MacAoidh notes that the revolutionary Left is reveling in its power to tear down monuments in New Orleans because that city, like so many others in this country, has become a one-party state ruled by a democrat party kleptocracy with a guaranteed grip on office.

Intelligent adults can see a Beauregard or a Robert E. Lee or a Jefferson Davis for the complex humans they were, and learn the lessons their lives can teach. Intelligent adults can also mark their contributions to what is good in our society while acknowledging their failings and those of the time in which they lived.

But it’s clear we have a shortage of intelligent adults. We particularly have that shortage in New Orleans, and have for some time.

It has worsened in recent years, but the exodus of intelligent adults – it’s been called “white flight,” but this is a lie; the middle class and the productive class is made up of people of all races, whether they share similar politics or not – from New Orleans is half a century old. As such, the city is made up of a new class of post-Katrina carpetbaggers, college students who hail mostly from far away, a giant underclass living on poor wages and government assistance, an outsized criminal class in and out of the penal system, small pockets of put-upon middle class homeowners and a declining monied elite. Most of the people who make the New Orleans metro area work have moved out of the city limits, and most of those moved away a generation or two ago.

And it’s mostly those people who have taken up the cause of those monuments. Not because they’re “white supremacists;” that is an ugly slur thrown around by the same social justice warriors who throw around racism as a towel into the ring in admission they lack a better argument. They wish to preserve the history, and a connection to the culture they and their families were raised in.

But they don’t live in New Orleans anymore.

That feeling of powerlessness, of knowing there is nothing they can do to stop the bowdlerization of the city’s history and that of the region, carries with it pain, to be sure. But that powerlessness is a choice; these people left. That’s not an indictment of them; they left for a better life in the suburbs or in another city. But the choice carries a consequence – when you leave, it’s those you leave behind who make the decisions in New Orleans. And when what’s left is a city of fools who make stupid decisions, last night is the natural result.

The question is what to do about it. Should the productive class, the protectors of the history and tradition of the region, the put-upon and the assailed simply move on? If so, don’t be surprised when the Beauregard takedown begets the Lee takedown and the Lee takedown begets the takedown of the Andrew Jackson statue in the famous square which bears his name.

Perhaps this can’t be stopped. Perhaps all that can be done is to inflict one’s own set of consequences on those left in the city.

After all, the productive classes in the suburbs still contribute an enormous economic impact to New Orleans. Maybe that should be rethought. Maybe the restaurateurs who live in Metairie should move their businesses closer to their homes. Maybe the lawyers and stockbrokers with offices in Orleans Parish should decamp for the ‘burbs and eschew the commute.

And maybe the captains of the Mardi Gras krewes who contribute such a massive amount to the city’s economy each year ought to rethink what they’re doing. After all, those krewes were all formed by the same people who contributed to the erection of the Lee, Davis and Beauregard statues. Their heritage is bound up in the same package as those monuments Mitch Landrieu and his bowdlerizing fan club have been howling to destroy.

And most of those krewe members don’t live in New Orleans anymore, either.

There are lots of parade routes in Metairie and Kenner, and lots of them in St. Tammany Parish. Those routes might not have the tradition of a St. Charles Avenue or Canal Boulevard, but they also don’t have the elevated risk of paradegoers being shot or the dysfunctional police department incapable of arresting the bad guys.

And these judgments can now be made, because of this corrosive, stupid modern mentality which is taking down the monuments. If the culture which gave us Beauregard is to be scrubbed, then the fruits of that culture shouldn’t be enjoyed – and those wonderful Mardi Gras parades are some of those fruits. Let the good follow the bad out of the city, and let Bacchus and Endymion and the others roll down Veterans Boulevard or Metairie Road for a time.

Landrieu has cast his marker down. New Orleans’ traditions and cultural patrimony is no longer welcome. So be it. Let the full consequences of that decision fall. And if “we don’t live there anymore,” then let the economic and other effects of that be felt.

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Thought experiment: how much longer would democrat party machines control US cities, how long would it be before working middle class Americans and families returned to them, if we somehow arranged to tear down all welfare housing and deported from those cities everybody on welfare?

Arms of Jean le Maingre, known as Boucicaut. Blazoned: Argent à l’aigle éployée de gueules becquée et membrée d’azur.

Trink forwards the comments of Anonymous:

He’s a loose cannon. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s bumbling, fumbling, crude, rude, and the proverbial bull in an historic china shop.

The biggest complaint about the president is that he’s not presidential. How can he tweet? Yeah, Comey needed to be fired. Hell, he begged to be fired, but you don’t do it like that. It’s amateur hour.

