ISIS

2016/07/04

‘Political Correctness’ or ‘Potential Catastrophe’?

Followers of this blog will recognize I have very little positive to say regarding the whole concept of ‘political correctness’.  I maintain the practice stymies clear, concise communications and is largely used by the far left to attempt to camouflage some of their more onerous activities by couching them in less accurate terms.  At a time when we truly need accurate and concise communications more than ever I see ‘PC’ as a real danger.

With this said it has come to my attention some folks chose to believe that my denigrating the practice of being ‘PC’ also meant I favor the deconstruction of civility and basic human respect.  Nothing could be farther from the truth!  I profusely apologize for giving such an impression!!  Above all else I believe in the need for open, civil discourse and one cannot engage in such an activity without maintaining an air of respect for one’s supporters as well as the opposition.  In just being ‘civil’ there is no room for negative remarks based on any facet of race, religion, philosophy, gender, education or culture.  Such comments actually destroy the civility of any debate and generally point to an individual without a solid foundation in terms of comity and respect.  Given this I do not consider such language to fall under the auspices of ‘political correctness’; no, this is simple decorum and courtesy.

My issues with the ‘PC crowd’ center on the use of this maligned philosophy to twist facts and concepts by using inappropriate and/or inaccurate language often to conceal what is really involved or ongoing.  Let me offer up an example of one such situation:  the use of the term ‘entitlement’ to refer to ‘food stamps’, government assistance and similar programs.  These are NOT entitlements; rather, they are governmental handouts – good and needed or not – from taxes collected from the general populace.  True entitlements are things like Medicare or Social Security which involve the return of monies to those who have paid into the programs after meeting some standard.  The far left understood that ‘handouts’ or ‘welfare’ were terms that most tax payers did not embrace so they started using the term ‘entitlement’.  Now you tell me; is this clarifying to call a handout an entitlement?

There are a myriad of such examples around us and they all fall under the umbrella of ‘political correctness’ as far as this writer is concerned.  And the current administration has taken the bar to stratospheric altitudes in just seven years!  We can no longer refer to the ‘war on terror’ although those we were once ‘at war’ with certainly are still slaughtering us by the hundreds!  Our president will not even speak the term ‘Islamic jihad’ although the terrorists themselves regularly refer to themselves using the exact language.  How can we ever expect to defeat the Islamic terrorists if we cannot even call them what they are..?!?  One need only look at the state of our conflicts with the likes of Al Qaeda or ISIS to answer that question.

And then there’s the absolute lunacy of using ‘PC’ as the reason behind some recent incredibly ludicrous definitions.  In this sense I speak to some who think that saying someone is ‘short of stature’ is demeaning and instead would like to refer to them as ‘vertically challenged’.  Someone who commits felony after felony is not a criminal but rather ‘legally unskilled’?  And we should be calling illegal aliens ‘undocumented immigrants’??  Will someone please explain to me how calling illegal aliens ‘undocumented immigrants’ helps clarify their status?  I sure as heck do recognize most people will react less negatively towards the term ‘undocumented immigrant’ but isn’t ‘illegal alien’ more accurate (Hint: they are not legally in this country and they come from other countries)?  So what this form of ‘PC’ is really supposed to do, regarding the last example, is cloud the facts of the matter behind inaccurate words and terms in an attempt to make people doing illegal activities appear to be doing nothing illegal at all..?  And this is improving the clarity and succinct nature of human communication?

I have no patience with this kind of philosophy as it smacks of attempts to manipulate and even control people through rewriting terminology.  And this reminds me all too much of the ‘thought police’ and their ‘double-speak’ in George Orwell’s novel “1984”.  Of all countries one would think America would stand firm against such violations of our language but this has not been the case.  I will grant the PC crowd that maybe two to three decades back there might have been a need for a movement to clean up our discussions and become more sensitive to the rights and thoughts of others.  But in a characteristically ‘bad’ display of human nature a few zealots high-jacked what might have been a sound concept and distorted it, and especially amplified it, beyond recognition to utilize its inherent power.  So now I find myself pondering this question; ‘Should ‘political correctness’ run amok really be the basis for our person to person communications on this world?”

