Two kinds of people

Just as I posted Social Just Us, I find Jacinda Ardern telling us about the two kinds of people Heinlein was talking about.

The “F” bomblet

Like MAGA, ‘fascism’ is only two syllables. President Biden can say both reliably. His caretakers took a risk, though, when they handed him “semi-fascist.” Leaving us all to wonder which parts of actual fascism were covered and which were not. Turns out not to matter, because he doesn’t know what the root word means.

AFAIK, he’s been getting that four syllable variation right so far, even if neither he nor his affirmative action press secretary have been willing or able to define it.

Willy-nilly throwing out the word fascist and vilifying half the population of the United States in a political speech is his idea of unifying the country: Last Thursday, our President could be found driving his message home by posing before shadowy Marines (Think about that. It was a political speech.) before a background of dim blood-red lighting shining on Independence Hall. Anyone see projection here? Or, an historical reference?

In keeping with the carefully constructed atmosphere, the President delivered a speech worthy of the Italian socialist who invented Fascism. Mussolini was a better speaker, and a more accomplished and erudite man than the President.

Imitation. Flattery.

The President should ask Karine Jean-Pierre to read Angelo M. Codevilla’s 2020 article to him. Then they’d both have a better understanding of what they’re playing at:

The Original Fascist

I’d recommend reading it yourself. An excellent history lesson. A fantastic insight into how we came to have a President calling everyone who doesn’t vote for “Our Democracyts” a fascist.

A slice from Codevilla:

“Socioeconomic organization was fascism’s defining feature. Only employers’ and employees’ organizations approved by the government were allowed. They represented and collected dues from any and all in their category and territory, whether these had signed up with them or not. [Like taxpayers and student loans.] In 1925 these had agreed “voluntarily” to recognize each other as “exclusive representatives,” to subordinate interactions at the local level to central organizations, and to draw up procedures for their cooperation under government supervision. The Law of Corporations of April 3, 1926, codified this political-economic order. No longer would corporations be responsible to owners. Thenceforth, they would answer to higher duties as defined in the law. As Mussolini put it, “In a world of social and economic interdependence…the watchword must be cooperation or misery.” “Labor and capital have the same rights and duties. Both must cooperate, and their disputes are regulated by law and decided by courts, which punish any violation.” This resulted in the orderly servicing of interest groups, fascism’s daily preoccupation.”

What is the word to describe the fact that the FBI ‘advises’ Silicon Valley crony-capitalists on censorship, just days before a Presidential election, as news damaging to their preferred candidate is breaking? What is that word when the White House makes lists of “problematic posts,” then threatens those same corporations with: “Root out misleading speech or be held accountable?

One might assume these left wing corporations are merely following their natural inclinations to help a sympathetic government suppress stories they both don’t want publicized. It’s “like minded” fascism: Simple cloth masks retard CCP virus transmission. The vaccine prevents disease transmission. Natural immunity is not as good as a vaccine. Hunter Biden’s laptop is Russian agitprop. Trump paid Russian prostitutes to piss on a mattress. Shutting schools won’t harm children. The United States didn’t fund gain of function research by the Chinese. Trans “women” are biologically identcal to males for every purpose, but especially sports and incarceration. If you disagree, you are a fascist. Ipso facto.

It could be a natural inclination for the Masters of the Metaverse. It also could be called collusion. Turns out the latter is most likely.
Over 50 Biden Administration Employees, 12 US Agencies Involved In Social Media Censorship Push: Documents

What do you call a government which seeds the same outlets they suppress with a fantasy dossier, and then uses the news coverage generated by that leak as a basis for secret surveillance warrants? Is that “like minded” fascism, “collusion” fascism, “conspiracy” fascism?

Here are some of the latest individual receipts for such government manipulation:
Twitter, Facebook Regularly Coordinated With Biden Admin To Censor Users

FBI Responds To Zuckerberg’s Bombshell Rogan Revelation Bureau Helped Bury Hunter Biden Laptop Story

Top FBI agent resigns amid claims he shielded Hunter Biden from probe: report

The White House privately demanded Twitter ban me months before the company did so

The White House and the FBI are prevaricating about these stories, but what do you call a government which tries to regularize corporate censorship at state direction by creating a “Disinformation Governance Board

The Disinformation Governance Board was so outrageous an idea they had to rename it. Ministry of Truth had already been taken, so now it’s an ‘internet policy task force’ led by Kamala Harris, “with goals including “developing programs and policies” to protect “political figures” and journalists from “disinformation,” “abuse” and “harassment.””