Donald Trump’s demeanor has not only been dissected 18 hours a day since January 20th, it has been probed, prodded, and generally autopsied since he stirred up the 17-man field in the GOP primaries. There is nothing revelatory remaining.

If Washington loved “No Drama” Obama, it loathes “Quick to Jump” Trump. The Capital City has long been referred to as Hollywood for Ugly People, but we’ve entered a new era of performance art. It has become style over substance to the Nth degree.

The majority of the press, the commentariat and the professional class of teat suckers are just appalled, I mean appalled that man was ever allowed in the Oval Office. Yeah, he’s rich, but he’s tasteless rich. If Crotch-Scratch Joe from the trailer park down by the tracks won the lottery his place would look like Trump’s New York apartment.

And that’s the real sin, isn’t it? The four richest counties in America now surround the Federal City. The New York Times ran a story Friday about how property prices have soared surrounding the District and how well Aston Martins and McLarens are selling. See, we’re talking taste.

Meanwhile, across the country in Los Angeles county a new private terminal is opening for the super rich at LAX, replete with comfortable furniture, beds, fine wines and chocolate, a masseuse on call and, of course, a more refined TSA experience. But more than that there is an iPad sitting on a counter near the entrance with the feed of a camera on the lobby of the main terminal. A note placed nearby reads, “Here’s a glimpse of what you’re missing over at the main terminal right now.” It’s not enough to avoid the hoi polloi, one must take the time to sneer at them and perhaps be amused by their grubby, miserable lives.

Undoubtedly everyone who pays the annual $7,500 membership fee and the $3,000 fee per flight taken have all the right political positions and are heartbroken over Hillary’s denial to the throne. They just don’t understand how so many in those wretched places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin could vote “against their own interests.” Nor do they understand how these horrible deplorables who look so amusing on the iPad feed struggling with their luggage on the way to crass, plastic destinations, could possibly continue to back this horrid little orange man from the crass, plastic world of real estate dealings.

Out in the hinterlands, where technology and government has abandoned them, where their God is mocked and they offer up their sons and daughters to the military and the Marxists of the academy in hopes they will find their piece of the dying American Dream, they look at what’s happening in Washington and they feel as embattled as the President. And the party they thought was on their side reveals itself to be as disconnected from them as the LAX voyeurs.

Something has to change. It’s not going to be Trump. He is what he is.

Photo by Elliott Erwitt, 1950.

Russian mind control space beam.

Daily Stormer:

Anonymous sources within the FBI have revealed to The Times that they have new evidence indicating that everyone who voted for Donald Trump is an agent of the FSB (formerly the KGB). An unknown portion of these voters may have had their minds controlled by a Russian space-beam, agents close to the investigation say.

The allegation that 62 million Americans appear to be employed by Russian intelligence services has rocked the Bureau, and it is reported that multiple agents have taken their own lives, given that realizing just how deep this Russian hacking conspiracy runs blew their minds – literally.

This shocking new revelation comes after it was confirmed as a fact that Russia did Wikileaks because Donald Trump personally called Vladimir Putin and asked him to. It was also revealed earlier this week that Alex Jones (real name “Alexi Jonesinov”) is a Russian sleeper agent who was ordered by the FSB (formerly the KGB) to post news articles on the internet saying that Donald Trump would be a good President.

However, the revelation that 62 million Americans are taking orders directly from the Kremlin is a revelation of a whole other order, which FBI agents are struggling with how to deal with.

It was determined by Puerto Rican federal judge Mizu Tomazaki that it is a crime to support Donald Trump or to post positive things about him on the internet. 9th circuit judges Weinberg, Steinman and Goldenstein upheld the ruling. Despite this, the logistics of rounding up 62 million people and locking them in prison present a difficult task to overcome.

It may also be that not every voter is a direct agent of the FSB (formerly the KGB), and some may have been under the control of a mind control beam in space.

RTWT

San Diego Natural History Museum Paleontologist Don Swanson pointing at a large horizontal mastodon tusk fragment.

Wired reports on a fossil find near San Diego from the 1990s that may completely upset the chronological apple cart.

In 1993, construction workers building a new freeway in San Diego made a fantastic discovery. A backhoe operator scraped up a fossil, and scientists soon unearthed a full collection of bones, teeth, and tusks from a mastodon. It was a valuable find: hordes of fossils, impeccably preserved. The last of the mastodons—a slightly smaller cousin of the woolly mammoth—died out some 11,000 years ago.