PC Insanity

2016/01/09

Why Shouldn’t I Be Fed Up..??

A totally unforeseen effect of my semi-rural Alaskan relocation has slowly been growing and festering within my existence. While I now understand I recognized the beginnings of this ‘effect’ upon my psyche a couple years back only in the last six to nine months has the fallout become so very clear. In conjunction with my growing recognition of this situation has come a slowly simmering anger at its intrusion into my otherwise calm and serene existence. And I suspect my anger will only increase if I allow this to continue unchecked; in this sense I’m hoping that just writing about this situation may prove cathartic.

Because living in semi-rural Alaska does leave one somewhat remote and hence out of touch with world events and current history I developed methods of ‘keeping up’ mainly via internet news sites and satellite TV. But herein were the seeds of my current dissatisfaction; as I tried to stay ‘up to date’ regarding local, federal and world happenings I began to notice a definite increase in my stress levels. At first I assumed I was just showing the signs of age in that I was becoming curmudgeonly based on being set in my ways but with time I began to realize there was more going on. Indeed, I was just beginning to react negatively to so much of what I read about and saw happening across the planet. Sadly this has continued to grow and chafe at my sensibilities until it reached its current level.

Why shouldn’t I be fed up? I played by ‘the rules’ all my life; I paid my taxes, generally stayed out of trouble, broke very few laws, worked as steadily as I could and saved money for my retirement. In doing so I forced myself to work for companies I came to abhor and in darker moments would refer to myself as a ‘corporate whore’. I attempted to climb company ladders in search of more responsibilities along with more money; when I couldn’t make this happen within some firm I would seek out and start another job. From the time I graduated college in 1978 until I settled here in 2013 I relocated 14 times which figures down to a move once every two and a half years and pretty much insures one will lack any ‘roots’. I recognize these were, for the most part, my choices and I am willing to live with the consequences.

But while sacrificing so much to follow the American Dream I did not expect that once I reached that point in my life when I could supposedly reap the benefits the game’s rules had shifted. Obamacare was thrust upon the population with virtually no opportunity to really review and understand what it involved. It canceled my existing medical policy at the end of 2014. And my choices were Draconian at best; my original policy cost me $510/month but the cheapest I could locate in Alaska during November and December of 2014 would run $860/month for the same insurance. Because I was unwilling to pay that differential I decided to go without medical coverage until October of 2015 when I could start receiving my social security pay outs which would cover the increased costs. Fine, I made a decision to take this path. When I fell and severely fractured my left radius and ulna in March of 2015 and ultimately ended up spending almost $48,000 for orthopedic surgery and all the associated I understood I had made a decision to gamble and failed. So be it; I believe in accepting responsibilities for one’s actions. But to this day I cannot escape the fact that I wouldn’t have been in the position of having to make such a decision if the rules hadn’t been changed. So I must ask again; why shouldn’t I be fed up?

The more I read – I’ve given up on video newscasts as all are biased in some direction and unabashedly pushing their own agendas – the more frustrated I have become. Our once proud and strong country’s soul has been sacrificed on the dystopian altar of ‘political correctness’. While I eschew the nonsense sweeping colleges regarding censoring literature if it contains anything someone might find offensive and rewriting history if it is at all controversial I also see the roots of said ‘nonsense’ in the political correctness wave which really started back in the late 80’s. What a surprise we raised a generation terrified of offending anyone or anything; if I lived like that I’d need a ‘safe space’ on a regular basis as well! Of course one might wonder why all this censorship is acceptable in the first place but then one would have to be able to think critically and have a sense of history; our higher education system has worked diligently to insure these abilities are not taught to the masses. Once again; why shouldn’t I be fed up?

