GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

Alt Left, Alt Right (which we’re not), and other terms

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As I noted earlier, language evolves (or devolves). “Alt Right” is now owned by the neo-Nazi/KKK types (whom we reject). It was once a label for the kicky, fun, we-refuse-to-keep-losing type of conservative. Legit. But in the last 12-18 months, the racists (who btw are socialists or crypto-leftists) inserted themselves and took it over.

I say, fine: Let the National Socialists keep it. Let’s never use it for ourselves. That’s a good thing. Because now we can brand the equally (or more) violent/nasty Left, as Alt Left. We can tell lefties, in all sincerity, Of course we condemn the Alt Right…and your stinkin’ Alt Left, which isn’t any better…and we expect you to join us.

Some say that Hannity introduced “Alt Left”, and President Trump picked it up. Whatever. Our own V the K says the term is not meaningful because, when you look at how CNN and NYT and WaPo and Democrats are justifying left-wing violence, it’s really the entire Left, without distinction. He has a point.

But that’s the beauty of it. We can call CNN, etc. the Alt Left Media (as long as they keep excusing left-wing violence). We can refer to any leftie who justifies violence as Alt Left, exposing their moral equivalence to the violent and/or racist people of the Alt Right. Anyway, I’m on board.

The kicky, fun, we-refuse-to-be-cucked type of conservatives seem to be re-branding themselves as New Right. I’m not on board there; I mean, the name is a bit weak and I think it has to be replaced with something better. What are your thoughts?

They’re coming for the smart people

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I knew this day would come. In trying to make successful people feel guilty, Social Justice Warriors are ready to take us to full-on _Idiocracy_ or _Harrison Bergeron_. The SJW columnist Dan Williams says:

There are many kinds of privilege besides white privilege: cognitive privilege, for example. We now know that intelligence is not something we have significant control over but is something we are born with… below a certain threshold of intelligence, there are fewer and fewer opportunities… Thus, the accident of having been born smart enough to be able to be successful is a great benefit that you did absolutely nothing to earn. Consequently, you have nothing to be proud of for being smart.

His claims are contrary to science. There are plenty of things you can do, to enhance your intelligence or to damage it. For example, some studies show that frequent marijuana use can permanently damage your memory, concentration, and overall IQ. Whereas those things can be preserved or enhanced by healthy lifestyle, or some forms of education or problem-solving. So yes, your intelligence is something you “have significant control over”, long-term.

Williams’ claims are also contrary to my life experience. Throughout my life, I have consciously worked long and hard at becoming smarter and doing better things than I would have otherwise. It was no accident. It used to be called “self-improvement”.

But I suppose that, if you’re a modern-day lazy pot-smoking type of “smart” person – someone who was born talented and has indeed drifted along, doing little or nothing to forge your unique self, and falling into a six-figure salary all the same – then Williams’ comments might make sense to you. You would be too ignorant to know better. And you would need the SJW Religion for its cheap grace, or as a way to live with yourself.

From the comments: Heliotrope highlights another significant quote from Williams’ piece:

Any of us could have been born the unluckiest person on the planet, which, by definition, picks out precisely one person. But we all have the privilege of not being that person. We are all privileged by comparison.

This highlights the religious aspect of SJW-ism.

  • “Privilege” is the new Original Sin, the guilt-from-birth that no one escapes (except Williams’ hypothetical “unluckiest person born”, maybe).
  • PC “Social Consciousness” is the new Redemption (the cheap grace that I mentioned).
  • Revolution would be the (longed-for) Apocalypse or Last Judgment.
  • and Social Justice, the (unattainable) New Jerusalem or Kingdom of Heaven.

Foreign affairs

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President Trump is in Poland and gave a speech to a large crowd cheering “U! S! A! – U! S! A!” and “Dah! nald! Trump! – Dah! nald! Trump!” Video here, summary/reviews here and here.

