Category Archives: Morality

Collective Punishment?

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Justice, Media, Morality, Pop-Culture, Sport

When the events surrounding pederast Jerry Sandusky surfaced, I ventured that, to an outsider, the American football scene was obscene—starting with its incestuous fraternities, the rock-star status surrounding handlers and players, their pompom-waving, knickers-baring groupies, and the tantrum-prone fans who experience bare-fanged fury when their heroes let them down. The problem with this freak show is that the participants are pathologically invested in it.

Besides, how did the words “coach” and “legendary” ever come to be paired? Ridiculous.

Now comes the news that the NCAA, whatever that stands for— reporters no longer follow the convention of first writing out acronyms in full—has leveled a punishment on Penn State that will likely affect every student at the university.

Collective punishment for transgressions (crimes included) committed by certain individuals (who are no longer at the helm)!

The football program will also be excluded from playing in bowl games and post-season games for four years, as well as having its football scholarships reduced from 25 to 15, and having to pay a $60 million fine, the equivalent of one year’s revenues from the football program.

Thirteen team victories have been voided. So many kids must have worked hard and played their hearts out. Why are they are being penalized?

Career and camera-conscious individuals will do anything to look as if they are busy doing something. This is all Brownian Motion, and terribly unfair.

UPDATE III: The Closing of The American Mind? What Mind?

America, Education, Family, Ilana Mercer, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Justice, Morality, Pop-Culture, Reason

Expect a WND and RT column follow-up in response to the responses (a sample is here and posted below) to “Bullied ‘Jail Bus’ Lady: Fearful Fatty, Not a Hero,” which gave me a glimpse of America at it illiterate, fulminating best.

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.

And “Managerial-State busybodies” will mandate compulsory anti-bully courses to all inmates in the Jails that are our government schools.

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…”

UPDATE II:

From: Greg
Sent: Sunday, July 01, 2012 7:40 AM
To: imercer@wnd.com
Subject: Bullied ‘jail bus’ lady: Fearful fatty, not a hero

Ilana

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

Fuck you – ignorant bitch!

‘Flesh-Eating, Zombie Apocalypse’

Ethics, Etiquette, Media, Morality, Pop-Culture, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, The West, The Zeitgeist

The plethora of piss-poor, potty mouthed writers, who’ve attempted unsuccessfully to satirize contemporary cannibalism in the West, attest to what Thomas Fleming diagnoses as,

…partly the fault of a very sick popular culture that dotes on the perverse movies of George Romero, Anne Rice’s novelistic gushings over vampires, and the teen-exploitation books, movies, and TV shows in which ghouls, werewolves, and vampires are basically not bad creatures who just need a little understanding. We are teaching ourselves not just to celebrate evil but to elevate it. Good people trying to muddle through in a difficult world are boring: Evil is way cool.

Of course, I would not use the word “exploitation” to describe the maladies afflicting the Millennials, who’ve been allowed by errant adults to turn feral.

Millennials are a generation of youngsters that reveres only itself for no good reason. They have been unleashed on America by progressive families and educators (Democrat and Republican alike) who’ve deified their off-putting offspring and charges, and instilled in them a sense of self-worth disproportionate to their actual worth.

One can disagree with Dr. Fleming on this or the other point or perspective. But his erudite, highly intelligent and cultured perspective in “Eating People is Wrong”—whereby he eviscerates the smarmy “Amateur philosophers and pop culture critics,” who rushed “to ascend their cracker barrels and deliver their explanations for the hysteria”—strikes the right tone, avoiding stupid spoofs on the one hand, or platonic theorizing on the other.

The Quality of Egyptian Mercy… And Society

Democracy, Islam, Justice, Middle East, Military, Morality

“The concept of a society is based on the quality of its mercy, of its sense of fair play, its sense of justice,” goes that memorable line from the film “Midnight Express” (which surely represented Hollywood at its heyday). The protagonist’s protest against his inhuman and inhumane Turkish jailers was a plea against a merciless authority.

The kind the US and its surrogates (“NATO”) around the world endorse as democratic.

In another word, Egypt.

The new Egypt has demonstrated in spades the quality of its mercy and, by extension, society, by sentencing the “deposed leader Hosni Mubarak” “to life in prison for failing to stop the killing of 900 protesters in January 2011.” (Was that even provable?)

The demonstrating “activists” might want to consider giving old Hosni a sponge bath and reinstating him, rather than condeming an old man to life in prison (or death there, whatever comes first).

Since the ousting of Mubarak, reports BBC News, “Foreign direct investment has reversed from $6.4bn (£4bn) flowing into the country in 2010 to $500m leaving it last year. Tourism, a major revenue generator for the country, has also dropped by a third.”