YES, NO, BUT, WHAT THE!

Marx goes PoMo via his nefarious acolytes never ending quest to destroy the most successful civilisation our flawed human world has ever achieved, primarily because it did so on the 'wings' of the Judeo-Christian worldview:

"The beginnings of identity politics can be traced to 1973, the year the first volume of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago—a book that demolished any pretense of communism’s moral authority—was published in the West. The ideological challenge of socialism was fading, its fighting spirit dwindling. This presented a challenge for the Left: how to carry on the fight against capitalism when its major ideological alternative was no longer viable?

The Left found its answer in an identity politics that grew out of anti-colonialism. Marx’s class struggle was reformulated into an ethno-racial struggle—a ceaseless competition between colonizer and colonized, victimizer and victim, oppressor and oppressed. Instead of presenting collectivism and central planning as the gateway to the realization of genuine freedom, the new multiculturalist Left turned to unmasking the supposed power relations that subordinated minorities and exploited third world nations.

..........The original battleground was the American university, where, as Bruce Bawer writes in The Victims’ Revolution: The Rise of Identity Politics and the Closing of the Liberal Mind,
The point [became] simply to “prove”—repetitively, endlessly—certain facile, reductive, and invariably left-wing points about the nature of power and oppression. In this new version of the humanities, all of Western civilization is not analyzed through the use of reason or judged according to aesthetic standards that have been developed over centuries; rather, it is viewed through prisms of race, class, and gender, and is hailed or condemned in accordance with certain political checklists.  "[M Conttinetti]

Western civilisation is a mess, even at its loftiest point it was riddled with weaknesses, betrayal, dishonour, corruption and every failure known to mankind(sin?), but like Churchill's take on Democracy it was infinitely preferable to its alternatives:

"...indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…"

It appears that our erstwhile younger folk egged on by the globalist elite and desacrilized Hollywood sybarites and 're-educated' by neo-Marxist neophyte totalitarians with a penchant for allowing  children to direct the 'learning' (via critical theory from the Frankfurt school) resulted in cohorts of  graduates with a notable inability to think, reason research and/or comprehend consequences, we now end up with a voting population ripe for conquest.

As I have said before and will repeat ad nauseum; when they get what they think they want they are not going to like what they actually get....if history is anything to go by and unlike the bulk of educationalists today I believe history is an accurate indicator for the future.

STEAMING SWAMP PILE

Cognitive dissonance and Trump derangement syndrome are like trans-rational dance partners:

"Oh, and it’s all Trump’s fault because Trump is magical and omnipotent and he personally approves Arab hit team operations in Asia Minor. Or maybe it’s Jared Kushner who did that. It’s hard to know which of the White House masterminds (who we are simultaneously informed are scatter-brained half-wits) is pulling the strings around the world. After all, no Neo-Dark Age potentate ever murdered anybody until Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit lost." [K Schlichter]

HEY DUDE, I LOVE YOUR TATOOS MAN...

I have just read a post about an experiment in America where a drug was administered to a group of volunteers for the express purpose of 'making them more friendly towards refugees/immigrants'.

[The title of the study is, "Oxytocin-enforced norm compliance reduces xenophobic outgroup rejection." (Reference: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017 Aug 29;114(35):9314-9319.)]

Huxley embraces Orwell.

I also happened to be watching TV last night, a favoured programme which for 3 seasons has managed to maintain some balance in the political arena...not so with the new series. It has adopted a much more radicalised left-wing perspective even getting Hillary Clinton in to lecture the viewers about 'loving multiculturalism and hating nationalism'....this is a direct attack on the concept of countries having borders and an unrepentant promotion of the idea of globalisation. As in the study of Oxytocin the idea is to change behaviour, not address legitimate issues such as overcrowding, the loss of identity, crime, etc

Behind this agenda is a belief that the human being is nothing more than a biological machine to be manipulated by those in power to do what they believe is best for everyone[actually themselves]. With a TV programme it is possible to switch off as I did, however when it gets to the point of tampering with our water supply the effects are much more sinister.

Welcome to our Brave New World.

PS......thank you Hollywood for being so stupidly unsubtle which provides me with the opportunity to stop watching TV and begin to reawaken my studies of the glories of Western Culture. So much to catch up on, so much wealth and richness of reading.

MIKES ART PROFILE

I am beginning to emerge from a long hiatus regarding art and am re-publishing my Wix art profile detailing some works over the years...appreciate any and all feedback.

Because this is an ongoing process I realise that I have duplicated some images and have left others out but I am editing every day and would appreciate suggestions.