It sounds fairly epic:

President Donald J. Trump has said the West faces an existential challenge to “defend our civilisation”, “borders”, and “faith”…

“We must work together to confront forces that threaten over time to undermine our values and erase the bonds of culture, faith, and tradition”, he said…

“Because as the Polish experience reminds us – the defense of the West ultimately rests not only on means but also on the will of its people to prevail. The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive?

“Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the courage to preserve our civilisation in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?” he questioned.

He praised the Warsaw Uprising of World War II. As is customary, he skipped over the bad role played by Polish collaborators in aiding the Holocaust.

Trump will continue on to a G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany. As the Business Insider article puts it:

Trump…urged western NATO allies in Europe to spend more on defense, drawing a comparison with Poland which meets the agreed target of two percent of annual economic output.

Later on Thursday, Trump was slated to condemn “the steady creep of government bureaucracy” and praise the sovereignty of nations in a speech at a Warsaw square, according to excerpts released by the White House.

“The West became great not because of paperwork and regulations but because people were allowed to chase their dreams and pursue their destinies,” he will say, according to the White House.

Nice 🙂

As to the other side of the world: Trump Plans “Pretty Severe Things” In Retaliation Against North Korea

“I have some pretty severe things we’re thinking about,” Trump said at a news conference in Warsaw. “Doesn’t mean we’re going to do them. I don’t draw red lines.”

“I think we will just take a look at what happens over the coming weeks and months with respect to North Korea,” Mr. Trump added. “It’s a shame they’re behaving this way and they’re behaving in a very dangerous manner, and something will have to be done about it.”

I don’t see how North Korea can ever be solved without China’s active participation. And at this point, China is not even giving permission. If we take on North Korea without China, we will end up in a war with China. I trust that Trump knows it.

UPDATE: Added a bit of emphasis in the Poland speech, and here are more quotes from it. Trump on the importance of families:

We can have the largest economies and the most lethal weapons anywhere on Earth, but if we do not have strong families and strong values, then we will be weak and we will not survive.

Trump defending Western civilization:

Americans, Poles, and the nations of Europe value individual freedom…

… if we don’t forget who are [as a civilization], we just can’t be beaten…

We reward brilliance. We strive for excellence, and cherish inspiring works of art that honor God.

We treasure the rule of law and protect the right to free speech and free expression.

We empower women as pillars of our society and of our success. We put faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, at the center of our lives. And we debate everything. We challenge everything. We seek to know everything so that we can better know ourselves.

And above all, we value the dignity of every human life, protect the rights of every person, and share the hope of every soul to live in freedom.

That is who we are.

The more I learn about this speech, the more I see to like in it. Remember (or as I’ve blogged before), I am a Western supremacist.

Plus, today’s history lesson: In 1683, it looked like the Muslims (Ottoman Turks) would conquer Vienna and roll over Europe. The Pope called on all of Christian Europe to prevent it, and the Poles responded (among others). They prevailed.

It’s an example of Christianity’s – and Poland’s – importance to the West. If it hadn’t happened, America’s West-hating and Christianity-hating Left wouldn’t even be around today, to do their sneering/hating things.

Leftie juvenilia – with a smidge of progress

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Watching lefties digest new political happenings is often like a scene from Harrison Bergeron, the dystopian future where no one is permitted to do anything skillfully.

Lefties are handicapped by their own needs and delusions, the poor dears. They can’t handle the truth. So they ignore large parts of it, fixate on a fragment or two, distort it, then fall over like a ballet dancer wearing unnecessary weights. Still, they might learn something – on the margins.

Laura Loomer and Jack Posobiec’s Shakespeare in the Park protest was somewhat new-ish: Conservatives bringing home the Left’s disruption tactics (though still being comparatively polite about it). At this link, you can watch Seth Myers and Amy Poehler struggle to address it.

As you’d expect, Myers and Poehler ignore the real context and point of the protest, making a laughable Straw Man out of it; then laugh dutifully, complete with wide eyes and shouting. It’s fine, it’s how they operate. As you’d expect. Except for one thing.

