Home Field Advantage

 

Home Field Advantage

or

The Coach Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks.

© 2024 Ross Williams

My youngest son plays little league baseball which, in this part of the country is – for some strange reason – called Khoury League.  Not to brag too much, but he's the second best player on the team.

His team went into tonight's game in first place and undefeated.  11-0-2.  Tonight they played a pretty good team, among the better teams around.  The Troy White Sox.  A team my son's team, Maryville, had beaten the White Sox a week and a half ago on a series of technicalities.  But tonight they lost miserably, and looked horrible doing it. It was embarrassing.

Maryville won the first game against the Troy White Sox, at the Maryville field, by an NFL-ish score of 13-11.  On, as I say, a technicality.  Two, actually.  Maryville's prior game had been against Highland.  That game ended in a tie, and it included an incident where a Highland player – an 11 year old kid – corked the ball about 175 feet to straightaway center field.  Maryville's head coach asked the umpire to look at the bat that had been used.  It was a softball bat.

Technical details are important for pedantic people, and umpires are supposed to be pedantic.  The rules of the Little League that calls itself Khoury specify that bats must have a barrel width no greater than 2-5/8 inches.  Softball bats start with a barrel width of 2-3/4 inches, and get fatter from there.  They are also heavier because they are built for hitting a heavier and softer ball.  When a softball bat hits a lighter and harder baseball, the ball goes farther and much faster.  It can be dangerous to kids who don't have quick reflexes.  In the game with Highland, it went about 75 feet farther than even the heftiest 11 year old can hit a ball, even with a perfect swing on a perfect pitch – neither of which exist among 11 year olds who swing bats or pitch baseballs.

Not even occasionally.

But the rules did not specify “No Softball Bats”; it only specified a maximum barrel width.  A message was sent to the league to inquire about this and ask for clarification, and apparently someone in the league office did some research and discovered that softball bats start with a barrel width of 2-3/4 inches.  Before Maryville's next game a message was sent out to all teams declaring that umpires would be checking bats to make sure they were Official Little League Bats with a barrel width no greater than 2-5/8 inches.

Maryville's next game after the Highland Softball Bat fiasco was against the Troy White Sox.  Maryville was the home team.  Umpires consulted with coaches prior to the game to cover ground rules and explain the emphasis on bat barrel width.  The Troy White Sox scored a bunch in the top of the first; Maryville scored almost as much in the bottom half.  After the second inning, Maryville was up by a few.  It could arguably have been tied, but a Troy player was called out for using an illegal bat, ending the inning.

The Troy coaches were livid and screamed at the umpire about it.  Hey, it was explained prior to the game.  You didn't check your bats?  That's on you.

For what it's worth, every single kid on the Maryville team exhaled a collective “Huh? Do I have an illegal bat??”

They all, to an 11 year old, pulled out their bats and furiously began pestering the Maryville coaches who were too busy coaching to listen to them.  So they began pestering me, the team's score-keeper.

Kids!  It says right on the barrel.  Read it.  You can read, can't you?  Or are you in public school?  Look: “Official Little League – 2-5/8 inch.”  Calm down.

After three innings, it was less close with Maryville on top, but “Last Inning” had been called – evening game, no lights on the field, games are held to 90 minutes or thereabouts.  Four innings and sometimes only three are about all they play.  Troy came up in the top of the fourth.  And scored run after run after run.  It was 13-11 Maryville with two outs and runners on, and a Troy kid pasted a ball that would score one [or more, depending on how well Maryville's 11 year olds can hit the cut-off man, which they can't...].  And the batter was called out for an illegal bat.  The run comes off the board, the game ends, and Troy's coaches are collectively having several apoplectic fits each and screaming at the umpire.

You were called once for it, and you didn't check your bats?  You didn't check your bats after you were told before the game that this would be an issue?

That's on you – twice.

Last game of the season tonight.  Against [dr-r-r-r-rumroll] Troy White Sox.  In Troy.  Using Troy's umpires.  High school or college kids, usually, who need $10 for 90 minutes' work and are only vaguely familiar with the rules of the game.  Sorta like Major League umpires, except that the majors use adults and pay obscene Union Scale.  The vague familiarity with the rules remains the same.

Maryville scored a run in the top of the first.  ...and let me just take a paragraph to describe the Maryville team.  Remember The Bad News Bears?  The movie?  The real movie?  With Walter Matthau and Tatum O'Neal?  Not the we can't write compelling screenplays so we're going to rehash hit movie plots from 30 years ago version.

Remember Ogilvie and Lupus?  Maryville has a few of each.  Remember Engelberg?  Got one.  Stein?  Got two.  The reason Maryville wins is because the Ogilvies and Lupuses get walked, having a strike zone the size of a postage stamp, and the few kids on the team who can legitimately hit drive them in.  ...on those rare occasions they don't score on the ubiquitous passed balls and wild pitches.

As I mentioned, the Troy team is legitimately good for being 11 year olds.  Most of their kids can throw reasonably well, and most can catch reasonably well, and some can hit reasonably well.  In terms of generalized hitting and fielding, they're collectively a notch above Maryville.  What Maryville has that's lacking in other teams is pitching.  My son and one other are both Amanda Whurlitzer.  Hard and accurate, and the 11 year olds facing them cannot regularly catch up to the pitch.  It's not uncommon for these two to turn in 3-up, 3-down innings, with 3 Ks.  As scorekeeper, I recorded an immaculate inning a few games back, 9 pitches and 3 strikeouts [not my son's inning – it was the other kid].  The runs come from dropped third strikes that reach followed by an occasionally hit ball that gets tossed all around the field.  My son had a 5-K inning early in the season.  Probably not a record for this level of baseball, but damned impressive.  That's my boy!  Overachiever.