Ciao

https://mcmeekanmike.wixsite.com/artprofile

EXPERT, SCHMEXPERT

Leave it to our 'expert betters' to keep on keeping on with the comedy gold routines:

"When Trump’s electoral victory became apparent, Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman warned that the world was “very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight”. In fact, since the election of Trump, America has achieved solid and uninterrupted economic growth. Unemployment, and particularly black unemployment, is lower than it has been for many years. Home ownership is up. The stock market continues to climb. New industries have started and old ones have been revived. Trump’s America is prospering."[Hal Colebatch]

Pretty much every 'expert' these days is more influenced by ideology than fact and they prove it every time they predict some new doom and gloom scenario. The population explosion, the starvation of the world, the world running out of fossil fuels, the climate change scam, you name it they have got it wrong.

In fact just like the 'magicians' of Pharaohs court when confronted with Moses, all they manged to do was make a bad situation worse. Follow the money (especially taxpayer dollars) and you find the motive.

THE TRUE 'CIRCLE OF LIFE'

The Post Modern/Neo-Marxist worldview has through its various academic acolytes advocated for the deconstruction of language and has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams.

Relative values are not new, they have in fact being around for millennia, but since the latter part of the twentieth century they have gained enormous traction through the maniacal scribblings of Lyotard, Foucault and in particular Jacques Derrida.

Derrida is the deconstructionist/semiotics philosopher whose major influences included Rousseau and Nietzsche (surprise, surprise) and whose work though considered dull and incomprehensible, significantly impacted the intellectual climate of his day. It is no surprise that his work was unintelligible because it was the logical outcome of his own theory i.e. he considered words to have no meaning outside of their immediate context:

...asserts that words can only refer to other words; and attempts to demonstrate how statements about any text subvert their own meanings. [Wiki]

The English philosopher Roger Scruton said this about the works of Derrida: "He's difficult to summarise because it's nonsense."

Anyhow, we currently inhabit the afterglow of a deconstructed zeitgeist and its landscape of hollow worldviews occupied by hollow men and women. When we view our strange new world with 'eyes we dare not see in dreams' we observe politics and politicians who say one thing and then do another and who, if they are of the left, are never taken to task for such obvious incongruities.

The population at large appear to exhibit no 'common sense' anymore, everything is raw emotion and so many people seem to wear their emotional nerve endings on top of rather than under the skin.
Offence is taken, leaped on in fact, at every possible junction and lawfare breaks out at the slightest hint of a human rights' abuse, all the while admitting to no perspective being 'better' than any other...of course the actual evidence produced on the ground so to speak, points to an overwhelming bias dependant on which 'camp' you belong to.

Of course the blase acceptance of radically egalitarian values is sustainable only in the cultural/philosophical/literary avenues of existence; for example I would love to hear a Post Modern devotee who happens to hold a low skill occupation argue with their heart surgeon on the operating table that their opinion holds as much value as the surgeons. Of course such a view is absolute nonsense given that the surgeon has spent decades learning and perfecting his/her skills plus that such knowledge has quantifiable results i.e. life or death.

This is then the perfect segue to what motivated me to pen this diatribe in the first place.
Having opined briefly on how academic anarchists have altered the use and meaning of language; I draw your attention to an article I recently read featuring a 'bioethicist' named Joona Räsänen.

I grew up in a world that appeared to believe that to have ethics meant to act with integrity and morality under all circumstances. Ethics and morals have now been 'divorced' (maybe they never were 'married?) and ethics today appears to indicate a mere methodology. Hence we have academic superstars such as Princeton Professor of Bioethics Peter Singer arguing for what I would consider a highly unethical position: infanticide:

Singer often claims that his views have been misquoted, so I am quoting directly from his books. From "Practical Ethics": "Human babies are not born self-aware, or capable of grasping that they exist over time. They are not persons." But animals are self-aware, and therefore, "the life of a newborn is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee."[Nat Hentoff]

Singer was advancing his arguments before the new millennium and was, at the time, encountering some push-back. It appears that his ideas are becoming more acceptable these days and in fact are being built upon, as so often happens.
Consider the views of the aforementioned Professor Räsänen:

According to Finnish bioethicist Joona Räsänen, “[T]here might be an argument that gives, for example, the genetic parents a right to kill (or leave to die) their newborn infant even if the infant has a right to life. For example, it might be argued that people have a right to their genetic privacy and having the newborn infant in the world that carries the genetic material of the genetic parents violates their right to genetic privacy. Put another way: the fetus does not have a right to the genetic material of her parents.”[Lita Cosner]

At the risk of activating 'Godwins Law' I should point out that these ideas were advocated by the Nazi's under the rubric; Eugenics, and were, at the time, universally condemned as well they should be.

How times have changed...and yet they have not.