Used to be that ferreting out “disinformation,” and “harassing politicians” was the job journalists did.

So what’s the word for this set of corporatist rules? Here’s a hint: it takes the ‘semi’ out of “semi-fascist.”

That Italian I mentioned provided the rationale in the 1930s:
-1-:

The corporate State considers that private enterprise in the sphere of production is the most effective and useful instrument in the interest of the nation. In view of the fact that private organisation of production is a function of national concern, the organiser of the enterprise is responsible to the State for the direction given to production.

State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management.

and -2-:

The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State–a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values–interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people. (p. 14)

The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organised in their respective associations, circulate within the State.

-1- Benito Mussolini, 1935, Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions, Rome: ‘Ardita’ Publishers, (pp. 135-136), and -2- The Doctrine of Fascism, Firenze: Vallecchi Editore, (p. 41).

One more piece of Codevilla’s article is worth looking at in thinking about the history of Fascism in the United States.

The initial impetus came from a man who disdained the Constitution and got the transfer of power into the hands of the the Executive Branch rolling: Woodrow Wilson.

A cursory look at Wilson’s comments will demonstrate this, as well as the fact that he was a racist of the first water.

But the ball really got rolling under another President, a contemporary and admirer of Mussolini, Franklin Roosevelt:

“The view that the New Deal was “fascism without the billy clubs” was well-nigh universal among FDR’s opponents on the Left (e.g. Norman Thomas), as well as on the Right (Herbert Hoover). It could hardly have been otherwise since the essence of the National Industrial Recovery Act—the involuntary inclusion of all participants in categories of economic activity and their subjection to government-dictated prices, wages, and working conditions—was at least as detailed as those in fascism’s corporate law. The U.S. government had brushed aside the Supreme Court’s objections to the National Recovery Administration in A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935). By 1942, in Wickard v. Filburn (still “good law” today), the Court approved regulation of all manner of enterprise with reasoning stricter than any Mussolini had used in 1926. Today, by the same token, Senator and 2020 presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s proposed “Accountable Capitalism Act” would also force corporations to enroll into a legal scheme in which the government would force them to service various stakeholders as government regulators would decide from time to time. Such tools are far more powerful than billy clubs.

Until 1935 New Dealers, though careful not to add to their opponents’ ammunition, did not hide their administration’s kinship with what the Fascists, Nazis, and Communists were doing to redirect the societies over which they ruled. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes thought that “what we are doing in this country is analogous to what is being done in Russia and even under Hitler in Germany. The only thing is that we do it methodically.” FDR himself referred to Mussolini and Stalin as “blood brothers,” and spoke of having private contacts with Mussolini. “Mussolini,” he said, “is interested in what we are doing, and I am struck by how much of his doubtless honest programs to reform Italy he has accomplished.” Brain-truster Rexford Tugwell thought that the fascists had done…”

many of the things which seem necessary to me. At any rate, Italy has been rebuilt materially in a systematic manner. Mussolini has the same opponents as FDR, but he controls the press, which prevents them from daily spreading their nonsense. He governs a compact, disciplined country, despite insufficient resources. At least on the surface, he has achieved enormous progress.

So, for a man of limited intelligence, and even less erudition, tossing the word fascist about as if it were anything but a convenient epithet is a mistake. That is not to say that such men do not have a long tradition here. Mostly they are Democrats. Whose Blackshirts, Antifa, are anything but anti-fascist.

Think of fascism today as the administrative state. The “swamp.” Who are its standard bearers?

How many divisions has Brett Kavanaugh?

If a rent moratorium extension had been passed by the Democrat controlled House (which went on vacation instead), the measure would be almost certain to fail in the Senate. Senate Democrats need 10 Senate Republicans to overcome the filibuster.

I think it’s fair to call the extension anti-democratic. It’s election fraud. What’s the point of electing Senators if the Executive Branch is going to ignore the Constitution whenever the House deliberately invites illegal executive orders?

To review:

“I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

– Joseph Robinette Biden

“I, Brett Kavanaugh, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

“I, Brett Kavanaugh, do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as Justice of the Supreme Court under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.”

– Brett Michael Kavanaugh

“Because the CDC plans to end the moratorium in only a few weeks, on July 31, and because those few weeks will allow for additional and more orderly distribution of the congressionally appropriated rental assistance funds, I vote at this time to deny the application to vacate the District Court’s stay of its order… clear and specific congressional authorization (via new legislation) would be necessary for the CDC to extend the moratorium past July 31.”

– Brett Michael Kavanaugh

How’d that squeamish forbearance work out for ya, Brett? It didn’t work out so well for the rule of law, or the reputation of the Supreme Court.