Truth no longer has any merit and for this we can largely thank the deviants we’ve allowed to hijack our political and legal systems. Everyone has seen some politician suddenly take a stand wildly divergent from something they stood for in the past yet they will deny it even when there is video tape of them saying or doing it. And we can thank the morally bankrupt lawyers for allowing spin (“I did not have sexual relations with that woman..!”) and falsifications (‘the attack on our Libyan embassy was the result of an anti-Muslim movie just released’) to become acceptable in courts or in explaining their client’s aberrant behavior. But wait..! Ultimately ‘we the people’ have somehow embraced the concept of unaccountability; if some CEO or politician bald-face lies to the public as a group we’re okay with not holding them accountable..?!? When Obama said ‘you can keep your current doctor’ during the Obamacare debacle and then we discovered this was known to be false even before he publicly claimed this to be the case why didn’t we rise up and demand accountability? Because we’ve swallowed the whole ‘everyone makes mistakes’ line of reasoning, which is completely true, but in so doing we’ve taken it to a new low. Sure, we are all human and we do make mistakes but the vital foundation to this concept we’ve discarded are the need for us to take responsibility for our actions and learn from our errors. Given this why shouldn’t I be fed up?

Sadly I could continue this litany for days but I believe I’ve made my points. As a world we’re awash in this ill-conceived and downright dangerous concept of political correctness, as a country we’ve lost the ability to think critically, to remember and learn from our history and to separate right from wrong. This does not bode well for our collective futures. As a race humans have so very much in common; why, then, is it so hard to find even just a few of these commonalities in today’s world? Could it be there are a multitude of power bases that do not want this to happen because polarized, divided people are more easily controlled and manipulated? Some will say this is just paranoid conspiracy drivel and I most certainly cannot count this interpretation out but I’m also not convinced it can be so easily dismissed. In fact, I could make a case that I’m just an aging American who cannot keep up with all the ongoing changes and feels threatened by the ‘New World Order’. But herein lies something important that is largely missing from so many of our perceptions; at least I’m willing to think critically about what is happening around me, to compare the lessons of history to our present situations and to wonder at the causes and solutions. Yes, it can be frustrating and it does take time and effort but given the current desperate times this seems like the only intelligent effort one can make. Because in a world gone barmy with ISIS openly killing ‘infidels’, with ‘social justice’ running roughshod over the Constitution and individual’s rights, with major world powers sizing up a weakened America and taking actions to benefit themselves we cannot afford to get our next steps wrong. Or maybe these are just the railings of an elderly man bewildered by all the change surrounding him. Regardless…why shouldn’t I be fed up?

2015/05/25

Memorial Day Show

Once again I find myself reflecting upon this very special Monday and wondering just how many of my fellow Americans are doing the same. Indeed, we should start every day with a brief review of all we have to be thankful for and our freedom should be right up with the top five selections. But this Monday has been set apart as ‘the’ holiday to honor our vets and all they have done for us. While the focus of the holiday is on those vets who gave their all for this country and its people I prefer to include all our vets in my reminiscing. As a country we can never hope to adequately thank our vets for all their incredible effort on behalf of not just Americans but so many people around the world.  Most of us have no real feel for the level of sacrifice these brave men and women put forth on a regular basis to ensure our comfortable and free lifestyle.

Yet we are a country divided; one in which a large faction seems intent upon destroying the very liberties and freedom we hold so dear. There is a fringe liberal movement that would shame us into weakness by holding that we are an imperial power bent solely on dominating the world at any cost and as such we are evil. Tell this to the survivors of the Nazi concentration camps or those who endured natural disasters around the world across the past 15 years and are alive today only because of the generosity of the American people coupled with the power and strength of our military who selflessly were almost immediately on scene to provide assistance, supplies and comfort.

We elected a president who believes we should no longer be a major player on the international stage; that we have for far too long meddled in other country’s business simply for our own gain. And he and his dysfunctional administration have sought to ‘lead from behind’ – the very phrase is idiocy personified – while slowly eroding our military power. As a result we now live in times that are actually more dangerous than those of the Cold War days when it was the USSR and the USA at odds. During such times each super power had too much to lose to ignite a full blown conflict; nowadays with the likes of al Qaeda and ISIS bloodying the news we are all vulnerable to terrorism from savages with no moral compasses. While nuclear Armageddon hardly felt ‘safe’ as someone who lived through those dark days it was preferable to the specter of nuclear, biological and/or chemical terrorism initiated by fanatics with nothing to lose.

