From ZeroHedge comes this Nassim Taleb quote.

“The IYI pathologizes others for doing things he doesn’t understand without ever realizing it is his understanding that may be limited. He thinks people should act according to their best interests and he knows their interests, particularly if they are “red necks” or English non-crisp-vowel class who voted for Brexit. When Plebeians do something that makes sense to them, but not to him, the IYI uses the term “uneducated”. What we generally call participation in the political process, he calls by two distinct designations: “democracy” when it fits the IYI, and “populism” when the plebeians dare voting in a way that contradicts his preferences. While rich people believe in one tax dollar one vote, more humanistic ones in one man one vote, Monsanto in one lobbyist one vote, the IYI believes in one Ivy League degree one-vote, with some equivalence for foreign elite schools, and PhDs as these are needed in the club.”

Yep. Pretty much.  Those on the left celebrate diversity, as long as it means different flavors of leftism. They celebrate tolerance, as long as it’s the right tolerating the left. They celebrate inclusion, as long as it means including the left. They can gloat and say “I won!”, but the right is asked to “play nice” when they win. The left calls for free speech, as long as it is left-wing speech. The left calls for “safe spaces” for themselves, but also demand access to anyplace someone on the right wishes to be left alone in peace. The left calls their opponents bigoted, deplorable, hate-filled, narrow-minded, etc., but that’s just projection; they are blinded by their own bigotry, hate, and narrow-minded view of things.

But frankly, I don’t expect there to be a lot of self-reflection by those on the left; I expect tantrums, tears, and terrorism. They think “the public” is wrong; they will miss the warning the deplorable masses are sending them that it’s the elites that are going the wrong way.

Weird, weird election cycle. The stories are worthy of a Matthew Bracken or Dan Brown novel. I’ve got pages of links about voting “irregularities,” and a lot of them include electronic voting machines changing the presidential vote on a “straight R party ticket” to Clinton. None of them involve an irregularity going the other way. Not one. Hmmm.

Lots of shenanigans. Honest voting is only possible if both major parties actually want it enough to do what is necessary for it. Neither side apparently does, though for different reasons. Policy preferences make no difference if there are not honest elections to hold the elected accountable. A nation with no border and no common culture or ideas will never have honest elections, because at least one side will always try to take power by corrupting the election process at some point when power is within the margin of fraud. Here’s a few links to peruse (not all of them, just the fraction I decided to grab from time to time): Continue reading →

Human psychology is an odd thing. A person can justify and rationalize all sorts of evil for all sorts of reasons. Collective action allows people to absolve themselves of guilt by saying “well, everyone was doing it!” (think social drinking, or conspiring to cheat on a test), or “I was ordered to do it” (think crew-served weapons like machine guns or cannons in war-time). Napleon used a lot of cannon batteries because he knew that people would not want to “let their buddies down”, and that being part of a team effort allowed each man to tell himself “I didn’t kill all those men, I just loaded powder charges,” (or carried cannon balls, or pulled a lanyard, or managed the limber, or whatever). Continue reading →