Category Archives: America

Tucker Touches On The Orchestrated Consumerism And Voracious Corporatism Destroying American Lives

America, Business, Culture, Economy, Ethics, Globalism, Multiculturalism, Nationhood

More forbidden topics, touched upon by the Tucker Carlson treasure. Some of the highlights of his  editorial, delivered on his Fox News show some days back:

Romney spent the bulk of his business career at a firm called Bain Capital. Bain Capital all but invented what is now a familiar business strategy: Take over an existing company for a short period of time, cut costs by firing employees, run up the debt, extract the wealth, and move on, sometimes leaving retirees without their earned pensions. Romney became fantastically rich doing this. Meanwhile, a remarkable number of the companies are now bankrupt or extinct. This is the private equity model. Our ruling class sees nothing wrong with it. It’s how they run the country. …

The overriding goal for America is more prosperity, meaning cheaper consumer goods. But is that still true? Does anyone still believe that cheaper iPhones, or more Amazon deliveries of plastic garbage from China are going to make us happy? They haven’t so far. A lot of Americans are drowning in stuff. And yet drug addiction and suicide are depopulating large parts of the country. Anyone who thinks the health of a nation can be summed up in GDP is an idiot.

The goal for America is both simpler and more elusive than mere prosperity. It’s happiness. There are a lot of ingredients in being happy: Dignity. Purpose. Self-control. Independence. Above all, deep relationships with other people. Those are the things that you want for your children. They’re what our leaders should want for us, and would want if they cared.

But our leaders don’t care. We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule. They’re day traders. Substitute teachers. They’re just passing through. They have no skin in this game, and it shows. They can’t solve our problems. They don’t even bother to understand our problems.

One of the biggest lies our leaders tell us that you can separate economics from everything else that matters. Economics is a topic for public debate. Family and faith and culture, meanwhile, those are personal matters. Both parties believe this …

Members of our educated upper-middle-classes are now the backbone of the Democratic Party who usually describe themselves as fiscally responsible and socially moderate. In other words, functionally libertarian. They don’t care how you live, as long as the bills are paid and the markets function. Somehow, they don’t see a connection between people’s personal lives and the health of our economy, or for that matter, the country’s ability to pay its bills. As far as they’re concerned, these are two totally separate categories. …

“They teach us it’s more virtuous to devote your life to some soulless corporation than it is to raise your own kids. Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook wrote an entire book about this. Sandberg explained that our first duty is to shareholders, above our own children.”

HERE is the underwhelming title: “Tucker Carlson: Mitt Romney supports the status quo. But for everyone else, it’s infuriating.”

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‘Deaths Of Despair’: The Most Suicidal Populations Are Amerindians And American Whites

America, Economy, Healthcare, IMMIGRATION, Multiculturalism, Psychiatry, Race, Russia, The West, The Zeitgeist, Welfare

Suicide rates are declining everywhere except for the big exception: America, where it is 12.8 per 100,000, “well above China’s current rate of seven.”

And, in particular, among white Americans and native Americans.

“There are parallels between the rise in suicide in post-Soviet Russia and the ‘deaths of despair’ in America identified by Anne Case and Sir Angus Deaton, economists at Princeton University,” observes The Economist.

Suicide rates among white Americans are higher, and have risen faster since 2000, than among any other group except native Americans (see chart). The same trend can be seen among the middle-aged. At the turn of the century, older people were much more likely to kill themselves than those in their 50s, but that is no longer true. Rates among people in rural areas are higher, and have been increasing faster, than those among people in towns and cities.

The Economist is slightly more candid than the likes of the neocons and lite libertarians mentioned in the post, “Immigration: A Look-Away Issue For Neocons & Lite Libertarians“:

For working-class misery, neoconservatives and lite libertarians [economic reductionist all] blame everything BUT mass immigration, diversity, loss of community and sense of place. Anything but the truth …

MORE: “Defeating despair: Suicide is declining almost everywhere …”

UPDATED (1/9/019): This Is What Israel’s Walls Look Like. Does The US Have Such Unscalable Things, Mr. President?

America, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

In Israel, they call it a “security fence.” That sounds less foreboding. But this is no fence.

What the US has on its southern border is, for the most, … some fencing.

And this manned, near- impermeable wall is on Israel’s South, meant to stop illegal African immigrants, not necessarily terrorists. Via Breitbart:

UPDATE (1/9/019): 

 

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NEW COLUMN: The New Norm: Crime, But NOT Punishment

America, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Democrats, Intelligence, Law, Pop-Culture, Private Property

NEW COLUMN IS “The New Norm: Crime, But Not Punishment.” 

It’s now on Townhall.com, slightly abridged, and unabridged on WND.COM and The Unz Review.

An excerpt:

In the title of his magisterial book, Fyodor Dostoevsky paired “Crime and Punishment,” not crime and pardons, or crime and “Civics lessons,” amnesty and asylum.

Punishment must closely follow a crime in order to be both effective as a deterrent, as well as to serve as a public declaration of values and norms.

In explaining Texas justice and its attendant values, stand-up satirist Ron White performed the public service no politician is prepared to perform. “In Texas, we have the death penalty and we use it. If you come to Texas and kill somebody, we will kill you back.”

So, where’s such clarity when you need it?

Something has gotten into the country’s lymphatic system. The infection is becoming more apparent by the day, not least in the way matters of life-and-death are debated (or not).

Again-and-again one hears boilerplate statements that fail to properly fix on the defining issues of our time, much less fix them.

Consider the flippancy over threats against persons and property, from within the country and from without it.

The home of Fox News personality Tucker Carlson is surrounded by a small, if menacing, mob, and his family threatened. Before dinging the man’s front door, the assailants chant out their criminal intentions:

“Tucker Carlson, we will fight. We know where you sleep at night. We know where you sleep.”

To which other talkers, even the wonderful Tucker, respond by vaporizing about rights to speech and protest vs. some or other watered-down peace and security to which private property owners are entitled.

Nobody alludes to the rights of private property or to the fulcrum that is law-and-order.

No demands for arrests are issued or voiced, publicly. No expectation for retribution is set-up. Follow-up is nonexistent in media. Police do not publicize any arrests. If they make them, none are reported by media.

No teachable moments occur.

Remember words like, “Police are requesting the public’s assistance in finding those responsible”? Or, “No arrests have been made, as yet”? Such civilizing utterances have vanished from the nomenclature of media and law enforcement, when discussing acts of trespass, vandalism, and public disorderliness.

Be they within the U.S. or from without it, acts that violate one person’s property rights or the property rights of many—as the Central American caravanners expect to do—these acts don’t conjure the requisite tough talk or actions. …

… READ THE REST.  It’s now on Townhall.comWND.COM and The Unz Review.

https://tinyurl.com/ybwcrevs