But, back to the last game of the season, against a team that had lost on technical fouls, on the road, when they were now playing in their own home park with umpires paid [sic] by their home park's budget and who only vaguely understand the rules of the game.  After a half inning, Maryville was up 1-0.  That was the high point of the evening.  My son was not allowed to pitch this game – he'd pitched the previous game.  Another league rule.  The other good pitcher wasn't there.  Troy sent five batters to the plate in the bottom of the first, and all five scored, invoking the “5 runs allowed per inning except for the last inning” rule.  Outfielders overran fly balls, or waited until they fell before they felt confident in going after them, infielders tried to act like matadors neatly side-stepping ground balls as if they had a bull's horns.  Pitiful and embarrassing.

But, hey, the short kids with the postage stamp strike zones are coming up for Maryville.  We got this!  An easy 5-run inning.  It's worked all season.  Right?

Wrong.

This umpire called out the next three kids on helmet-high pitches.  Several were over helmet-high.  I was sitting directly behind the right-handed batters box, on a folding stool, scoring the game.  My eye level was pretty much at the same height as our Lupus' helmets.  And the pitches that were called strikes on them never once disappeared from my view behind the batter.  Which meant that the pitches were above their helmets.

Troy, showing some vulnerability, only scored three in the bottom of the second.

Maryville's third saw more Ogilvies being called out on above-the-helmet pitches.

Troy's third scored another five.

13-1 going into the fourth.  Alright kids, lookit, this umpire is calling strikes on you that are merely over the plate.  So you need to swing at crap, because they'll be called anyway.

That helped.  Because even though the Troy team can catch and throw “reasonably well”, at this level it doesn't necessarily mean a whole helluva lot.  Maryville actually got runners on by putting the ball in play.  Ill-advised base running took them off again, but still, they got on.  Temporarily.  The inning ended with no runs scored.

But because the score differential was greater than ten runs, the game was called.  And as the Troy team came off the field, I watched from my vantage point ten feet from home plate at least five of their players fist-bumping the umpire, and thanking him.  The high school kid paid by the home team's park.  The home team who'd been embarrassed with illegal bats – twice - while playing at Maryville.

Interesting, no?  The obvious questions: Was it a hamstringing in order to give an advantage? To compensate for a prior embarrassment?

You don't fist bump and thank an umpire when you win.  Instead, you fist bump your teammates.  Unless, of course, the umpire is one of your unofficial teammates.

I spoke to the kid umpire after the game, as he was being chummily chatted up by the Troy coach.  Hey.  Do you know what the strike zone is?  He averred as how he did.  And he described it more or less accurately.  Okay, then since we have kids who are 'this' tall [I held my hand out at his navel] why were you calling strikes that were 'that' high [and I moved my hand to his chin].

The kid didn't answer, he just looked embarrassed, as if he'd just been found out, which he had.  But the Troy coach who was standing there congratulating the umpire got livid.  Almost as livid as he got when his players were called – twice – for an illegal bat a week and a half before.  And the Troy coach started yelling at me about it.  Defending his umpire, who was not defending himself because he knew he'd been indefensible.

“Hey – both teams!!” he hollered.  No, actually it wasn't.  It was a Maryville-specific strike zone.  Not unlike the strike zone Angel Hernandez pulls out of his ass whenever he's behind the plate, come to think of it.  Or Hunter Wendelstedt.

No, on second thought, Hunter's strike zone wanders around the infield from inning to inning, never staying consistent apart from consistently wrong.  This was way too specifically bad.  Angel Hernandez all the way.  And it's not like high school kids are going to be even marginally precise with their game calling.  That's simply a given at this level.  When it's consistently wrong you roll your eyes and move on.  But this was blatant.  There was no “both teams” about it.  Besides, for Troy batters to get helmet-high pitches called a strike, the ball would have been above the Maryville catcher's ability to catch the ball from a crouch, and it would have hit the umpire full in the face mask.  The Troy team is tall – almost too tall for the 11 year olds they're required to be.

Besides, the Maryville pitcher could only throw ephus balls.  They died in the dirt just behind the plate.

“He can throw you out of here!!  And don't think he won't!!” the coach proxy-threatened me. The same coach who, with his sidekick a week and a half before had been screaming at the umpire in Maryville because they - the coaches - hadn't done their job checking bats.  Throw me out after the game is over?  That'd be a seriously useless gesture, and kind of a dead give-away, doncha think?  The kid umpire remained silent and ashamed.  He wasn't throwing anybody out.  He'd been caught and he knew it.  So did the Troy coach.

I informed the umpire that he was one-sidedly bad, and the coach of the winning team got defensive.  Bad optics, boys.  Very, very bad.

Down for a NAP

 Down for a NAP

© 2024 Ross Williams

I just emerged from a heated discussion with “conservatives” about one of the few subjects which I – a libertarian – am diametrically opposed to “conservatives”. That subject is abortion.