I fear for my country yet I cannot deny ‘we the people’ allowed this situation to grow and fester through inattention and an unwillingness to understand what was happening within our government. Decades of preferring TV and video games to becoming involved in the political process has left us with a bitter legacy which has poisoned so many people’s outlooks on this once great country. Fringe elements on both ends of the political spectrum utilize the fallout from this poisoning to recruit new ‘believers’ in the war for the country’s soul while so many of us are forced into inaction because we can see no way to reverse this trend.

Against all this I cannot help but wonder what all our veterans would think of this country; the same they spilled blood to support and often gave their very lives? Would they be proud of their efforts and sacrifices? Or would they just be befuddled and confused regarding what has happened to ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave’? Sadly I believe it would be the latter and that is a disgrace upon their collective honor, one they shouldn’t have to bear.

On this most poignant of national holidays I fear for my country yet I also have hope because of the legacy our veterans have given us; that of commitment to cause, dedication to principle and a willingness to sacrifice everything to perpetuate the dream of a free, proud and strong America. They have done, and do, so much for us and ask so little in return. Yet the debt we owe them is immeasurable and we can never hope to even begin to adequately repay them for their service. Across my years I’ve purchased and stuffed packages with ‘comfort’ items going to troops overseas, I’ve written letters to many service men, I’ve assisted in cleaning local veteran’s cemeteries and I give as much as I can to support organizations like the ‘Wounded Warrior Foundation’ and ‘The Snowball Express’. But in the end it all seems so meager, so little in the face of their sacrifice. Yet I will continue to do what I can because our vets deserve it…and so much more!

Tonight, if tuning into 88.9 KTNA Talkeetna or listening on ‘KTNA.org’ I will once again make a very humble offering in the form of:

“Good Evening, you are listening to KTNA broadcasting at a frequency of 88.9 MHz on your FM dial and streaming live via our website – KTNA.org.  It is now 20:00 on a Monday evening and that means it is time to ‘Take A Little Trip Back…’ Tonight is a special program as once again we find ourselves celebrating Memorial Day; as such this is the day we take time to remember all those who gave their lives to ensure this country would remain free. Indeed, this is something we should reflect upon each and every day because as this holiday so poignantly reminds us:  ‘Freedom isn’t free!’ I’m dedicating this entire to show to all our service women and men, whether still with us today or deceased, Thank You All for your dedication, your courage and your sacrifice!! You embody the very best this country has to offer and ‘we the people’ owe you all a debt we can never hope to adequately repay. With the greatest of respect I dedicate the next hour to our vets…”

2015/02/27

Will the Sheep Ever Look Up..?

Across the past few months I’ve been quite intrigued, not to mention disturbed, by the ongoing miasma of miscommunications from our federal government; you know, the same one that is charged with protecting the country from all threats foreign and domestic.  Of course this administration has never been able to put forth a coherent, unified message unless it is lying but then this can be said of many of the recent administrations.  Still and all I believe the Obama administration has done the best job of torturing the truth in recent memory and there may well be a fairly straightforward reason for this observation.  Could it be this administration has sensed that the American public has finally been dumbed down to the point they are incapable of thinking for themselves when dealing with complex issues like foreign or fiscal policies?

I’m sure most of us have seen the videos of folks visiting college campuses, large cities or recreational areas and asking randomly selected people very simple and straightforward questions regarding the American government, American history and/or American leaders only to see truly epic idiocy when those questioned could even conjure up an answer.  Initially such videos were funny but very soon many people found them to be alarming; how could college students fail to know who fought in the Civil War or who lost World War II?  Given the crush of the 24 x 7 news cycle how could someone fail to identify Joe Biden as the VP or Bill Clinton as a former president?  The really sad versions of these programs then demonstrate that these same folks can name any current Hollywood member by their picture, recite the string of boyfriends and girlfriends for the same as well as their current and past acting efforts.  Somewhere something went horribly wrong with this country’s educational standards and we are now seeing the fruit of this sowing.

