give his authority and sanction to the principles and aims of a mass meeting by adding his name to the list of
those who had pledged themselves not to use intoxicating liquor, being unduly pressed after his first polite negative, he made the following reply, declining the request:

“Gentlemen, I refuse to sign any pledge. I never have been drunk, and, by the blessing of God, I never will get drunk, but I have a constitutional privilege to get drunk, and that privilege I will not sign away.”‘

Kent never had the inclination to grant legislative authority over his sobriety.

I have no intention of granting either my political enemies or my political allies the authority to determine what can can’t or what I must listen to.

If some day Rogan has a guest I’m really interested in and I choose to jump in or even subscribe, fine but nobody is going to make that judgement but me.

THAT’s freedom.

I’m Old Enough to Remember When the idea that the Government Was Hooking People of Color on Drugs Was a Conspiracy Theory

Posted: February 7, 2022 by datechguy in culture
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Ten Years ago when I woke up to the news that Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for basically being Barack Obama I though that I was still asleep and just dreaming.

It’s happened again, but instead of a silly dream it’s apparently a nightmare:

“The Biden administration is set to fund the distribution of crack pipes to drug addicts as part of its plan to advance ‘racial equity.’ The $30 million grant program, which closed applications Monday and will begin in May, will provide funds to nonprofits and local governments to help make drug use safer for addicts.

“Included in the grant, which is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, are funds for ‘smoking kits/supplies.’ A spokesman for the agency told the Washington Free Beacon that these kits will provide pipes for users to smoke crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine, and ‘any illicit substance.’”

Four thoughts

  1. If this had been a Trump program the moment it had been proposed every media outlet in the nation would have been screaming it was a conspiracy to keep people of color hooked on crack, but instead we are only hearing about this after the grant program had closed applications for the funds.
  2. I maintain that the last election was stolen and the information that continues to get around the media’s blockade increasingly supports that idea and Donald Trump did better with the black community then other GOP members, nevertheless the Black Community overwhelmingly supported this administrations election therefore I don’t want to hear a damn thing ever again about the circle of poverty and addition when said community is aiding an abetting such a scheme.
  3. What makes this even worse is the supposed “leaders” of the Black community in congress and in the communities did not raise holy hell over this program and the cementing of a permanent addicted black underclass whose addictions will be supported by government funds. This tells you all you need to know about what the so called black leadership thinks about the black community. Remember this is being done under the guise of “racial equality”.
  4. Finally I must commend the various drug gangs and cartels on their ability to normalize themselves within the American system. They apparently have used their influence and cash to lobby and/or contribute through the political system to such a degree that a program whose very suggestion would have been condemned by members of both parties in the 60’s is now going though without a whimper. These guys might be evil but nobody can say they’re not smart.

You wanted a post Christian society, you’ve got it.

The Key Line From the Ironic Story of Charlotte Bellis That You Might Have Missed (and the obvious question)

Posted: January 31, 2022 by datechguy in covid, culture

By now you might have seen via the Washington Examiner the story of Charlotte Bellis who is a pregnant journalist from New Zeeland who was covering the Taliban for Al Jazeera. found to her utter surprise that she was pregnant and has been unable to get back into her native country for the birth of her daughter despite being vaccinated and boosted due to the stupid COVID rules her country has adopted.

The irony of course being that after leaving Qatar because it’s illegal to be pregnant and unmarried (oddly enough no protests by western feminists at the Qatari embassy, unexpectedly of course) and having to leave Belgium where her partner and father of her child NY Time Photo Journalist named Jim lives because foreigners can only stay there three months out of every six where could they go where they both had visa’s for?

The problem was the only other place we had visas to live was Afghanistan. I organised a meeting with senior Taliban contacts, “you know how I am dating Jim from The New York Times, but we’re not married, right?” “Yes, yes we respect you both and you are foreigners, that is up to you.” I nervously continued. “Well, I am pregnant and I can’t get back into New Zealand. If I come to Kabul, will we have a problem?” One translated for the other and they smiled. “No we’re happy for you, you can come and you won’t have a problem. Just tell people you’re married and if it escalates, call us. Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”

Yes they were welcomed into Afghanistan while New Zeeland has continued to reject them despite the bad PR this is giving the country and the massive amount of paperwork hoops they have navigated to be rejected.