I put “conservative” in quotes because what generally passes for conservatism among modern “conservatives” is not conservatism, but a melange of prudishness that should result in a boon for proctologists removing sticks lodged in uncomfortable places. Political conservatism is – once again – the practice of expanding government power and influence only insofar as the government can afford to do so without increasing sovereign debt or the tax burden on its citizens. It is not a political philosophy based upon forcing the government to abide by any limitations on its power, as defined by – say – a Constitution. That political philosophy is called libertarianism.

At any rate, the discussion devolved along predictable lines – predictable because I'd had the same discussion over thirty-plus years with everyone imaginable. In this recent version, I quoted the Constitution; the “conservatives” quoted each other, various non-falsifiable moral certainties, marxists, “progressives” [another quotated term of political ideology due to every “progressive” pushing everything but progress], and court precedent built upon philosophies promoted by various non-falsifiable moral certainties, marxists and "progressives". They quoted anything that would get them to their desired conclusion even if it meant tying themselves into rhetorical pretzels to do it.

My position on the subject is clear: I am foursquare against abortion. It is among this society's preeminent indicators of irresponsible self-indulgence and narcissistic me-centrism. But it's not the government's business. I can say it's not the government's business because it's not written into the Constitution AS the government's business. The government must stay completely out of the picture. Hence, “conservatives” are not permitted to euchre the government into restricting or banning abortion, and “progressives” are not permitted to wheedle the government into promoting abortion by hook or – as is the “progressive” wont – by crook.

But having mentioned that my position is the libertarian [and therefore constitutional] position, an attempt was made to back me into the corner of having to defend my libertarianism, as if the subject being discussed was me rather than abortion. Having also been involved in this discussion – repeatedly – over the decades as well, I refused to play along. Neither I nor my political philosophy was the subject at hand.

The avenue for attempting this turnabout by circumstantial ad hominem was, as usual, the vacuous Non-Aggression Principle – the NAP, the Holy NAP, and yes that term is intended to be seen as sneering mockery – which is cited by the vast majority of libertarians as the overriding principle of the libertarian political philosophy. I do not accept this notion. For a few reasons.

First, libertarianism is a political philosophy of governance, and virtually all libertarians who screech about and swoon over the Holy NAP reduce it to a moral guidance of personal behavior, which would properly render it into the realm of religion. Instead, virtually all libertarians who salute the Holy NAP in misty-eyed adoration as hippies once did rainbows and unicorns when the subject is utterly abstract, will run screaming from it and deny it exists, parse it to pieces and equivocate it into a demand for pacifism when the philosophy is challenged by real-world circumstances. The libertarian hypocrisy is staggering.

The Holy NAP is supposed to be a principle for guiding sovereign actions in nations that are defined to be libertarian. And, of course, a nation defined to be libertarian is one which promotes liberty. Which is to say, having strict limitation on government powers and the promotion of individual freedoms, even if those freedoms' sole purpose is to act on irresponsible self-indulgence and narcissistic me-centrism.

It is undoubtedly necessary to remind everyone for the umpteenth time that the one thing that every political philosophy ever invented by the power-whoring mind of mankind can agree on is that political power is an absolute dichotomy. It doesn't matter whether the political philosophy is anarchism or absolute despotic totalitarianism; political power in any given circumstance only has two outlets:
1] as a function of government, in which case it is called “authority”; or
2] as a function of the citizen, in which case it is called “rights”.

The only difference between political philosophies is where those philosophies-put-into-practice are willing to draw the lines between powers of government and powers of citizens. In the entire history of human civilization, there has been exactly one libertarian government defined to exist: the United States of America. Every other nation – even other “western democracies” coming into existence after the formation of the US – are patterned upon the historical model of governance: government has what powers it chooses to take, citizens may have the powers the government chooses not to take or which cannot be meaningfully controlled. Many arguments exist – and I have made most of them – that claim the US government has backslid into the historical “Because I Can” model of governance.

The second reason I refuse to accept the Holy NAP as the overriding principle of libertarianism is that if the overriding principle were what I claim it to be – strict limitation of government powers to those defined by the Constitution which created the government, and where the government obeyed those limitations on its powers – then sovereign non-aggression in both domestic and foreign policy would be a necessary and inevitable consequence. Government would simply not have the power to aggress against an individual or foreign entity without just cause.

And it is the “just cause” qualification that is critical. The Constitution defines requirements for just government action, and limits by exclusion, denying unjustness, its power to act on any subject not identified therein. The Constitution does not mention abortion. It declares that “persons born or naturalized” have protectable rights. The government acting against the interests, even the irresponsibly self-indulgent and narcissistic me-centric interests, of an individual in favor of what the Constitution classifies as a non-entity is impermissible aggression under the libertarian philosophy by which our nation was defined.

To alter our understanding of what a governmental just cause would be in this circumstance would require a change to the Constitution. Personally, I don't see that happening, but it's the only option short of outright abandonment of our Constitutional framework. Besides, that abandonment is already being championed by our “progressives”. If and when that constitutional change is successfully completed I will stand behind it. But ONLY if and when. Until then, I will stand behind what the Constitution currently says, even though I personally dislike it.

Because the Constitution is better than the fickle emotions of “conservatives” and sanctimonious exhortations of “progressives”. Or, with regard to most libertarians, hypocritical sophistry.

Take a Laxative, Will

 

Take a Laxative, Will

...And the Award for 'Most Awkward Moment in a Musical, Comedy or Variety Show' Goes to...