It does dawn on them that maybe people disrupting events isn’t what we all need and the Left should try to walk that one back. They slip in these words to their audience:

Free speech isn’t about just protecting speech you like. So, if you think it’s terrible to interrupt _Julius Caesar_, you have to think it’s terrible to interrupt Ann Coulter…She gets to speak too; liberals cannot be hypocrites when it comes to free speech…so, be OK with it when Ted Nugent says “President Obama can suck my machine gun.”

I left out the crap they wrapped around it. I’m saying, we can be grateful for the small things. Two leftie celebrities had a moment of self-awareness, and smuggled it into their audience. Will it take?

Manphobia hits new lows

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In left-wing Berlin, Germany, we now have a crackdown on advertising that would dare to depict women as “nurturing, happy to do housework, beautiful, addicted to shopping” or men as “rational, aggressive, technologically gifted”.

Get it? Ads must feature unpleasant, unattractive, angry feminists disposing of pathetically weak and foolish men.

Boys must not be shown as “liking sports, the colour blue, and playing with technology”. According to these German feminists(!), girls are so stupid and deficient by nature that when they “see images of heterosexual housewives, the consequence is that they cannot imagine themselves outside this framework.”

Meanwhile in Madrid, they banned ‘manspreading’. Because God Forfend that a man on a bus should sit a bit comfortably. Crowder explains it to women and gets some to admit to the existence of female privilege.

Does Camille Paglia’s example prove or disprove a notion that women shouldn’t vote?

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A commenter pointed us to this Weekly Standard interview with Camille Paglia. As in most of her work, she says true and fascinating things – on the way to wrong conclusions. As a sample, here she is on the election:

Hillary, with her supercilious, Marie Antoinette-style entitlement, was a disastrously wrong candidate for 2016 and that she secured the nomination only through overt chicanery by the Democratic National Committee, assisted by a corrupt national media who, for over a year, imposed a virtual blackout on potential primary rivals…

After Trump’s victory (for which there were abundant signs in the preceding months), both the Democratic party and the big-city media urgently needed to do a scathingly honest self-analysis, because the election results plainly demonstrated that Trump was speaking to vital concerns (jobs, immigration, and terrorism among them) for which the Democrats had few concrete solutions…

She has much more to say; RTWT. For example, she slams the transgender movement of today as dupes of Big Pharma:

…the pharmaceutical industry, having lost income when routine estrogen therapy for menopausal women was abandoned because of its health risks, has been promoting the relatively new idea of transgenderism in order to create a permanent class of customers…I condemn the escalating prescription of puberty blockers (whose long-term effects are unknown) for children. I regard this practice as a criminal violation of human rights.

And she covers President Trump’s recent “infrastructure” speech, which indeed was awesome.

But then, whom did Paglia support? (Disclosure: I supported no one; a registered Independent, I came close on Gary Johnson but even he wasn’t good enough for me.) As Paglia explains:

I am a registered Democrat who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary and for Jill Stein in the general election. Since last Fall, I’ve had my eye on Kamala Harris, the new senator from California, and I hope to vote for her in the next presidential primary.

Which is downright silly.

In travelling the “alt” opinion world, one occasionally comes across a strange theory that women shouldn’t vote. Here is an example from the vlogger Black Pigeon Speaks (who is center-Left on many issues, but right-ish on immigration, culture and terrorism). For the record: I disagree with the theory (that is, I think women should vote). But I’m going to describe it.

The essence of the theory (which again, I think is a broken theory) is that biology has wired men to take stands on issues and to initiate projects in the world; while it has wired women instead to be concerned with immediate safety and securing benefits from the group (and/or some patron). Because of that, says the theory, women voters over time will drag a country toward both appeasement (of its enemies) and socialism. Which is not good.

Is Camille Paglia evidence for that theory? Here we have a woman with a talent for grasping and expressing truth, yet she still can’t see through the people-destroying ruse of socialism.

Friends, Romans, Countrymen…

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To follow up on that Shakespeare in the Park thing where President Trump is Julius Caesar and they assassinate him:

Caesar Flickerman, speaking in his alter ego of Fareed Zakaria at CNN, said “If you’re in NYC, go see Julius Caesar, free in Central Park, brilliantly interpreted for Trump era. A masterpiece”. (Yes, Zakaria tweeted that.)