But the dig site turned out to be even more revelatory—and now, with a paper in the journal Nature—controversial. See, this site wasn’t just catnip for the paleontologists, the diggers who study all fossils. It soon had archaeologists swooping in to study a number of stone tools scattered around the bones, evidence of human activity. After years of debate over the dating technology used on the mastodon, a group of researchers now believes that they can date it and the human tools to 130,000 years ago—more than 100,000 years earlier than the earliest humans are supposed to have made it to North America.

The researchers expect a bit of controversy from a discovery that pushes back the arrival of humans in North America by a factor of ten.

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June Chu, Dean of Pierson College, Yale University.

Little Bryn Mawr girl June Chu doubtless regarded herself as a winner in the meritocrat rat race and safely embedded in the very heart of the elite establishment, deaning the day away down in Yale’s Pierson Residential College, but life in Politically Correct America is perilous, even sometimes for Identity Group two-fers.

As one might expect, a couple of little reptiles from America’s Oldest College Daily were shouting “Burn the witch!” in the forefront of the mob.

Over the last year, Pierson College Dean June Chu published controversial reviews of local businesses on her personal Yelp account, on one occasion referring to clientele of a restaurant as “white trash” and “low class folks,” and on another praising a movie theater for its lack of “sketchy crowds” despite being located in New Haven.

Screenshots of the reviews, obtained by the News Saturday afternoon and accessible here, began circulating among Pierson students in recent months. Her account has since been deleted.

Chu sent an email to the residential college community on Saturday apologizing for her reviews, which have been been met with anger and disappointment by students.

Over the last year, Pierson College Dean June Chu published controversial reviews of local businesses on her personal Yelp account, on one occasion referring to clientele of a restaurant as “white trash” and “low class folks,” and on another praising a movie theater for its lack of “sketchy crowds” despite being located in New Haven.

Screenshots of the reviews, obtained by the News Saturday afternoon and accessible here, began circulating among Pierson students in recent months. Her account has since been deleted.

Chu sent an email to the residential college community on Saturday apologizing for her reviews, which have been been met with anger and disappointment by students. …

Another student in Pierson who asked to remain anonymous said he and some friends searched Chu’s Yelp account after receiving a college-wide email on Jan. 30 in which she announced that she had become “Yelp Elite,” meaning she had been recognized by the website for active participation.

The student said he discussed the reviews with friends in Pierson and other residential colleges, and they agreed that Chu’s use of “demeaning and offensive” language was inappropriate for someone in her position.

“These reviews make it clear how Dean Chu thinks about people who are different from her, and how she feels about New Haven, the city all of us call home for a few years,” the student said.

[An] anonymous student in Pierson said he and his friends found her reviews inappropriate, particularly one of The Mochi Store in New Haven, in which Chu wrote that the establishment would be acceptable only to a “white person who has no clue what mochi is.”

“I will never be able to look at her in the same way. She needs to formally apologize in person to the college,” the student said. “Dean Chu is trained in human development and psychology so should clearly understand the gravity of her actions, yet the fact that she would put such things on the Internet shows that she really should not be in a position of advising students.”

In February, Chu removed her reviews of Koto Japanese Steakhouse and Criterion Cinemas after [Pierson Head Stephen] Davis informed her that they had offended students, she wrote in her email. …

One Pierson student, who requested anonymity, said Chu’s comments convey a bias against certain groups of students who call Pierson college home. He added that the remarks jeopardize Chu’s capacity to properly execute her job as a steward of the college community.

“If I had heard these comments upon arriving to Yale as a freshman, the first thing I would have done is walked to Pierson College and demanded a residential college transfer form,” the student said.

Her offending reviews are collected here. I thought they demonstrated her to be entitled, full of herself, and a bit overly censorious, but what would one expect?

Chenchen Zhang informs us that the educated Chinese despise “baizuo,” soft-headed and soft-hearted Western liberals. And who can blame them?

If you look at any thread about Trump, Islam or immigration on a Chinese social media platform these days, it’s impossible to avoid encountering the term baizuo, or literally, the ‘white left’. It first emerged about two years ago, and yet has quickly become one of the most popular derogatory descriptions for Chinese netizens to discredit their opponents in online debates.

So what does ‘white left’ mean in the Chinese context, and what’s behind the rise of its (negative) popularity? It might not be an easy task to define the term, for as a social media buzzword and very often an instrument for ad hominem attack, it could mean different things for different people. A thread on “why well-educated elites in the west are seen as naïve “white left” in China” on Zhihu, a question-and-answer website said to have a high percentage of active users who are professionals and intellectuals, might serve as a starting point.