©2022 Ross Williams

I don't mind saying, I'm torn. I'd say I'm tearing my hair out, but it's not that big a deal, and besides... too soon.

On the one hand, I don't like Chris Rock. He's a decent actor, but he's an entitled, racist asshole who – frankly – deserves far more than a slap across the face. He claims to be a comic, but I don't agree.

On the other, I do like Will Smith for most everything except his rap, which is doggerel set to a juvenile rhythm. He's an excellent actor, as his new Oscar for Best ditto attests, and from all accounts has a stable [if unconventional] marriage, which is scarce in Hollywood.

In case you missed it as I did, and there are certainly many who will have, Chris Rock made a joke about Will Smith's wife during the Oscar Awards show and Will took serious exception to it. The result was the ...well, the slap heard 'round the auditorium. I was about to type “'round the world”, but no one watches these things anymore because most people are thoroughly disgusted by the political horseshit that has become synonymous with Hollywood and its self-righteous “woke” assholery. Especially during their awards shows.

At any rate, I'm torn.

I'd really, really like to be on the Fresh Prince's side here, and pull a Nelson Muntz on Chris Rock. But I can't.

Chris Rock made a joke about Will Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who has alopecia. The joke was about Jada starring in the sequel to G.I. Jane, the movie where Demi Moore shaved her head. You can claim the joke was tasteless if you like. It might very well have been. As someone who's losing his own hair, I can sympathize. But I'm a man, and hair loss is part of the male privilege we men all profit by. It's got to be orders of magnitude more distressing for a woman to be going bald, particularly one as attractive as Jada.

And I can sympathize with Will about it, too. I've had people insult my wife in front of me thinking they were being funny, and I've had to defend her honor. “Your wife married YOU?? How gullible is she?”

At any rate, Hollywood insiders, the leftist, liberal, “progressive” elite, have been on a thirty-year program to eradicate “insensitive” japes from the world of comedy. Daniel Tosh famously made rape jokes a decade ago and the Hollywood comedy world circled their wagons against him. “You can't do that!! It's too uncomfortable to women!!” Aww, poor baby.

Apart from rape jokes, Hillary Clinton's haberdashery has been declared off-limits by the super-sensitive left. You can't say “Yo! Medusa! The 90s called and they want their pantsuits back!” Eighty percent of The View, once they recovered from their apoplexy, would have you a trending twit on Twitter if you did.

Also included in comedy's forbidden list is homosexuality, transsexualism and the grooming that goes with it, dwarfism, obesity, ugliness, physical deformities and handicaps all around, mental handicaps of all kinds even when the person serving as the butt of the joke is not strictly mentally handicapped, death, disease, racial distinctions, ethnic distinctions, religious distinctions, gender distinctions, political distinctions, geographical distinctions, social distinctions, economic distinctions, socialist hypocrisies, democrat governors murdering oldsters by putting ill patients in uninfected nursing homes…

...unless the one being roasted is a white, male, WASP, christian, middle-class or greater, and not indisputably leftist.

Why wouldn't involuntary female baldness be included in the list of topics too crude to use for humor? Will Smith would seem to have come to the obvious conclusion that it should have been, and that Chris Rock was way, way out of line. Again. Like he has been countless other times on countless other topics.

Chris Rock deserves what he got. Just not for what he said at the Oscars. So, what the hell:

“Ha ha!”

-Nelson Muntz

Mark your calendars. March 27 2022 may just be the date that the leftist freaks, in Hollywood and otherwise, realize that no topic is verboten to comedy, and that they need to regrow their sense of humor. At the very least, us white, male, WASPy, middle-class non-socialists can go public with our jokes about the left's collective constipation.

Casualties of Another's War

 

Casualties of Another's War
©2022 Ross Williams

Inarticulation is one thing. Most people have words that simply will not form properly in their mouths and refuse to come out sounding like human speech. I, myself, cannot say wildly ...or mildly, or childlike, or anything that contains that middle combination of letters. I either strangle the Ls, or have to completely skip over the D.

Deliberate mispronunciation for dig me, aren't I cool reasons is another. The mispronunciation of Caribbean as cuh-RIB-ee-un emerged out of nowhere in the 1930s among America's nouveau riche profiting from the Great Depression. They were as much as declaring, “Old money pronounced it Care-uh-BEE-un and look at them begging dimes on street corners; this just proves it's cuh-RIB-ee-un.” And by this time, morons who have no concept of linguistic history and too ignorant to dig into it are copying them, because apery is fine. The word is pronounced Care-uh-BEE-un. Learn it, live it, get used to it.

Deliberate mispronunciation for politics, though, is infantile. It's unforgivable and is one form of that common American practice that manifests itself most popularly among our “progressives” [ironic term], but which is shared by all domestic political persuasions and most people who subscribe to those politics. It is the sanctimonious practice of “cancellation”. If you do something that is seen by a “progressive” as so thoroughly outside the pale of the he/him, she/her, they/them/it political sensibilities, you will find yourself being “canceled”. This entails all “sensitive” people and institutions ignoring you, refusing to allow you to, essentially, join in the reindeer games. Because Rudolph was the bad guy for being the square peg, obviously.