Whereas Delta said “No matter what your political stance may be, the graphic staging of Julius Caesar at this summer’s Free Shakespeare in the Park does not reflect Delta Air Lines’ values.” BofA said “The Public Theater chose to present Julius Caesar in a way that was intended to provoke and offend. Had this intention been made known to us, we would have decided not to sponsor it.”

The irony, of course, is that the staging only creates sympathy for Trump. Rightly or wrongly, history ranks Caesar as one of its Great Men. The pack of Senators stabbing him look like cowards. The general bloodiness of the staging reminds people how sick and tasteless America’s “progressives” are.

UPDATE – The Left’s revenge-shakedown begins: C-list celebrities want to boycott Delta, BofA. Because they stopped paying out for the Trump-assassinating Public Theater.

Sometimes it’s fun to watch

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Has Oliver Stone, the conspiracy-minded filmmaker, committed high crimes of HERESY and TREASON by questioning the Russia narrative?

“Mr. Putin is one of the most important leaders in the world and in so far as the United States has declared him an enemy – a great enemy – I think it’s very important we hear what he has to say.”

“[Stone’s new Putin documentary] opens up a whole viewpoint that we as Americans haven’t heard,” Stone said. “We went to see him four different times over two years.”

When questioned about allegations made by Democrats and the political left that President Trump has direct connections to Russia, Stone replied: “That’s a path that leads nowhere to my mind.”

“That’s an internal war of politics in the US in which the Democratic party has taken a suicide pact or something to blow him up; in other words, to completely de-legitimise him and in so doing blow up the US essentially,” he said. “What they’re doing is destroying the trust that exists between people and government. It’s a very dangerous position to make accusations you cannot prove.”

I’m old enough to remember when the Left stood for peace (or thought it did) and “understanding the Russians” was mandatory, as was “respecting the results of elections”. Stone is old enough, too. It will be fun to see if they’re going to turn on him.

Against ethnic identitarianism

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First, let’s catch up on some lingo. Nathan Damigo, the guy who punched Moldylocks, founded something called “Identity Evropa” (meaning European). I visited the website and I did not find any statements that call for white supremacy; only for white/European identity.

Think of it this way. We have accepted identities such as African-American, Latino-American, Asian-American, Jewish-American, etc. In general, those identities don’t intend full-on Black or Latino or Asian or Jewish supremacy. They may sometimes achieve special privileges (for example, quotas or differing standards for the alleged races). But the majority of people holding to those identities don’t intend anything like a hard apartheid (or internment camps, etc.) for the other identities. In that sense, they usually aren’t “Black supremacists” or “Latino supremacists” or “Asian supremacists”, etc.

Damigo and company seem to be saying, we can get along with those identities but let’s have one for whites, too. They reject the term “white supremacists”. In the Rebel Media interview linked above, Damigo describes himself as a “white identitarian” and says that hysterical claims about his being a Nazi, a racist, etc. are just “anti-white hate speech” to shut down conversation.

It may sound almost reasonable until you remember that all identity politics are harmful. These guys are going in the exact wrong direction. They are doing a “Me, too” on racial identity politics. Like the others, they offer a cheap identity – “join the fraternity”, says their website. A San Diego Union-Tribune article says:

[As a Marine in Iraq, Damigo] saw firsthand the conflicts between the country’s ethnic and religious groups. “I said, ‘This is dumb. Why don’t … each one of them have their own country and they can all express themselves and … they’re not, you know, fighting with each other,” he told the Los Angeles Times in December.

In other words: Damigo might not want to harm or subjugate the other identities; but he thinks that both the Middle East and America should be even more ethnically-divided than they already are. Not good.

I believe in a melting-pot, American identity based on America’s founding principles of Human Freedom under Limited Government and the Rule of Law. Yes, the Left has pulled us all away from it with cheap, divisive identity politics. So let’s restore it.

