Vincent J. Curtis
8 Feb 2017
With the excitement of
the election being over, the inclination to write on significant events has
kind of waned. My output has been
lagging.
However, my hometown newspaper has been
providing opportunity, on a small scale, to keep the writing mind (an claws)
sharp. What follows is a series of small
pieces of local concern primarily, but are in relation to Trump’s election or
other world events.
Professor Henry A.
Geroux is professor emeritus at McMaster University; his full bio is available
on Wikipedia. He is, from my perspective,
an extreme leftist, a hold-over from the 1960s.
While Obama was president, he was writing articles expressing hatred for
his native land. He is a one-note Johnny
in that respect. The Spectator published
on Op-ed of his, in which he talked about the need for the “normalization” of
Trump. My response is below:
Jan 4, 2017
With the parlance of high, extreme-leftist academe, Henry A.
Giroux amply demonstrated that he doesn’t get Trump at all, and much else in
the working world.
Contrary to what Giroux says, there is no need for the
“normalization” of Trump, as Giroux claims is not going on. Trump is a New
Yorker, and is as American as they come. If there was a truly weird one,
it was Obama, who struck me as quite un-American in comparison to his 43
predecessors.
If “normalization” of Trump is going on, it is due to the
main stream media finally coming to grips with the new reality. The MSM
are getting past the denial and grief stage, and are moving on to
acceptance. The MSM lost all credibility in the election, and coming to
grips with Trump is a step forward on their road to redemption.
The old media and political paradigms were smashed by
Trump’s election. President-Elect Trump embodies the rejection of progressivism
and political correctness, and only in the contorted perspective of leftism and
progressivism - that makes the bizarre seem normal - is Trump horrifying.
America’s virtue-signalling coastal elites were beaten by the blue-collar
workers of the great interior, who suffered the consequences of elitist
idealism.
It must be astonishing and alarming to an elitist
progressive to be weighed and found wanting by the great unwashed masses.
The elite progressive is the expert, and the unwashed masses those in need of
his expertise. Rejection of the expert must be due to a fault in the
masses, he reasons.
###
Jan 6, 2017
The Editorial page editor of my
hometown newspaper is something like a blind squirrel. Occasionally, even he can find a nut. For the occasion below, Mr. Elliott
editorialized that Canada’s forced adoption of a carbon tax is a good thing,
even though raising taxes at any time usually is not. I decided to try giving Mr. Elliott a little
encouragement upon his discovery of a real truth.
Howard Elliott
is RIGHT!
It never is a
good time to raise taxes.
Why?
Because raising taxes increases the power of the government and reduces the
economic power of the taxpayer, who has to pay a tax for the privilege of
buying something, or merely earning a living, or dying.
Mr. Elliott
argues that by raising taxes on gasoline, diesel fuel, and natural gas in
Canada the world’s climate is going to stop changing. Okay, he admits
that isn’t going to happen, because what Canada does or doesn’t do is
insignificant compared to the United States, China, India, and the EU.
Nevertheless, he argues that we should do penance for our use of carbon fuels
because it is the morally right thing to do.
Mr. Elliott
reached a moral conclusion dogmatically after the practical argument proved
impractical.
A new carbon
tax is not going to reduce the consumption of gasoline, diesel fuel, and
natural gas because the amount is not punitive enough to change
behaviour. If the tax were punitive enough to change behaviour, the
outcry would be fierce.
As the economy
improves, the consumption of fuels will increase, creating both more carbon
dioxide and more tax revenue. So here we have the argument that Canadians
should collectively put on a hair-shirt because it is good for us, even if as a
practical matter wearing a hair-shirt will have no effect on the problem at
issue.
The new carbon
tax is not a tax on carbon, it is a tax on stupidity.
###
Jan 11
January 11
was an especially bleak day for editorializing in my hometown newspaper. Editorializing was found disguised as news
articles and fashion articles. What was
produced on the actual editorial page was noteworthy for its poverty. The article at the very end was of a fancy, but
newly minted, lawyer arguing that a defendant in a racism case had no right to council. Not a good day.
Today was not a good day for Spectator editorializing. Readers
found needless editorializing even in the GO section.