With that in mind, Russia recently invaded Ukraine, and even America's liberal cum “progressive” cum socialist crowd has – ironically – largely found this to be distasteful. To that end, restaurants have discontinued the Russian dressing, which is mayo, ketchup and dill relish, at the salad bar. Some are substituting a “Ukrainian” dressing, which greatly differs in that it is ketchup first, mayo second and dill relish. It has all the telltale earmarks of the “freedom fries” that replaced the french ditto at several burger joints during the Gulf War. Pointless pouting for the purpose of signaling a vacant virtue.

Not to be outdone in the down with everything Russian department, America's media stylists have declared that the worldwide pronunciation of Ukraine's capital is no longer acceptable. For roughly ever, Ukraine's capital – Kiev – has been pronounced “kee-EHV” in America. Two syllables, accent on the second. Ukrainians had been a subject people under Russian dominance for several centuries, and Ukraine merely a province under whatever Russia had in the way of government, tsarist or communist. In the Russian alphabet, Ukraine's capital is spelled Киев. The American, indeed the entire English-speaking worlds', spelling has been a roman alphabetic transliteration of the Russian cyrillic alphabetic spelling: Kiev. Not a big deal, right?

Yes, big deal, to Americans who are primarily interested in style over substance, itching to cancel, cancel, cancel. ...which includes, sadly, most Americans today. As a consequence, American media, after dicking around with “kuh-VIV”, “kie-uhv” and a handful of other slab-tongue options voiced near the end of February in the early days of the Russian invasion, invented “keev” as the Not-Russian alternative to let the world know they didn't agree with Putin's little invasion. And, sadly and pathetically, most Americans are accepting it without a quibble. “It's how the Ukrainians pronounce it...”

Just one problem. It's not.

Ukrainians have a language separate and distinct from Russian, in most respects in the same way that Americans have a language separate and distinct from the English. Which is to say, not very. What they do do differently is pronounce; they have different accents. But again: not by much. There's more differentiation in the pronunciation of English words between Brooklyn and Dallas than there is in the shared Russo-Ukrainian words between Volgograd and Odessa. What they really do differently is spell.

While both languages' alphabets are derived of the Greek alphabet Saint Cyril took north with him in the 9^th century to convert and educate the pre-literate pagan Slavs, Ukraine has a different version of the cyrillic alphabet than the Russians have. This makes the distinction between the Russian language and the Ukrainian language more like the distinction between Señor Spanish and Signore Italian. Both use the roman alphabet, but the Spanish added the double-L and the “enya” to accommodate their specific idiolect. Still, a Spaniard and an Italian can easily converse, each in their own tongue, with relatively few stoppages in play. Likewise, so can a Russian and Ukrainian.

The Ukrainian spelling of their capital city is Київ. It is, in the Ukrainian diction, a two-syllable utterance, not a single syllable as American media morons would reduce it. The nearest it comes to being spelled – and pronounced – in the English alphabet and language is “Kyiv”, or “KEE-uhv”.

Give a very close listen to the Ukrainian and Russian versions of Kiev, Kyiv, Киев or Київ. What you will hear is that of the two pronunciations, the Ukrainian pronunciation [KEE-uhv] is virtually identical in sound to the traditional American pronunciation [kee-EHV], and the primary distinction is in the syllabic stress.

Once again for the slow kids in class: Ukrainians pronounce it KEE-uhv. Americans have always said kee-EHV.

On the other hand, the Russian pronunciation – unless you listen very very very closely – sounds almost identical to the “keev” currently being illiterately spewed by media's every babbling head on radio and television news.

Киев? Київ?

KEE-v? KEE-uhv?

Kiev?

Kee-EHV?

To ears untrained, inattentive, or [like mine] simply old and worn out, the distinction among any of them is either unnoticeable or altogether absent. What is noticeable is the grotesquely illiterate and preening posturing of “keev”, done – declaratively if not wildly inappropriately – to inform Ukrainians, through subtle linguistic tics, that we side with them and not the Russians. Call me a pain-in-the-ass pragmatist, but I'd think a boatload of javelin missiles would make that statement far more meaningfully. Want to make sure they understand? Send another full of stingers.

“Oh, but it's a way to show respect for the Ukrainians and their separate 'identity'.”

I get the inferiority complex suffered by the collective psyche of a people who'd been subjected to slavish treatment by their Slavic conquerors, as the Ukrainians have. Stalin's pogrom upon Ukraine eclipsed even Hitler's upon the Jews. Hell, even Americans who'd merely been subjected to English taxes against their will, in the decades after the Revolutionary War, went out of their way to divorce and divest themselves from 'English' anything.

Finance, n. The art or science of managing revenues and resources for the best advantage of the manager. The pronunciation of this word with the i long and the accent on the first syllable is one of America's most precious discoveries and possessions.

-Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil's Dictionary”

But it's all transitory window dressing that doesn't mean a single god damn in the long run. Three generations later the English and Americans were back to being cozy cousins, and in a few generations, Ukraine and Russia will undoubtedly be as well. Putin can't live forever, and the way he's treating his inner circle, the chances of him surviving to the end of the year are increasingly dim.

Go ahead and change the American roman alphabet spelling to more closely mimic the Ukrainians' cyrillic alphabet if you absolutely must; I shall not. But if you can't think of anything more substantive to demonstrate your support for Ukrainian sovereignty than the way you pronounce their capital, then use their actual pronunciation: KEE-uhv. Exaggerate the way Ukrainians pronounce it and make it two words, if you insist: “Key Yiv”. But “keev” simply adds your intellectually integrity to the growing list of casualties of their war. If anything needs to be canceled, it is the loss of intellectual integrity.