The question has received more than 400 answers from Zhihu users, which include some of the most representative perceptions of the ‘white left’. Although the emphasis varies, baizuo is used generally to describe those who “only care about topics such as immigration, minorities, LGBT and the environment” and “have no sense of real problems in the real world”; they are hypocritical humanitarians who advocate for peace and equality only to “satisfy their own feeling of moral superiority”; they are “obsessed with political correctness” to the extent that they “tolerate backwards Islamic values for the sake of multiculturalism”; they believe in the welfare state that “benefits only the idle and the free riders”; they are the “ignorant and arrogant westerners” who “pity the rest of the world and think they are saviours”. …

In fact, heated discussions about baizuo on Chinese social media websites rarely make reference to domestic issues, except for occasionally and unsurprisingly insulting Chinese Muslims for being “unintegrated” or “complicit in the spread of Islam extremism”. The stigmatization of the ‘white left’ is driven first and foremost by Chinese netizens’ understanding of ‘western’ problems. It is a symptom and weakness of the Other.

The term first became influential amidst the European refugee crisis, and Angela Merkel was the first western politician to be labelled as a baizuo for her open-door refugee policy. Hungary, on the other hand, was praised by Chinese netizens for its hard line on refugees, if not for its authoritarian leader. Around the same time another derogatory name that was often used alongside baizuo was shengmu – literally the ‘holy mother’ – which according to its users refers to those who are ‘overemotional’, ‘hypocritical’ and ‘have too much empathy’. The criticisms of baizuo and shengmu soon became an online smear campaign targeted at not only public figures such as J. K. Rowling and Emma Watson, but also volunteers, social workers and all other ordinary citizens, whether in Europe or China, who express any sympathy with international refugees. …

The anti-baizuo discourse in Chinese social media gained stronger momentum during the US presidential election campaign. If criticisms of the ‘white left’ in the context of the refugee crisis were mainly about disapproval of ‘moralist humanitarianism’ mixed with Islamophobia, they became politically more elaborate as Chinese critics of the ‘white left’ discovered Donald J. Trump, whom they both identify with and take inspirations from. Following the debates in the US, a number of other issues such as welfare reforms, affirmative action and minority rights were introduced into online discussions on the ‘white left’. Baizuo critics now began to identify Obama and Clinton as the new epitome of the ‘white left’, despite the fact that they were neither particularly humanitarian nor particularly kind to migrants. Trump was taken as the champion of everything the ‘white left’ were against, and baizuo critics naturally became his enthusiastic supporters. …

From a domestic perspective, the proliferation of anti-baizuo sentiment is clearly in line with the dominance of a kind of brutal, demoralized pragmatism in post-socialist China. Many of the attacks on the welfare state and the idea that states have obligations towards international refugees appeal to the same social Darwinist logic of ‘survival of the fittest’. It is assumed that individuals should take responsibility for their own misery, whether it is war or poverty, and should not be helped by others. The rationale goes hand in hand with the view that inequality is inevitable in a market-economy-cum-Hobbesian-society. Although economic disparity in China has been worsening in recent years, sociologist Yu Xie found that most Chinese people regard it as an inevitable consequence of economic growth, and that inequality is unlikely to give rise to political or social unrest.

Pragmatism with an emphasis on self-responsibility seems to be the ideology of our post-ideological times. It is, in UK prime minister Theresa May’s words, ‘living within our means’. This is combined with a general indifference towards race issues, or even worth, with certain social Darwinist beliefs that some races are superior to others, leading many mainland Chinese netizens to dismiss struggles against structural discriminations as naïve, pretentious or demanding undeserved privileges.

Seen from the perspective of international relations, the anti-baizuo discourse can be understood as part of what William A. Callahan calls ‘negative soft power’, that is, constructing the Chinese self through ‘the deliberate creation and then exclusion’ of Others as ‘barbarians’ or otherwise inferior. Criticisms of the ‘white left’ against the background of the European refugee crisis fit especially well with the ‘rising China’ versus ‘Europe in decline’ narrative. According to Baidu Trends, one of the most related keywords to baizuo was huimie: “to destroy”. Articles with titles such as ‘the white left are destroying Europe’ were widely circulated.

In an academic-style essay that was retweeted more than 7000 times on Weibo, a user named ‘fantasy lover Mr. Liu’ ‘reviewed’ European philosophy from Voltaire and Marx to Adorno and Foucault, concluding that the ‘white left’ as a ‘spiritual epidemic’ is on its way to self-destruction. He then stated that Trump’s win was only “a small victory over this spiritual epidemic of humankind”, but “western civilization is still far from its self-redemption”. However ridiculous it may appear, the post is illustrative of how a demonized Other is projected onto seemingly objective or academic criticisms of the ‘white left’. Ultimately, the more the ‘white left’ – whatever it means – represent the fatal weakness of democracy, the more institutional and normative security the Chinese regime enjoys. The grassroots campaign against the ‘white left’ thus echoes the officially-sanctioned campaign against ‘universal values’, providing a negative evidence for the superiority of the Chinese self.

