Category Archives: Reason

UPDATE II (4/15): The Beef Vs. Bugs Phony Dichotomy

Conservatism, Criminal Injustice, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Gender, Israel, Justice, Literature, Logic, Reason

Animal husbandry—Intensive animal farming or industrial livestock production, in this case—is humanity’s Mark of Cain …~ilana

To be Right and reactionary (check) you don’t have to be gang-ho about and indifferent to the horrors of industrial livestock production ~ilana

The idea that humanity has only the bug vs. meat-guzzler eating options sets up a false dichotomy and gets a fail on logic and ethics ~ilana

On or around the time of this travesty—the evil, the indifference—of letting 18 thousand cows go up in flames—author Meir Shalev died, aged 74.

For the richness of his descriptions and the depth of the depictions and characters, down to his achingly exquisite unusual sensitivity and sensibility about animals—Shalev is up there with the greatest writers. (Nobel Prize winner Shai Agnon was a vegan.)

Nabokov of the Israelis? Maybe, but Shalev was unburdened by Nabokov’s prurient preoccupation with decadence, mired as he was in it.

Meir Shalev was a soulful innocent.

About the cow, Shalev said that she is the longest suffering, most abused of livestock—made to lactate unnaturally and painfully for a lifespan (which is why milk is puss-filled, by the way; to “regulated” levels, of course), her young removed, and then she, at life’s end, led to the slaughterhouse.

Shalev has described the cries of a heifer when her calf is removed. They go on for a very very long time.

Animal husbandry—Intensive animal farming or industrial livestock production, in this case—is humanity’s Mark of Cain …

*Screen pic image credit

*Shalev as screen pic

UPDATED: Animal Ethics @TuckerCarlson. NONE.

This update is from a January 18, 2023 tweet. It concerns the tenor on the Tucker Carlson Tonight show when it comes to animal ethics. Many of my readers have long-since abandoned the Republican line of rape-and-pillage-the-earth-it’s-yours. (That’s not in or from the Hebrew Testament!)

One person, whose comment I posted to Twitter and Gttr, appreciated my disgust with the flippancy on conservative shows as to animal ethics and husbandry. Other than dogs and cats, the traditional pets that comply with humanity’s slobbering needs—cons have no animal ethics bar utilitarianism: squeeze all you can from em to sate your ugly big gut.

On masking a cow:

Nobody on Tucker Carlson made an ethical argument against CRUELTY to one of the longest-suffering animals in the barnyard: the cow.

But great strides in thinking were made thanks to a cute, blond, fashionable farmer girl in serious war-paint (make-up).

AND, blond and cute is more important than ethics anytime.

Today, April 14, 2023, came a repeat performance, in the form of an idiotic segment on bug eating. Run for cover. They’ll force feed you bugs.

The Beef Vs. Bugs Phony Dichotomy

Every country in the West emulates America’s Fox News in producing their own standard issue Tomi Lahren quality thinker and lookers to compete for segments on Tucker. And so it is that the US, Fox News, creates a global marketplace for blond bimbos.

My mother, a Dutch citizen for over four decades, tells me that the Dutch, a serious and glum people, despise such Americanism. Among the Hard Right, the Dutch still carry the torch for that brilliant orator, Geert Wilders, who comes close to Assange in leading a life of martyrdom for truth.

For another, a good journalist would question the so-called veracity of the global plan to force-humanity to eat bugs en masse (don’t believe every conspiracy Tucker feeds ya). Bugs serve important ecological functions. Eat them all and you really won’t have food.

The creation of these false dichotomies and straw arguments when it comes to ethics in animal husbandry is loathsome—certainly irrational and illogical.

One can eat animals if one must and do so ethically. Of course, you cannot mass-produce animals ethically. But the idea that humanity has only the bug vs. meat-guzzler eating options sets up a false dichotomy and gets a fail on logic and ethics.

Moreover, the rah-rah of badmouthing of vegans is also worse than pathetic. Many young conservatives, or sensitive conservatives, are likely not on board. It’s of a piece with the phoniness of the old Republican, red-blooded girl and guy shtick. Not all vegans are activists with pink hair. Most are simply concerned with the ethics around eating animals.

In sum, to be Right and reactionary (check) you don’t have to be gang-ho about and indifferent to the horrors of industrial livestock production.

 

Performative Contradiction: Pipsqueak Declares Pat Buchanan ‘Not A Great Writer’

Argument, Conservatism, Critique, Culture, English, Intellectualism, Logic, Reason

‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’ ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

This is rich! (In-hysterics emoji)

Against the backdrop of the retirement of the superb Patrick J. Buchanan, some cipher—that’s a melodic word for a zero, a nobody—at The American Conservative, which I recommend avoiding like spam for penis extensions, one Declan Leary declares that Pat Buchanan “was not a great writer.”

Mr. Buchanan is a very fine writer! Spare and strong, easily great.

Let’s see: A nullity, Declan Leary, implies Buchanan was a mediocre writer, and does so while writing—nay embodying—mediocre, nondescript prose. I’m in stitches here.

Leary is still a pipsqueak, but you don’t grow talent. You either have it or you don’t. It is self-evident that Leary’s prose is never going to be anything but nondescript. (Experience Declan for yourself in “Against ‘Buchananism.’”)