As any student of history can show, the period into which Jesus Christ was born, the early Roman Empire, such practice was commonplace and considered completely 'normal'. Roman law, religion and the entire ethos of the ancient world saw nothing morally wrong with infanticide or with abandoning their newborns on the dung heaps or garbage dumps of cities.

It appears that our modern day academic 'saviours', in their attempt to create Utopia on earth are in fact merely returning us to a time in history that most are quite ignorant of, and would if knowledgeable about, would want nothing to do with, whilst I, being a critic of how Derrida has bequeathed us confusion in thinking and communicating have managed to achieve both in the writing of this short opinion.

My bad!

VERMILION IS TAQIYYA

It is really hard to understand the leftist worldview.
I try to give most the benefit of the doubt but everyday those with a left tilt to their worldview confuse and confound common sense and reasonable perspectives.

I can only assume these people live in the 'eternal now' without regard or reference to anything in the past, and here I am not talking about history per se, but the very words that they themselves have recently uttered.

Take for example 'Peter the Red', a.k.a. 'Peter the bandanna-man' who begs forgiveness from terrorists for something we may have done to cause them to attack us (shame on you for victim blaming Peter FitzSimons!!!):

We are sorry. We are desperately sorry that the world has now moved to the point where it is on the edge of an abyss from which there can be no return. We accept that such hate as drove the planes into the World Trade Centre towers can only have come from incredible suffering, and we are desperately sorry for that suffering, even if we are yet to come to grips with its specific cause.

And then reflect on his current outburst at those who would dare to advertise on the 'holy' sails of Sydney's Opera house:

The role of those involved will not be forgotten or forgiven. The anger is visceral and widespread.

A tad unbalanced wouldn't you say?

Of course the use of advertising on behalf of stinky 'capitalism' is what offends our 'red brethren', not the use of the OH exterior for display purposes given his approval of a recent event on these same sacred sails:

The sails of the Opera House in Sydney are lit up with a projection titled "Badu Gili", which means 'water light' in the language of the Gadigal aboriginal people.

What about another example of tergiversation from another keening milquetoast; Waleed Aly who whilst probably not of the vermilion variety, leaning possibly towards that of the taqiyya type.

Here he is displaying the exact same victim blaming methodology as Peter the red:

The terrorists are weak, they're just an irritant, it's our fault, it could be white racists....

Terrorists are merely misunderstood victims of Western malevolence, weak people who are little more than a mere irritant, in fact they are probably not Islamic at all but 'white supremacists'.

Talk about Alice Aly in Wonderland!

However, when it comes to the white, capitalist patriarchy using the sacred space of the Sydney Opera house sails for the frippery of horse-racing (a favourite Australian pastime btw), they are:

"tearing apart the fabric of our society". 

There is unfortunately no end to the absurdity from the loons of the left.

One can only hope that the sensible, silent majority are able to differentiate what is intended for the good of society from what is intended for destruction; a distinction well articulated by C S Lewis in his Pilgrims Regress and, as herein illustrated, frequently misunderstood by our left leaning commiteriat.

PETER PANDEMONIUM

We are inhabiting an 'eternal present', a Peter Pan generation where you are encouraged to remain  eternally adolescent  like Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift and at the grotesque end;  Cher.

What we really need to do is to shuck the short pants, respond to responsibility and read some history...it could save our civilisation and in the process you might just grow up!.

NUTS AND FRUITS OF THE ABC

Australia's taxpayer funded national broadcaster...:

"Another myth commonly floated about the ABC is that a state funded broadcaster means an independent broadcaster free of the whims of the evil media barons like Rupert Murdoch and those evil advertisers. The ABC is the least independent media outlet in the country because it’s owned by the government. There’s nothing independent about it." - Gideon Rozner, IPA

It may well be 'owned by the government (aka the Taxpayer) buts its entire operation is overseen by the 'collective'.

It is no great secret that the ABC is run by its own special interests group and what the recent spats with management have shown, is that the content, behaviour and the ideologies behind those who run the joint are firmly on the side of the Lenin/Stalinesque variety.

It is a cancer at the heart of Australia and deserves nothing less than a massive withdrawal of the free booty that keeps its head above water.

If these neo-Marxist ideologues and their twisted brethren want to spew their venom into the atmosphere then I as an advocate of free speech declare; "let them".

But what I emphatically, categorically and passionately reject is that they are able to do it on MY dollar, at MY expense both figuratively and literally.

If their ideas are so powerful, if they believe that what they are selling is the real thing,then let them loose on a level playing field to compete with all others in the common arena. Why should this bunch of bottom feeding ferals be free to use our hard earned cash to trash all that we hold dear.

This 'arrangement' is the most ridiculous case of the death of a civilisation by suicide that I have ever heard of....its plain nuts!

CULTURE WARS