Jesus, the Socialist

 

Jesus, the Socialist

And Other Lefty Rationalizations

©2022 Ross Williams

A common tactic among idiot leftists when trying to rationalize their leftism is to claim that their leftism is actually supported by the tenets of what the right holds dear.

Leftists love, for example, robbing Peter to pay Paul through various government programs like medicaid, social security and the entire welfare umbrella, and so they claim that Joshua bar Joseph, who most people refer to as Jesus, would have wanted it that way. And they entirely miss the point of christian philosophy in doing so. JbJ commanded YOU to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and take care of granny if she weren't capable of taking care of herself, not have the government do it for you. He specifically directed his followers to ignore what the government had to say about it. Render unto Caesar... render unto god...

Christianity is all about free will. You must have the option of doing both good and bad, and you must choose to do good. That's what gets you points. If you are made to do good by a government which taxes you and does virtuous things with your tax money, that doesn't count. You don't get any gold stars on your St Peter Report Card, even in the exceptionally unlikely event the government does legitimately virtuous things with your taxes.

Almost as common, and just as anti-intellectual, is what leftists claim America's founding fathers would support in our modern political climate. Not missing her cue, Julie Werner-Simon, walking and quacking like a commie, opined smugly and very incorrectly on the op-ed pages of the LA Times about what “the framers” would be doing about Kung Flu. She claimed to be a former federal prosecutor as well as ConLaw professor so you'd think she'd know better than to make the pitch she made. She parlayed her big government sensibilities and poisoned concept of constitutional law into a defense of big government solutions to problems they were given no power to address. Because our Constitution was all about promoting Big Government in unlimited fashion.

What is it with ConLaw professors, anyway? We had one a few years ago who grew up to be president and discovered the elusive “Phone and Pen clause” in Article II. Julie exhorts us on the benefits of studying our history, and completely disavows any familiarity with the subject.

Apparently, according to Werner-Simon, if Ben Franklin, Tom Jefferson and Jim Madison were alive today, they'd be lining up for their fifth booster shot and wearing three masks at all times, even in private. They'd be indescribably grateful to the government for compelling them to do so, and not by law, either, but by executive decree. Because these gentlemen “conceived of a political structure where those involved would be virtuous.” “For the common good.”

Well, these gentlemen did conceive of such a political structure. This is her perigee to correctness.

She recites Al Hamilton's admonition about those worthy of American leadership as those “who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society.”

Of course, being correct about these things is not a great feat of intellectual prowess, which puzzles me why she couldn't get any nearer to correctness. The intellectual founders of our definition of governance wrote extensively about these things. And then acted on it.

Much more succinct is the ironic statement [paraphrased] made by US President number two, John Adams: A free people must be a virtuous people. It's ironic because he was the brainchild behind the anti-freedom, anti-virtue Alien and Sedition Acts, in which – pulling a page from today's democrats – criticism of the government or its officers is a crime against the State. Like modern democrats' use of Big Tech social media, the Adams administration used the mass media of the time as his henchmen to dig up and uncover that criticism. The only individual in The State that could lawfully be criticized was Adams' personal friend but partisan enemy, Vice-President Thos Jefferson.

But yes, the principles on which this free nation was founded did indeed depend on the public pulling together for the common good. The only thing was, this pulling together for the common good was not to be compelled by government. The “framers” were very very very very very very clear about that. The “common good” was defined as having as little government, and thus as little government compulsion, as possible. Free will was just as important to our founding fathers as it was to Joshua bar Joseph. You don't have inalienable rights without free will. And you certainly cannot attain the “virtue” necessary for a self-governing free people without free will. You must have good and bad options available, and the citizen must choose the good option, without government standing over one's shoulder whispering threats of penalty into one's ear.

Compulsion denies virtue in politics as in religion.

What they were against even more than government compulsion was the elimination of public debate in determining what the common good actually consisted of. The entire foundation of our nation was – tellingly – built upon the concept of there being multiple, indeed contradictory, “common goods”. That's why states were given wide latitude in how they handled their own affairs, and why county and municipal authorities had even more latitude than that. The “common good” could be, and usually was, quite different in one state than another, one county than the one next to it, and in two towns in the same county.

In short, everything that modern leftists claim as the “common good” that our nation's founders would cringe at republicans, “the right” and us right angles to standard politics libertarians for doing is pretty much completely the opposite of what our nation's founders would actually do, because – with the exception of John Adams, who was ushered out of office after one term – they never once did it when they were alive.

Were our founders here today, we would be endlessly bickering about the science behind everything and even whether science was relevant in a free country built solely upon political freedom; about the efficacy of masking; about the futility of preemptive quarantining of healthy [or at least non-noticeably ill] individuals; about the known relative risks borne by the disease among individuals within specific demographics against the unknown risks of experimental pseudo-vaccines rushed through clinical trials and having zero long-term testing, and the like. Most importantly, those who interfered with public squabbling – Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and op-ed page editors take note – would be pilloried in the public square at a minimum and tarred and feathered at the worst. Such was our “framers'” dedication to the notion of each citizen being equal to all others, irrespective of their opinions, right up to the point when the “common good” was actually ascertained, and enacted by the relevant legislative body having the legitimate authority to enact it.

The relevant legislative body having the legitimate authority would not have been Congress...