I do declare that Declan Leary is engaged in something of a performative contradiction.

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent,” said Ludwig Wittgenstein, a great analytic philosopher.

*Lawrence Auster and I were first to denounce the American Conservative.

* Screen picture credit

Devil’s Party Running On Pelosi Attack, Believe Election Commissars, Not Legislature, Represent The People

Crime, Cultural Marxism, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Political Philosophy, Reason, Republicans

©By ILANA MERCER

To go by the networks, the Democrats are running on the Papa Pelosi Attack. They think it’s a defining issue for the voters.

The only centrally important thing about Pelosi’s attacker is that he will not be granted bail; while an ordinary peon’s attacker or murderer would and does, in California.

SYMBOLISM OVER REASON

Never mind facts; symbolism is the Devil Party’s stock-in-trade. For these demented Democrats, the Pelosi attack symbolizes something greater than the mere facts of the case. Like all liars they love the truth afforded by a one-case study (invalid in research methodology). It allegedly points to some eternal truth about all of us MAGA men and women.

LEGISLATURE VS. POLITBURO

The second observation about The Devil Party’s plank is this:

Whereas we, MAGA men and women, are silenced and indicted for merely mentioning the realities of election fraud—our Republican representatives having largely abandoned us—Devil operatives like Mother Jones’ Ari Berman indict Republican gerrymandering elections just BECAUSE Republicans vest the Wisconsin Legislature with representative power, rather than the state’s centralized, six-member Elections Commission (WEC), made up of so-called “bipartisan” representatives.

One election commissar for every 1 million Wisconsin voters—the state has a population of 6 million. This is the essence of democracy for the Devil Party. And what a diabolical notion this is.

As bad as it already is—democracy to the Democrat Devils means something even worse. It means that a politburo is more representative than a legislature. The latter (legislature) comports with the Founding Fathers’ philosophy of governance; the former (commission) with the former Soviet Union’s theory of rule.

The GOP appears eager to wrest control away from the bipartisan commission that supervises elections [all six members of it] in the state and give that power to the ultra-gerrymandered [so you say] legislature, which could then choose the state’s presidential electors instead of the voters.

The Democrats, the Devil’s Party, are unbeatably Orwellian.

UPDATED (10/21/022): NEW COLUMN IS “Race And Sex Hegemons To Control The Skies

Affirmative Action, Argument, Feminism, Gender, Human Accomplishment, Pseudoscience, Reason, Regulation

NEW COLUMN IS “Race And Sex Hegemons To Control The Skies.” It is currently featured on WND.COM , The Unz Review, The New American, American Renaissance, and on Saturday, at Townhall.com.

Excerpt:

The topic was “the end of the all-male, all-white cockpit.”

The context: A June 3, 2022 TV episode, in which Fox News personality Tucker Carlson beseeched viewers to look beyond the race and gender of pilots, to his or her competence. “What’s color to do with competence?” he demanded to know.

Mr. Carlson was appealing to the wrong audience.

In America, where woke is ruthlessly propelled by the private-sector, the commercial aviation industry has been itching to replace humble men like Captain Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger, III, with black women (the looks of whom indicate that a good weave, tattooed eyebrows and eyelash extension are baseline requirements).

Using their employees’ opposition to forced vaccination as a proxy for backbone, moxie and rational thinking—the commercial aviation industry is increasingly shedding very many magnificent, military-trained pilots.

Just so there’s no confusion: Pilots with the right stuff are being selected out of their profession.

Granted, correlation is not causation, but if there is a statistically significant correlation between gender or race and the likelihood one survives a plane flight—well then, one might just want to consider these variables as proxies for safety and survival, however politically impolite it is.

Tucker might want to check the aggregate accident statistics to determine who are the best, safest pilots. By ScienceDirect’s telling, “… females employed by major airlines had significantly higher accident rates than their male counterparts overall.” [Emphasis added.]

To be expected, ScienceDirect then launches a fusillade of excuse-making weasel words to conceal with bafflegab that if you fly with a female, you’re a little less likely to reach your destination. It’s a ghost of a chance, but hey, life matters. Do you want to lose it?

Yes, female pilots have a higher error/accident rate, but never mind that say the Fake Science purveyors; this is only so because they are younger and less experienced. Airlines should make every effort to recruit and retain “experienced” females and manage diversity, they exhort.

Essentially—and while plummeting to his death—the passenger should search his bigoted soul. In addition to letting go of your life; you must release all bigotry. Those thoughts about how race and sex could well correlate with flight safety, and how you wish you had checked the pilot before you took the fatal flight: Let them go. Oh, and by the way, RIP, you sexist, you racist.

The desired outcome is that you fly with a less able pilot, ceteris paribus. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN, “Race And Sex Hegemons To Control The Skies,” is currently featured on WND.COM ,The Unz Review, The New American, American Renaissance, and on Saturday, at Townhall.com.

UPDATED (10/21/022): “Virginia plane crash kills flight instructor, injures student pilot.” Yes, and in addition to all else that was wrong with this fated flight—the flight instructor is a bubbly 23-year-old child/girl. Was.

*Screen pic credit