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Jeffrey A. Tucker explains exactly why Donald Trump is driving liberals batty.

This frenzy even has a name: Trump Derangement Syndrome. It is an identifying state of mind. It has particular symptoms.

To be sure, I read these pieces and don’t entirely disagree with the particulars of the analysis. In none of our lifetimes have we seen anything like this. The stodgy, serious, protocol-driven attempt to bring high dignity to this office has been a main concern of government. When it came out that Bill Clinton was using his power and office for private pleasures, it rattled the establishment, not because of his sins but because his behavior elicited ridicule from the public. …

But there is something off about this center-left tendency. These commentators are driven to wild apoplexy by Trump, but not for the reasons I would normally cite. I don’t like his trade theories, his views on immigration, his shabby understanding of the problem with American health insurance, his ramping up of the police state, or his foreign policy. I was calling him out on all of this as early as July 2015.

Their complaints are contradictory. They, on the other hand, seem to object to the very existence of Trump, his every utterance, his actions no matter what they are, and everything related to this new administration.

Their complaints are contradictory. He is terrible because he is doing terrible things! He is terrible because he is not really doing anything! This presidency is destroying the world! This presidency is all sound and fury and nothing else!

It finally struck me why. For this crowd, all their hopes and dreams are bound up with particular political processes, outcomes, and institutions. The state is their favorite tool for all the good they aspire to do in this world. It must be protected, guarded, defended, celebrated. The illusion that the government is not a taker but a giver and the source of all good things must be maintained. The gloss of the democratic process must be constantly refurbished so that the essential sanctity of the public sector can be constantly cited as the highest calling.

The center-left has at least one hundred years of work and resources invested in the state’s health, well being, reputation, and exalted moral status. Nothing must be allowed to threaten it or take it down a peg or two. Any failures must be deemed as temporary setbacks. The slightest sign of some success must be trumpeted constantly. The population must be subjected to unrelenting homilies on the essential holiness of the public sector.

Their education told them this. Their degrees and ruling-class pedigree were hard earned. This is what has inspired them. They believe so strongly that they can make the world a better place through the managerial state that it has become their religion. It’s their very core!

Above all else, the president is supposed to represent. His duty is to reflect and broadcast this sensibility.

Writing in 1944, Ludwig von Mises wrote that the debate over the future of freedom is not only about beating back socialism, communism, fascism, interventionism, and so on. There is broader discussion to be had. The core problem is the ideology of statism, a word he took from the French term etatism. It identified a view that the state should always and in everything be the central power, organizing principle, and spiritual core of any society. It must be the final judge, the final arbiter, the center of our loyalties, the one indispensable institution because it alone is deserving of our highest devotion and ideal. It must be forever built, larger and larger, taking on ever more responsibility and taking ever more money and power from the rest of us.

The president is supposed to at least pretend to be the high priest of the statist religion. That’s his job, according to this outlook.

Everything seemed to being going so well under the Obama administration, which was so earnest, so decorous, so civil. He was funny, smart, respectful of process, and sincere in his pronouncements. He ran on hope and change but governed as the person who kept hope for a new freedom and any radical change at bay.

Trump has profoundly disturbed the balance. He overthrew the respective establishments of two parties, tore right into the legitimacy of the national press, humiliated every expert who predicted his demise, and is now stumbling around Washington like a bum in a jewelry store. He is not actually cutting back on the size of the state; he is doing something even more terrifying from the center-left point of view: he is ruining the mystery of the state, and thereby discrediting their holy institutions.

After the election, I wrote that this might be our 1989. What I meant is that major aspects of what we always thought would be true were suddenly not true any more. New possibilities have opened up. An older establishment has been discredited if not overthrown. What comes next is another matter.

Trump is not a liberator in any sense. His temperament suggests the opposite. It was he who famously said in the campaign: “The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony.” Moreover, and in many ways, the deep state has regrouped and bitten back to avoid losing power and influence in Washington.

Even so, he is everything that the center-left fears most, a person who works, despite himself, to discredit the thing they love the most. He has demoralized them beyond consoling. Now we are seeing talk of impeachment. This seems to be some people’s last hope for saving the old faith.