…the Republican National Convention did provide Americans with extraordinarily important information about Mitt Romney and the sort of leader he is likely to be …he is also a rules lawyer who is more than willing to smash the spirit of the game while rewriting its rules any time it appears to suit his interests. From keeping important party figures such as Ron Paul and Sarah Palin off the podium to refusing to recognize the duly-elected delegates from Maine, from changing the party rules on the fly to indulging in a Soviet-style vote count in which only votes for Romney were reported, it is clear that Mitt Romney is even more inclined toward authoritarian rule than Barack Obama has ever shown himself to be.
The problem with assertions made above in “Romney’s Fair Warning,” by Vox Day, my WND colleague, is that they are … assertions, in which Day skips a crucial step. This step would involve showing that Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee are one and the same thing, and that the candidate is involved in the bureaucratic machinations of the party executive.
This is quite possible, but unproven in the column; Day has been too quick to collapse the distinction, at least in so far as administrative matters go, between the purview of the Republican Party politburo and that of the candidate.
I mean, did the candidates running at the time have a hand in what the National Republican Senatorial Committee did to Christine O’Donnell?
Again, it is quite possible that Mitt Romney agreed with party leadership’sdecision to bar the most controversial speakers from the 2012 RNC. But it is unclear that Romney was behind it. Assertions absent proof don’t cut it in journalism.
A dear friend (and libertarian luminary) wrote to say, “Bravo.” He also divulged that he had given up on combating what goes for wisdom (Sophia) in America today. He quit writing for the “public.” His career spans decades to my 15 years (having arrived in North America in 1995). My friend is fortunate in the sense that most of his magnificent writing was done before America entered “The Age Of The Idiot.”
Illiterate and educated: They joined to castigate and curse this writer for writing truths that, if heeded, could set free the prisoners on the “Yellow Jail Bus”—those coerced to ride and/or pay for government schools.
Illiterate and educated: There was scarcely a difference in the quality of argument. I described immutable reality: a dysfunctional, ineffectual adult that had abnegated her duty and dissolved into a puddle of self-pity in the face of taunts from a couple of crappy kids. I urged: “Drain the septic tank that is our federalized education system, and with it the auxiliary personnel that infest the schools and feed off a dwindling tax base. There is now one non-teaching adult for every eight or nine children.”
For using words to describe reality, I was peppered with ad hominem, my character impugned. (And no: to the detritus delivered to my WND email address, and posted below: Even though she has had a life far harder than Karen Klein’s, in Israel and South Africa, my mother is still a dignified, beautiful lady at 73. I love you, mom.)
A day will come, and a child riding the Yellow “Jail Bus” will be beaten to a pulp (or maybe to death) by the type of wolverines who set upon Klein. Klein will have retired (and moved closer to “the Mecca of maturity: Disneyland”). But true to the system and society she represents, another ineffectual, fearful female will have taken her place.
I wonder what my assailants will say then? A second-hander might write a similar article … years down the line. (As has happened with most hot topics; mainstream catches up.) Or, more likely, people will continue to pay homage to PC pietism, making sure no one utters words that cleave to reality, such as, “Feeble, too fat to budge and too powerless to perform the task for which she is being paid.”
Kids could be injured because of Klein-like adults in positions of “authority.” But so long as nobody’s feelings are hurt—all will be deemed copacetic (even if it’s not). Wreaths will be lain, candles lit, tears shed, more slobbering will happen on weak-minded TV shows.
Not to tax the American Mind too much, but the Klein episode conjures a story by Edgar Allan Poe. (Don’t worry; your kids won’t hear about him in the public schools, from where his ilk has been expunged. Poe was, after all, some white American dude who could, “like write and stuff.”)
“The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether” tells of inmates in an asylum who overpower their wardens, tar and feather them, throw them into underground cells, and proceed to have “a jolly season of it” without them.
If only…
UPDATE I (July 1): Abelard Lindsey: You may need to re-read the column. Excerpt: “… Perhaps the two [bus drive & monitor] live in fear of potential lawsuits, lodged by the parents who sire these good-for-nothing seventh graders…”
This was an excellent commentary on both the public schools and the “sissified” adults that pretend to manage them. I agree with you completely.