We got letters from New Zealand obstetricians and medical experts to confirm the dangers of giving birth in Afghanistan and the impact of high stress during pregnancy. We included ultrasounds, letters in support of our relationship, bank statements, our Covid vaccinations including boosters, evidence of my resignation and our travel itinerary since. Between Jim and I, we submitted 59 documents to MIQ and Immigration NZ, including a cover letter written by our lawyer summarising our situation.

Vup they’re vaxxed AND Boosted and they’re still not letting then in. That’s a pretty good hook to show the COVID insanity irony that’s sweeping the west.

In my opinion however there is a bigger irony to this story, one that you would not know if you had only read the Examiner piece but is hidden in plain sight at the very start of her piece in the New Zeeland Herald that the Examiner story is based on:

For years I had been told by doctors I would never have children. I threw myself into my career and made my peace with it.

Hold on, do you mean to say that her doctors, those people trusted with diagnosing illness and giving advice on survival, extensively trained in the west with degrees from universities, licensed by the state and the final arbiters of what the “Science” says concerning these matters were WRONG about her ability to have children, and not just one doctor, MULTIPLE doctors over the course of years had told this young woman that is was not possible to have children to the point where she had to mentally make piece with it got this completely and utterly wrong?

Did they get their degrees at the same university as Fauci?

So think about it New Zeeland is keeping her out of the country of her birth because of COVID rules Rules supposedly based on science and the advice of Doctors…

…which are the same folks that insisted for years that this woman was not capable of having a child.

THAT is the ultimate irony here that lays waste to the COVID madness but there is another irony that is illustrated in this piece that exposes a hole in western culture.

This lady and the NYT guy Jim clearly like each other. They got together in Belgium, they got together in Afghanistan and he was trying to get into New Zeeland to be with her at the birth of their child. They clearly value each other and the child they will have together they child she never thought she could have. The child she calls a “miracle”. As a devout Roman Catholic an obvious question came to me

Why didn’t they just get married?

Think about it for a second. If they had gotten married she could have kept her job and her health insurance and not had to start on this three country quest in the first place. Instead they are both jumping though multiple hoops through three countries as they attempt to get into a 4th when all of this could have been avoided if the these two people who at the very least seem to like each other VERY much simply said “I Do”.

Some say: Well marriage is just a piece of paper, well so are the visas and forms they are filling out to try to get back into New Zeeland and they didn’t have a problem with that did they? It would be no more complicated being married with a child holding jobs that send them around the world then it would be being unmarried with a child doing the same thing.

It’s moments like this when the advice my father gave me and that I’ve given my sons really rings out: “If she’s good enough to sleep with, she’s good enough to marry.”

Personally I think this miracle child is worth it.

Famous Last Words: “I’m not black enough to be shot”

Posted: January 29, 2022 by datechguy in crime, culture
Tags:

Apparently the false media message that the only reason why black felons wielding weapons are shot by police is due to their race was taken to heart by a knife wielding man in New Jersey:

When one of the officers said, “I don’t want to shoot you,” Ackley showed a high level of political awareness by responding, “I’m not black enough to be shot?”

Life is often a journey toward knowledge and one of the final acts of Daniel Ackley thirty three years of life was the discovery that this information that the media imparted to him concerning white privilege and police was in fact in error:

Within 15 seconds, one of the officers fires his service weapon and Ackley stumbles to the ground, apparently struck by a bullet and stays seated, raising his now empty hands.

He would be life flighted to a hospital but pronounced dead on arrival clearing demonstrating that there is less to white privilege then meets the eye.

I’ll give the last word to Stacy McCain who notes that this police shooting is even less newsworthy nationally then the hundreds of death from black on black shooting in Chicago, LA or Baltimore:

Nobody looted Best Buy. No statues were toppled. White guys get shot by cops all the time, and CNN never seems to notice.

If only he identified as a black woman, than CNN could have gone with: “Police shoot potential Biden SCOTUS nominee”.

Update: Alas this was not the case 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.

Now I’m an old fashioned guy who thinks that race doesn’t matter when you’ve got a guy waving a giant knife around threatening people and that shooting such a person (because crazy people are dangerous) is justified in such a case.

But that’s playing by the old rules that our friends on the left no longer apply.

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