Instead, what we've seen is dictatorial fiat issued by executives at all levels of government, having zero constitutionally-defined authority to impose fiat at any of those levels, done as “emergencies” to take effect days or sometimes weeks in the future [because emergencies can be planned well in advance, naturally], mostly having no defined notion of what constitutes an end to the “emergency”, and all invariably – as we've found out – built on a foundation of brand spanking new “science” that had never ever ever been known before March of 2020. When legislatures have acted it has been solely to overturn the executive diktat not permitted in our constitutional republic. These legislative limitations of disallowed executive action is what constitutional pseudo-scholars like Julie Werner-Simon call “anti-science” “lack of virtue”.  To anyone who has actually studied the Constitution, it is called Checks and Balances among co-equal branches of government.

There has never before been preemptive quarantining of healthy people in the history of the human race; it defies science to do so. Masking for general public prophylaxis has never been medically recommended and in study after study after study consistently shows that it does zero “common good”. Our treatment of children under this public health fiasco has shown itself to be not simply a stupid, psychotic anti-science damage to their physical and mental health, but fuckingly so. And the official treatment of medical professionals who offer alternative explanations or advice to any aspect of the Party Line are virtuously silenced every bit as effectively as being sent off to a Soviet gulag.

N.B.: I know it's not the US and therefore not directly pertinent, but Australia has actually created internment camps for Aussies unwilling to submit to being pseudo-vaccine guinea pigs. Governments around the world, including in our own nation, are beginning to repeat an eighty year old request: Die dokumenten, mein Herr. More “virtue”, I'm sure.

As a result, we in the scientifically innovative and medically advanced United States are left to rely on outside medical research to learn that just about every crazy conspiracy theory that us anti-science luddites have concocted since early 2020 are true to within decimal places of our original crackpottings. Japanese researchers are telling us that if you're under thirty and in good health you are at greater risk of death or debilitation from the pseudo-vaccine than you are from the disease the pseudo-vaccine purports to, but doesn't, prevent. Danish researchers are telling us that the common lefty saw, “pandemic of the unvaccinated”, is grossly incorrect; the unvaccinated have gotten the disease, gotten over it, and are mostly immune from re-infection, while the vaccinated are not immune at all, and they are more likely to be spreading it around – primarily to those who've been vaccinated multiple times.

The vaccine works so well that Israel is on its fourth mandatory booster in just over a year.

Medical researchers all over the world, with one major holdout among US government health agencies, are finally catching onto the twin facts that the pseudo-vaccine is largely ineffective and that the fallback rationalization of the compulsory vaccine pushers, “Well, taking the vaccine means that it won't be as bad if you catch it” is also very very wrong. The world's best bet for beating this is to do – as Sweden, South Dakota and Florida have shown us – nothing heroic, and let nature take its course. Acquired immunity through survival of infection is the best way to beat it down. Just like – and what are the odds of this? – science has shown us for thousands of years.

We are left having to watch foreign nations which don't have the billions of dollars necessary to buy pseudo-vaccines from Western pharmaceuticals using cheap therapeutic alternatives for off-label purposes, and to great success. But we can't talk about it here, because it's “misinformation”, according to Facebook and the other Ministry of Truth apparatchik.

It is now a foregone conclusion that this virus was manufactured by the Wuhan Institute of Virology [just as us conspiracists claimed], and used Fauci-grant money to do it [just as ditto]. The only unknown is whether this was an inept leak, or a deliberate release. I'm still going for the deliberate release, as its coincidental timing to US sanctions and tariffs having severely crippling effect on China's baling wire and bubblegum economy was just a bit too coincidental. If China was going to go down the drain, they'd take everyone else with them. And that's what's happening.

It's only lefty op-ed “journalists” who still cling to scientifically unsupportable claims that the virus which came out with a grab bag of viral building blocks, HIV and the like, took a natural jump from bats to pangolins to humans. It's only those same lefties who claim that the money trail from Fauci's department at NIH to WIV was not for research but for, I dunno, a massive take-out order of egg rolls or something. Lefties are still the only ones who believe his “This gain of function research isn't real gain of function research, because I am Science and I say so” bit.

No, if the dudes who wrote our Constitution were alive today to apply Hamilton's wisdom to discern to our instant circumstances they would be aghast at the lengths to which a handful of individuals and government institutions have hijacked the notion of “virtue” in a free country among free people to contrive a “common good” that was neither common nor good but entirely predicated on consolidating power among those whom our founders' virtues of common good were specifically designed to keep power away from.

There may indeed be an argument to be made for a “common good” “virtue” for collective action regarding public health. But it has not been made [to my knowledge] by any leftist and specifically not Julie Werner-Simon. It would likely not be imposed [in our nation] by government action and certainly not by dictatorial edict. And it would only come after having a long, boring, tedious public wrangle over every conceivable detail without the forcible silencing or censure of the quibbledicks who contradict the orthodoxy of centralized power.

Advice to Julie: the next time you cite the Constitution as authority for your poisonous politics, please spend a few minutes actually reading it first.

Diogenes the Libertarian Attends a School Board Meeting

 

Diogenes the Libertarian Attends a School Board Meeting

©2021 Ross Williams

In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.

– M Twain

Much has been said about last summer's edict from Merrick Garland, the newest Shyster General, regarding his FBI hotline to report domestic terrorist parents whose terrorism consists of objecting to the Critical Race Theory curriculum being taught in public schools, and which really isn't Critical Race Theory at all – pinky swear – even though it waddles and quacks just like Critical Race Theory. But what do we do when someone on a school board assaults a private citizen parent at one of those meetings? Is there an FBI hotline for that?