When I come across identity-politics material of any kind (white, black or otherwise), the word “stupid” keeps popping into my head. I’ve been thinking about why that is. First, here is how I define the term. Interactions between 2 parties will have one of four outcomes.

  • I win, you win: That’s smart.
  • I win, you lose: That might be justice; if it’s not, then it’s predatory on my part, masochistic on your part.
  • I lose, you win: That might be justice; if it’s not, then it’s masochistic on my part, predatory on your part.
  • I lose, you lose: That’s just stupid.

With identity politics, everyone loses. Even the hucksters who gain financially from it are still losers – because they’re hucksters. If it’s stupid when Blacks or Asians or Latinos do it – and I’m afraid that it is – then it is equally stupid when whites do it.

All identitarians oversimplify their group’s history, and Identity Evropa is no exception. Their materials highlight Western civilization with majestic Greco-Roman-appearing figures next to slogans like “Let’s become great again”, “Serve your people”, “Discover who you are”, “Protect your heritage”. Fine. I like greatness and heroic art. But these guys seem unaware that Jesus was a Mediterranean Jew, and that the Greco-Roman civilizations (I dare not say “races”) were highly mixed, with a good deal of Mediterranean, Semitic (Phoenician), African and European heritage together.

They seem to forget that *culture is culture*. It isn’t about ethnicity, or tribe, or race, or genes, or color. It’s ideas; principles; the arts; laws and legal practices; philosophy; sciences; means of production and trade; food; ethics; things that can be adopted by anyone, of any ethnicity, at any time.

I am a Western supremacist. That is: I think that the Judeo-Christian-Greco-Roman-Lockean/Enlightenment civilization, while not perfect, is better than the others; it has the most elements from which an ideal civilization could be built. And I want to spread those good elements, by example and persuasion, to all ethnic groups (in America and the world).

It’s about the ideas/principles, and the individuals everywhere who may hold them. I couldn’t care less about the survival of *any* ethnicity as such. Ethnic identity is a sideshow, a rabbit hole where everyone loses, if we keep going down it.

And sorry Mr. Damigo, but if it does turn out that you’re one of those people who dwells on racial categories and uses them to pre-judge your fellow human beings: then yes, at that point you would be a racist. If you don’t want to wear that shoe, kindly make sure it never fits.

Brexit: Marine Le Pen vs. the Clueless Elites

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Two contrasting items today, in the Establishment press.

In Foreign Policy magazine, James Traub says “It’s Time for the Elites to Rise Up Against the Ignorant Masses”. Yes, that is the title of his article.

It’s a trashy piece, packed with elitist cliches and the occasional jaw-dropper (for example, when he refers to Washington’s infamous “K Street” lobbyists with approval). Yet it’s a tortured attempt to begin to face reality:

The issue, at bottom, is globalization. Brexit, Trump, the National Front, and so on show that political elites have misjudged the depth of the anger at global forces…

Actually no, Mr. Traub. Globalization, in itself, is not the problem. -Dictatorial- globalization wherein the political elites wrongly seek to enslave people, is the problem. But kudos to you, for beginning to tell the said elites that maybe there could be some sort of systemic problem.

A good contrast: In The New York Times, Marine Le Pen says “After Brexit, the People’s Spring Is Inevitable”.

British voters understood that… only one question, at once simple and fundamental, was being asked: Do we want an undemocratic authority ruling our lives, or would we rather regain control over our destiny?
[…]
More and more, the destiny of the European Union resembles the destiny of the Soviet Union, which died from its own contradictions.

There’s much more. As the saying goes, “Read the whole thing.”

UPDATE: Over at The Guardian, it’s even worse than the James Traub piece above. David Van Reybrouck’s article is titled “Why Elections Are Bad For Democracy” (yes, for real).

Starting from a blind premise that Brexit is obviously awful, he says “Voting is the problem” and suggests, in all seriousness, that citizen referenda should be replaced by focus groups (called “sortition” to make it sound nice and historical) which will be guided by the elite’s approved experts. (Via ZH.)