“I have been informed [the CDC is] about to make a judgment as to potential other options. Whether that option will pass constitutional measure with this administration, I can’t tell you. I don’t know. The bulk of the constitutional scholarship says that it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster. … But there are several key scholars who think that it may and it’s worth the effort.”

– Joseph Robinette Biden, outsourcing his job to “several key scholars.” The “consensus” only matters for “climate change?”

But, just a few days ago he said he did know, “Whether that option will pass constitutional measure.”

“Given the recent spread of the delta variant, including among those Americans both most likely to face evictions and lacking vaccinations, President Biden would have strongly supported a decision by the CDC to further extend this eviction moratorium to protect renters at this moment of heightened vulnerability. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has made clear that this option is no longer available.”

– White House statement

Channeling Stalin’s question, “How many divisions does the Pope have?”, Maxine Waters, clarified that for Mr. Biden:

“I don’t buy that the CDC can’t extend the eviction moratorium – something it has already done in the past! Who is going to stop them? Who is going to penalize them? There is no official ruling saying that they cannot extend this moratorium. C’mon CDC – have a heart! Just do it!”

— Maxine Waters

Either Brett Kavanaugh is not an “official,” or SCOTUS rulings are irrelevant if they inconvenience Mad Maxine. Or both.

Thanks Brett.

Pen control

We’re told the pen is mightier than the sword. We’ve known, for as long as we’ve had the concept of “sticks and stones,” that words can make people uncomfortable should they have to defend their ideas about how others should be made to behave.

Those cultural memes make our chief sword wielders nervous. And present an opportunity to manufacture a crisis that should not be wasted. The technological advances in speech clearing houses make it (momentarily) feasible for the whole country to become a State safe space, where never is heard a regime discouraging word.

Four concepts, three of them false, are necessary to this goal.

1-The defining characteristic of the modern Nation State is a monopoly on physical violence.
-Encyclopedia Britannica

2-Social (racial, sexual, etc., etc.) equity (identical outcomes) cannot be achieved without identity group targeted State intervention. Otherwise, the best we could hope for would be a necessarily imperfect equality before the law (identical opportunity). Ironically, identical outcomes will require a great deal of policing. The State is proposing to swear in our speech clearing houses.

3-Words are violence.
How the Left Turned Words Into ‘Violence,’ and Violence Into ‘Justice’ -Quilette
Brandeis ‘Word Police’ Highlights the Absurdity of Modern Progressivism -Newsweek

Words are apparently killing people as I write. The President has said of Facebook, “They’re killing people!”

After some Facebook pushback, he’s waffled a bit on who exactly are the murderers. Maybe it’s just a few Facebook users committing capital crimes. Well… a few would be the speakers… unclear if the apparently myriad listeners are just accessories after the fact. IAC, if we didn’t have Facebook there wouldn’t be any Facebook speakers or listeners. The regulatory threat exists despite Mr. Biden’s walk back.

Besides, the people getting killed would be those deplorables who read Facebook based on algorthims designed to “engage.” So, who cares?

No matter how you cut it, the question is free speech. In summary, the President can say ‘they’ are killing people. ‘They’ can’t say he is.

The official position is that we cannot depend on individuals to decide what they want to read or hear.

We have the technology to give the State the the pen control it needs to secure our right to think correctly. Still, it is not enough that the State possesses all the swords and all the pens. To ensure equity in ideation it follows that we cannot depend on individuals to decide what they want to say.

4-In some cases silence is violence.
How “Silence is Violence” Can Become Compelled Speech -Johnathan Turley

‘Silence Is Violence’: D.C. Black Lives Matter Protesters Adopt Strategy of Intimidating Random White People -Reason Magazine

This fourth item may seem over the top. But how are we going to enforce equal outcomes if private conversations are not controlled? How could they be controlled? The Lives of Others makes a suggestion. Watch it if you haven’t.

Mr. Biden’s press secretary assures us the State is just making suggestions about who Facebook should allow to speak, even as she suggests “banned on one should be banned on all,” and even as messaging apps are being eyed for government filtering: White House May Work With Carriers To Screen Anti-Vax Messages

The advantage to the State? No one will have the slightest skepticism about Dr. Fauci’s pronouncements, inflation, CCP virus lab leaks, penises in female shower rooms, Iranian nuclear ambitions, or immigration policy. The risk of regime change will drop precipitously. I don’t mean a mere embarrassment at the ballot box, but the risk of violent overthrow by bare chested people in furry hats, overtly parading in the halls of Congress based on the intel from unassembled Lego models of the building.