Greg
UPDATE III (July 5):
From: John W.
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2012 9:23 AM
To: imercer@wnd.com
Subject: Thanks….
I only “taught” children for one year. If I can’t spank ’em, I can’t teach ’em. I found other work!
Thanks for a great article.
John W.
I’m getting tired of this thankless, punishing gig. I may just oblige my detractors and, for starters, close the moderated sections of what is a labor-intense blog spot. If you have a preference, which I very much doubt it, you may register is by clicking to Donate.
ILANA
Here’s a sample of America the Virtuous:
From: bizlique@comcast.net [mailto:bizlique@comcast.net]
Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2012 6:23 PM
To: imercer
Subject: cunt
you’re a bitter old hag and total cunt.
here’s some attention: i hope you die soon and when you do, we’ll rejoice like we did when breitbart died. that will be your legacy.
From: Virginia Gomez [mailto:virginiagomez4@aol.com]
Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2012 2:20 PM
To: IMERCER@WND.COM
Subject: YOUR ARTICLE ON MS. KAREN KLEIN
Wow, and ‘YOU’ actually have the nerve to call yourself a writer?! … But what can one expect from a ‘liberal’ whom I consider jerks and idiots. There aren’t any nice words I can use to describe your despicable article on: “Bullied ‘jail bus lady’: Fearful, fatty Not a Hero”. Is your mother overweight or is your dad overweight from eating too many twinkies?? Would they be considered “Fatty”? Do you call them “fat” without regards to their feelings?? It’s a shame that YOU haven’t taken a real close look at yourself in the mirror and seen how ugly you really are! …when I saw that you are a liberal I said to myself “hey, what else can one expect from a liberal, thank god she has not disappointed me.” Take your shitty comments/ articles and apply them to your parents and other jerkoff liberals who appreciate your worthless talent.
From: Thomas Mariani [mailto:xmarianix@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2012 3:00 PM
To: ilana@ilanamercer.com
Subject: Bus driver
How can you write things like this, “Or, perhaps the bus drive is another fearful fatty who was unable to dislodge herself from her seat”. Ilana, Go fuck yourself.
From: C B [mailto:taz11375@yahoo.com]
Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2012 6:06 PM
To: ilana@ilanamercer.com
Subject: Exclusive: Ilana Mercer asserts Karen Klein is perpetuating infantilism in America
The new ‘poster child’ for a bully victim in America is, wait for it, not a helpless small child, robbed of lunch money by the schoolyard ruffian, but an adult entrusted with supervising them.
The Internet watched 68-year-old Karen Klein, who was charged with ‘monitoring’ bused children in the town of Greece, N.Y., dissolve in tears to the taunts of her 13-year-old charges.
Klein’s failure to fend off the feral children was captured on YouTube by her tormentors, students at the Athena Middle School in suburban Rochester.
To the sight of a feeble adult, who occupies two seats on the vehicle she’s supposed to supervise; too fat to budge and too powerless to perform the task for which she is being paid—the Internet erupted in cheers.
Klein was quickly catapulted to fame for her, yes, courage. ‘God bless, you are my hero,’ effused a woman with the handle ‘Marykate,’ in an online post.
Charitably put, Klein has not advanced adulthood in infantile America. …
… In defense of the wolverines who preyed on Klein, how is an adult such as herself to command their respect? From whom are these fiends, out on a wilding spree, expected to learn a lesson? From Supervisor Klein, who was not adult enough to holler for help? Klein lacked the wherewithal to ask the bus driver to stop the bus and set the kids straight, then and there. …
… Or, perhaps the bus drive is another fearful fatty, who was unable to dislodge herself from her seat? Perhaps the two live in fear of potential law suits, lodged by the parents who sire these good-for-nothing seventh graders? …
… Natural order is not predicated on state-enacted laws. The natural order that has worked throughout the ages to tame young terrors is predicated on hierarchy; on the preservation of clear, never-to-be-blurred boundaries between adults and kids. These boundaries were once upheld in-house—in the principal’s office, the home and the church. …
… Restore old-fashioned discipline to classrooms and school buses.