Glastonbury Connecticut has a public school, and a school board which controls it. Last year, during the needless bunkering of the human race due to a bad cold bioengineered by our good friends in the Chinese Communist Party, the school board of the Glastonbury public schools used the largely hidden mechanisms of online “public fora” to change the school's team mascot from “Tomahawks” to “Guardians”. The new iconography depicts a knight's helmet.

But rest assured, this move was not done out of political correctness or [god forbid!] wokeness. No, on the contrary, it was done simply because it was “the right thing to do” “at this time in our history”. And what makes it “the right thing to do”? Why, the fact that the term and symbolism of 'tomahawk' is racist. And what makes it racist? The fact that the woke say it is.

Never mind that the reflexive eradication of notionally racist conditions is pretty much the definition of woke political correctness. That doesn't matter. Leftists have a rock-solid rejoinder to that: it isn't because leftists say it isn't. Their logic, such as it is, is all wrapped up in sensitive solipsism.

Note to the pious preeners: changing a school's iconography to a knight isn't any more “the right thing to do” than keeping it a tomahawk. First, there's the whole Crusades thing, in which responding – with medieval knights – to the peaceful Turkish muslims' conquest of large swaths of the Byzantine Empire with military force was considered exceptionally rude. Second, there's the minimization of women through chivalrous, courtly elevation upon a vapid pedestal that Nth-wave feminists consider highly offensive and objectionable “at this time in our history”.

Be all that as it may, the school board received enough blowback from the public they claim to serve that they consented to revisit the issue. The subject of team mascots apparently has community relevance in Glastonbury whereas CRT indoctrination and labcoat fascistry does not. So a few days prior to this writing, the school board convened a meeting to air the objections to their previous resolution. During a recess in that meeting, a 53 year-old citizen approached Ray McFall, a 57 year-old ex-Marine elected to one of eight seats on the Glastonbury school board.

Words were exchanged – loudly. Profanity erupted. And the two, who most describe as being nose-to-nose to begin with, engaged in a trivial tussle. McFall shoved the citizen. The citizen responded by clocking McFall who, true to his name, fell to the floor.

A blonde woman stepped in between them, though she declined to assist Humpty Dumpty in regaining his feet, but many accounts [often given by city councilman John Cavanna] claim that city councilman John Cavanna intervened in the fight, stopping it in its tracks. I see statewide or national office in city councilman John Cavanna's future.

In any event, leftists who claim that “tomahawk” is axiomatically racist because they say it is are attempting to claim that this exceptionally minor scuffle was the fault of the citizen. They give two reasons for believing this:

1] the citizen was all up in the face of the school board dude, and

2] some video shows that the two, who are fairly trim considering the propensity for middle-aged male pot-bellying, were not merely nose-to-nose, but also navel-to-navel. And since the conversation was instigated by the citizen, the navel-nubbling was the citizen's doing, and would constitute the initial assault, thus making McFall's shove a form of self defense.

These notions would be laughable if they were not offered seriously. Given that they are offered seriously, these notions are most accurately described as grasping bullshit.

McFall is an elected official in a constitutional republic which purports to have civil rights. Among those civil rights is the right to say what you want, to or about the government or its agents, elected or otherwise, to their face, in their face, or behind their backs, without the government or its agents being able to do a damned thing about it. Leftists only need to hearken back to their gang accosting of Rand Paul on the streets of DC, and their other flash-mobbings “at this time in our history”.

Next, there isn't a non-contact sport in existence which would interpret passive belly bumping, even if it did occur, as a game infraction. Basketball, baseball, soccer. It's called “incidental contact”. For incidental contact to be considered a legal harm under the criminal side of a free society's laws, you pretty much have to demonstrate that one person charged at the other, like a Sumo rassler, gut forward, with the implied purpose of knocking the other guy out of the circle. That didn't even come close to happening.

Besides, it would make a horrible legal precedent the next time there's a close encounter on a crowded commuter train – assuming there will ever again be a crowded commuter train. The next woman who gets jostled, tits first, into a horny male next to her will not be able to complain when the guy grabs her ass and won't let go. It wasn't incidental contact; it was her making a sexual advance on him. He simply reciprocated.

So lefties, dry your eyes and stop trying to nail yourselves to your wet-noodle cross. The victim-blaming game is old and tiring.

Here's the answer:
If you don't want a citizen jumping in your face, then don't be an elected official. If you still want to be an elected official, expect citizens to jump in your face – no matter what position you take on the weighty matters confronting you. And when they jump in your face, they have the right to do it in a free society [if, though, you want to propose that our society is not, or should not be, free then all bets are off]. You, as an elected official, do not have license to shove a citizen who is in your face, but you do have the obligation to take it.

For what it's worth, these also apply to unelected government officials as well, which the leftists of BLM and their anarchist Auntie Fey minions demonstrated hundreds of thousands of times over during the 2020 Summer of Love.

If these conditions aren't to your liking as an elected official, please use one of the several options available to you:

1] stop being an elected official

2] move to a nation in which elected officials have license to do whatever they want, such as Iran or Russia, and get elected there

3] stop doing the foolish things that cause citizens to jump in your face after you do them.

It really is not that difficult.