The people who told you the Steele dossier proved Donald Trump was a Russian agent, that Hunter Biden’s laptop wasn’t his (and if it was, the contents were faked), that Hillary Clinton’s private email system wasn’t a security risk, that coronavirus could not possibly have escaped a lab (which they absolutely did not fund), that it is anti-scientific to keep penises out of female shower rooms and off the women’s Olympic medals platform, that it’s Republicans who want the police defunded, that Kamala Harris had visited the non-existent border crisis two and a half weeks before she got within 800 miles of it (close enough for government work), that a Lego kit is evidence of insurrection, that starving Cubans are protesting because they lack CCP virus vaccines – which is the fault of the United States (protestors waving American flags notwithstanding) … have stepped up to the task of identifying speech they call ‘disinformation.’

They are saying “Trust us.”

Liberal

The ruination of the word in the U.S. arguably started around 1913 with a President openly hostile to a Constitutional Republic. A dedicated racist who RE-segregated the Federal civil service, and an oligarch who bypassed the Bill of Rights with the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918; Woodrow Wilson.

His ideas picked up steam in 1932. That’s when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was nudging the Enlightenment political definition of Liberal, “a belief in individual liberty,” toward a phrase made popular by another collectivist snollygoster: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

FDR admired the man who uttered it: “‘I don’t mind telling you in confidence,’ FDR remarked to a White House correspondent, ‘that I am keeping in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman’
Henry Wallace, New Frontiers, p. 31.

That admirable gentleman was Benito Mussolini, and it’s no wonder FDR was interested. Benito put the principles of the New Deal more plainly than FDR dared:

“The … State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organised in their respective associations, circulate within the State.”
-Benito Mussolini, 1935, The Doctrine of Fascism, Firenze: Vallecchi Editore. p 41.

The corporate State considers that private enterprise in the sphere of production is the most effective and useful instrument in the interest of the nation. In view of the fact that private organisation of production is a function of national concern, the organiser of the enterprise is responsible to the State for the direction given to production.

State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management.
-Benito Mussolini, 1935, Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions, Rome: ‘Ardita’ Publishers pp. 135-136

Do you detect any similar policy tendencies in current American Maim Scream Media™ headlines, or in Biden executive orders?

Il Duce’s characterizations are authoritative. So, China, among many others, is clearly a fascist state. It may not surprise you that Mussolini was a socialist before he took up the fascist cause, and you may be forgiven if you wonder whether fascism was just a way to avoid the word “nationalization.”

By the time FDR took office there were many Americans who had good things to say about Benito Mussolini’s fascism. Here’s a link to the Leftist WaPo, a site your Progressive frenemies cannot easily dismiss. It manages to bash Trump, always a Progressive treat, and lists many prominent American Mussolini enthusiasts. The author manages to get through the whole thing while never mentioning FDR, and includes this hilarity:

Mussolini’s powerful handlers tapped into widespread misgivings about the domestic cost of Wilson-style democracy and growing anxieties about gender equality by pitching Mussolini as a strong male leader with a nationalistic brand of effective governance.

‘Handlers’? Ha. You want handlers? Look up Edith Wilson in the context of Woodrow’s stroke, and think about Jill Biden. The 25th Amendment had to wait until 1967 to be added to the Constitution, and until 2020 to be part of Democrat election strategy.

‘Wilson-style democracy’? Wilson was an oligarchist.

‘Misgivings’? Ha, ha. While our Democrats were making Henry Wallace FDR’s Veep?

Implied misogyny’? Ha, ha, ha. The Italians were worried their leader didn’t respect women, while FDR was … well, not worried about it:

“Franklin deserved a good time,” Alice Longworth, a confidante of FDR, once said. “He was married to Eleanor.”

‘Gender equality’? A construct beyond the imagination of Italians or Americans of the time. In 1932 “gender” was rightly regarded as a feature of some Romance languages, not a social justice crusade necessitating a redefinition of “sex.”

The Great Depression helped FDR get away with the New Deal, and when WWII came along to actually end the Depression (FDR had prolonged it), it only reinforced FDR’s power to shift the country to acceptance of the “dollar a year man” authoritarian bureaucracy. It’s not so cheap anymore.

We still see this autocratic urge expressed through redefinition today. The word “science” used to mean “falsifiable,” for example. Now it means whatever the consensus of government dependent boffins come up with. From “climate change” to lockdowns and mask mandates. From denials of biological sex to outcome equality. For example:
Translating Social Justice Newspeak – Law & Liberty
Liberals Redefine Words

Worth reading, but both neglect some important redefinitions. “Democracy,” for example.