It is no secret the ‘higher education system’ is staffed largely by academics with strongly liberal views and these are the folks we pay exorbitant monies to educate our college enrolled children.  What has happened across the past 50 years that we now regularly churn out college graduates who are clueless regarding the basic workings of the government that controls the country of their births?  I’m sure there are a myriad of factors which play into this scenario but regardless of what the motivation the fault has to fall directly upon these institutions of ‘higher learning’ and, by default, their staffs.  Sure, it is still possible to get a quality college education but it seems as though this is now the exception rather than the rule.  Just what could be driving this inexorable flow to the mundane and ill-educated..?

Without question tenure is a major player; once attained it is virtually impossible to remove a tenured professor regardless of performance, histrionics or lack of commitment.  But I find it hard to believe a majority of the instructors in our collegiate system are sub-par in terms of teaching abilities.  So just what is happening – and has been happening for at least the past decade – that’s given us college graduates total devoid of a basic background in civics, economics and politics?  I feel that for whatever reason – and I suspect PC is at the root of this belief – maybe 40 years ago colleges began to move away from teaching critical thinking in favor of indoctrinating the students into the necessity of having a ‘world view’ and empathy towards all races and cultures.  After all, if one does think critically about ISIS any sane person will have an extremely difficult time dredging up much empathy for brutal beheadings and the raping of children all based upon the sick perversion of a theocracy.

But back to my original question:  could the current administration have decided the American public is so incapable of rational, critical thought that they can now be led about by their collective noses?  I think this is a definite possibility and I need only look at this week’s swirling direct disagreement by administration members regarding the ISIS threat to support my belief.  Earlier in the week we’ve heard Obama and Kerry (that’s the president of the US and the Secretary of State for you the clueless) both come out and tell us we are safer now than at any time in the past.  Yet following on the heels of these statements the former counterterrorism adviser at the Department of Homeland Security John Cohen said; “The West is facing the most complex and severe terrorist threat we have certainly seen since 9/11”.  Then, a few days later, the FBI’s top counterterrorism official – Assistant Director Michael Steinbach – gave this chilling assessment of America’s attempts to stop ISIS from spreading its ability to recruit new members online; “We are losing the battle”.  All this has been covered, however briefly, in the so called ‘mainstream media’ yet as of this writing there’s been little to no reaction.

How can ‘We the People’ accept such diametrically opposed evaluations of our nation’s safety?  Where is the reaction from the public demanding an honest, credible analysis of our situation?  Without question the failure by the ‘lame-stream media’ to really cover these discrepancies has contributed but this also highlights another supporting observation regarding my concerns about the American public’s inability to think for themselves; if the lame-stream media doesn’t cover it it’s not worth knowing..??  Apparently a majority of Americans cannot read this information and develop their own thoughts, evaluations and perceptions; they must have the so called ‘journalists’ – and I use this term very loosely and with the deepest disrespect – tell them what to think and believe?  If the federal government is looking to push more and more people unto its dole then seeing how clueless the public has become must really put a smile on its face.  This, coupled with the data showing 47% of ALL American households now receive some form of government assistance – and, no, this does not include social security or Medicaid – certainly backs up the suggestion that the American people are losing their ability to think and function independently of governmental support.  Is this what we want to foster in upcoming generations..?

I try to be optimistic but seeing what this administration has done across the last six years – and previous administrations since World War II – I find little to inspire hope.  In a way much of our population has come to mirror the narcissist in the White House; we have time only for our cell phones, ‘selfies’, reading ‘People’ magazine and giving no thought as to where our country is heading.  I would like to think that maybe, just maybe, the horror of ISIS might give us a rallying point but when we have a President and Secretary of State telling us we are safe and the ISIS threat is mainly something manufactured by the likes of Fox News I guess we prefer to accept that view.  And why shouldn’t we..??  After all, this is the administration that gave us ‘Fast & Furious’, Benghazi’, the ‘lead from the rear’ philosophy which worked so well in the recent Middle Eastern conflicts, the Obama Care roll out and similar; what could go wrong..?!?!  Not that I needed another reason to be pleased with my retirement to semi-rural south central Alaska but at least up here people are aware, prize individual strength and the ability to fend for one’s self.  In a way it shouldn’t be a surprise that ‘The Last Frontier’ should be one of the last states to still mirror so much of what made America great…