The news section ran an editorial disguised as a news story from
AP. The story encourages disruption and defiance of Trump in its very
headline, “Sessions says he’ll defy Trump if needed.” Jeff Sessions
is one of Trump’s earliest and closest supporters. Sessions was asked
what he would do if Trump ordered him to do something unconstitutional,
illegal, or unethical. Out of this no-brainer was drawn the headline.
Readers were treated to an editorial cartoon which depicted Trump as a
blonde ape. I don’t recall ever seeing an editorial cartoon that
portrayed Barack Obama as a chimp.
A tired editorial from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was regurgitated
under the headline, “Replacing Obamacare with a job killer.” Obamacare
was dubbed a job killer, and in their intellectual poverty the progressives
can’t think of anything original to throw at its replacement. We don’t
even know what that replacement is going to be, so calling it a “job killer”
jumps the gun, and exposes the defensive set-up.
In the GO section readers are treated to a headline which asks, “Can
restaurants take a stand during inauguration without alienating Trump
voters?” Those that do I hope get the Black Lives
Matter/Ferguson/Baltimore treatment. If Christian bakers and photographers
can be financially ruined for taking a personal stand against gay marriage,
progressive institutions can get a taste of their own stick.
Then we have today’s doozy, a newly-minted juris doctor morally shunning
a union chief for the crime of doing his job too well in, “Police union chief
owes Green an apology.” What does this credentialed lawyer think a union
is for? More broadly, are those accused of unprogressive activities
entitled to effective outside council? Attacking council for his line of
defence is not only illegitimate ad hominem, but is border-line contempt
of court, councillor.
Not a good day.
###
Jan 14
The Canadian
Press ran an article that quoted the Ukrainian Ambassador as encouraging Canada
to treat President Donald Trump in a patronizing manner. Yeah, like that’s going to work! Anyhow, it seems that no one except
blue-collar America (and a few observant foreigners) understand what Trump is
about.
Mike Blanchard of the Canadian Press did Ukraine Ambassador Andriy
Shevchenko no favors by quoting him word for word. If English were Ambassador
Schevchenko’s first language, he would not have said that Canada should
‘educate’ the Trump Administration about Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The foreign policy team of the Trump Administration are all highly
accomplished men who reached the top of the ladder in either the military or
business. In virtue of that they are all self-confident and undoubtedly
well informed. I doubt that they could sit patiently while they were
being ‘educated’ by a callow youth from a militarily insignificant foreign
power. I’m sure they get the worry from the Baltic States and the Ukraine
about Putin.
I suspect that Trump is giving Putin every reason to put aside his
military aggression against neighboring and NATO states. If, despite
Trump’s efforts at a reconciliation with Russia, Putin decides to take another
bite out of the Ukraine, or try to take over Latvia, or try to force a split in
the NATO alliance, that Trump will react violently and unpredictably. In
the meantime, Trump’s focus on rebuilding the US military and insisting that
NATO countries live up to their pledge to spend 2 % of their GDP on defence
will make a Trumpian reaction all the more potentially unpleasant to Russia as
time goes on.
Trump is operating in a dimension that his critics have no inkling even
exists.
###
Jan 16
An article
about the many failed experiments in psychology demonstrates that the fans of
the soft-sciences have no clue what science really is. Science may not be perfect, but it is
imperfect in a way the author doesn’t understand. Anyhow, climate science is mentioned.
It is quite evident that the author of the piece “Science Isn’t Perfect”
came to his conclusion because he don’t know what a science really is.
His examples of “science” are in fact disciplines that seek the dignity and
reputations of a science on the promise that they will eventually deliver the
goods. That’s how you get funding, by promising something you don’t yet
have.
That goes for sociology, psychology, and so-called “climate
science.” The reason why all those psychology experiments failed to be
reproduced is that no objectively measurable etiology was proposed, and without
an etiology you don’t have a science.
“Climate science” makes extensive use of other sciences like physics and
chemistry but is not a science itself, because it has no central
etiology. Climate science cannot even agree that the world is warming,
let alone assigning the cause of warming being the wicked activities of
man. It was the obvious politicization of climate science twenty five
years ago that told me that something was amiss. Its conclusions fit
altogether too nicely into a progressivist political narrative about the evils
of western civilization.
Actual science isn’t perfect, but it does know the limits of its error.
Made-up science has no idea of the significance or validity of its data, but
Arts majors are sure ready to tout alleged “conclusions” that real scientists
would be circumspect about.
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