I don’t know when that started, but the false premise is that the United States is a Democracy rather than a Constitutional Republic (Thanks, Woodrow.). Now Democracy “belongs” to Democrats, and you aren’t part of that if you object to voting without regard to legality, dislike open borders, believe sex is binary, think the Second Amendment applies to individuals, or get grumpy when someone calls you a murderer for not wearing 2 masks. Here’s a 4 minute video worth watching for how the Democrats view “Our” Democracy.
WSJ Opinion: The Progressive Push to Redefine ‘Our Democracy’

Another important word that’s been redefined is “Capitalism.” It’s depressing how many people describe China’s economic system as capitalist. If you look at Mussolini’s definitions, China is fascist. In America, it’s fashionable for Progressives to blame “free market failures” for botched government interventions. American corporatism pays homage to the blustering Italian, and is familial with the Chinese Communists.

What words mean matters. Those who make the changing of meaning their tactic for gaining political advantage are characters in 1984.

Mau-mauing the swamp dwellers

Facebook and YouTube continue to bury, or outright ban, well founded commentary on CCP virus public policy and the myriad election irregularities of which the Uniparty disapproves.

They aren’t alone. Amazon has banned books. Twitter banned all mention of Hunter Biden’s laptop, including suspending the New York Post‘s account.

That ban arguably lasted long enough to affect the election, and now that we know Hunter Biden has been under Federal criminal investigation since 2019 for his foreign business dealings, it seems like Twitter, et. al., should have some accountability.

The article slice below is behind a paywall. I think Glenn Greenwald is worth the less than a buck a week as an honest liberal entrepreneur. You pay as much for the CNN/MSNBC/CBS/PBS/ABC/NBC channels on your cable.

Some of what he writes is public. A link appears in TOC’s blogroll under Glenn Greenwald.

Greenwald left The Intercept (he was a founder) because they spiked an article he wrote about Hunter Biden before the election. That’s when I checked out his independent gig on Substack.

Greenwald (this one is paywalled) provides a gimlet eyed view:

The revelation that Hunter Biden is being criminally investigated for his business activities in China came on Monday from the investigative target himself, and he predictably and self-servingly depicted it as just a narrow probe about his “tax affairs” by the U.S. Attorney for Delaware. As I wrote last night, that by itself would be significant enough — the documents published in the weeks before the election by The New York Post contained ample information about exactly that matter, yet were widely repressed by a union of mainstream news outlets, the intelligence community and Silicon Valley based on propaganda and lies. But new reporting suggest the investigation has been far broader.

“The federal investigation into President-elect Joe Biden’s son Hunter has been more extensive than a statement from Hunter Biden indicates,” Politico reported Monday night. Specifically, “the securities fraud unit in the Southern District of New York also scrutinized Hunter Biden’s finances”; “investigators in Delaware and Washington were also probing potential money laundering and Hunter Biden’s foreign ties”; and “federal authorities in the Western District of Pennsylvania are conducting a criminal investigation of a hospital business in which Joe Biden’s brother James was involved.” CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz added that “at least one of the matters investigators have examined is a 2017 gift of a 2.8-carat diamond that Hunter Biden received from CEFC [China Energy’]’s founder and former chairman Ye Jianming after a Miami business meeting.”

We’re slipping into fascism backwards. One normally thinks of the formal government (Mussolini comes to mind) as the instigator of fascism*, but in the current case it’s most certainly rent-seeking large corporations leading the charge. And that goes far beyond our cybernetic overlords. It’s also Maim Scream Media™, academiots, and corporate whores mau-mauing the swamp dwellers.

Of course, Antifa and the present cadre of BLM have raised mau-mauing to an actually dangerous level with arson, looting, assault, and murder. They would be the brownshirts.

Then, there’s this:
Hunter Biden Email Reportedly Names Kamala Harris, Others as Key Contacts for ‘Joint Venture’ With China Energy Co

Perhaps Eric Swalwell could do with a serious “debriefing.”

*That definition is fatally flawed because it includes a mention of capitalism, but the misunderstanding is pervasive. Free markets are required under capitalism. Fascism precludes free markets.

For once…

…an appropriate use of “shredded.”
An Anonymous Berkeley Professor Just Shredded BLM’s Injustice Narrative

It’s worth the read.

He mentions Thomas Sowell and Wilfred Reilly. It’s also worth checking
Glenn Loury & John McWhorter
Walter Williams
Shelby Steele

These are all black men Joe Biden would say aren’t really black.