… Better still: Drain the septic tank that is our federalized education system, and with it the auxiliary personnel that infest the schools and feed off a dwindling tax base. There is now one non-teaching adult for every 8 or 9 children. …
If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive libertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.
I’m appalled by these Lord-of-the-Flies adolescents. But I also recall my Irish grandmother, who would have stuffed their words back down their throats ’til they choked, and then settled back for a nip of her favorite whiskey.
The U.S. these days is sadly lacking in cranky old folks.
I reply:
SS: I love your comment. Exactly my sentiment. I grew up around wiry little old Israeli ladies, who were so tough and scary that we kids used to imagine they were witches who would eat us up if we got close enough. (There were no Idiot Pads in those days; we’d think up scary stuff for fun.) Anyone taunting these former pioneers of the Holy land, who had drained swamps in their youth, would run for his/her life. We respected our elders.
UPDATE III: Guys start fighting on my Wall over abortion. I write: “AMM: There is not a thing you can do when people go off about fetuses (which I, of course, love). As I once wrote: “Would that Republicans fussed as much over the many fully formed human-beings dying daily in Iraq, as they do over fetuses.” Fuss all you like, but not on this Wall, fetuses (which I love) are not the subject here. But, I have a very low regard for your average Republican’s “culture of life.”
Ilana Mercer, one day you will be old, and fat, and powerless, and someone will heap on the last straw…and you will break, and sob, and understand what this woman went through. Until then, you’ll be a soulless fraud.
How does the fool writing this know I am not “old”? Because of the way I look? American slobs make me sick. You know nothing about real suffering, but you think a cruel word qualifies. (Read Into the Cannibal’s Pot to get a perspective on just how disgustingly self-indulgent and full of self-pity you are.)
Americans are blind to anything and anyone that isn’t like them; you can identify with Klein because she looks like you. You cannot identify with those who do not mirror indulgence and sloth (“old” though they may be).
From the fact that someone looks OK, you deduce that they are young, have it easy, haven’t suffered like the Klein woman has (she doesn’t know what real suffering is)?
If someone looks OK in middle age, you think that comes easily and doesn’t involve hard work and disciple, and isn’t achieved despite a difficult life? You pity the slack and pile on hard-working disciplined folks, for what? Driving themselves hard (I do that)? Running 12 miles a week for the last 22 years? (I do that, come rain or shine). Not wallowing in pity (I don’t do that). Anything to excuse the way you eat and look, and the arrogance with which you treat others not like you.
How old does the writer think I am, what with a daughter who is 29-years old?
Misplaced compassion and envy; that’s what this country is increasingly about.
What I once said in an interview about reason and misplaced compassion obtains: “In well-functioning people, the intellect is not separated from the affect (i.e. the emotional). They are integrated. When people are rational, they observe reality as it is, and are more likely to be concerned with justice and avoid misplacing compassion.”
Stripped of their property by the political class (at the behest of the masses), landed aristocracy is making a comeback to a desperate Europe, in the role private property has always encouraged: duty and custodianship, in contrast to pillage politics (which is what the political class does).
With the exception of Greece, which with Anglo-American help had avoided its sister countries’ red servitude, the populations of the formerly Marxist region welcomed back their former monarchs (or their heirs) with open arms—going so far as to reverse the theft of much of their former property. The Balkan royals began once again to play supporting roles in their homelands’ public life. Simeon II of Bulgaria was perhaps the most successful. Acting as the focus of a grassroots political movement, he was elected prime minister in 2001.
…So steeped have we become in the politics of envy that the government robbing a rich man—better still, an ex-reigning sovereign—will bring joy to many. This is why the decades-old reduction of Britain’s landed aristocracy from a political force to a band of desperate folk trying (and often failing) to hold onto what is left of their inheritance begets either a smile or a yawn. If Simeon is to continue to play a useful role in his country’s life, he will need to seek justice—paradoxically enough—from the European Court of Human Rights. It is ironic that this is happening under Boyko Borisov’s scandal-ridden prime ministry. The contrast between monarch and politico could not be starker. …
