Tag Archives: Woke

America has not bottomed out yet — ask Stanford

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In stock market investing, you’re supposed to be pessimistic when everyone else is optimistic, and optimistic when everyone else is pessimistic. Warren Buffett famously put it this way: “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”

The reason the aforecited principle applies well in stock market investing is that the herd instinct makes people buy or sell stocks because other people are buying or selling. The result is that the stocks get over-sold or over-bought, thereby driving their price too low or too high in relation to their real indicators of value – mainly their current and future profits.

Eventually, the herd drives the stock so high or so low that even dedicated herders cannot fail to miss the fact that the stock is mispriced in relation to objective value indicators. At that point, they finally change direction – they start buying while the herd is still selling, or vice versa – and the price trend reverses. The herd reverses direction, and stampedes off the other way. You can make money by being contrary to the herd. Be a bull when they’re a bear, and vice versa.

So, does the same principle apply in evaluating the state of a culture? Has the assessment of American culture become so bearish that it is surely too much so?

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Democrats are shocked to discover that law-abiding minorities don’t support law-breaking ones

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The world of woke is rife with incorrect assumptions about racial minorities. First is the assumption that racial minorities are criminals.

That assumption is wrong. It’s true that a disproportionate amount of crime – especially the violent kind – is committed by racial minorities. That’s true even after normalizing the numbers for the increased poverty level of minorities. I suspect this is due to a familial breakdown caused by many complicated factors.

But it’s certainly not true that minorities are all, or even generally, criminals. To the contrary, the great majority of minorities are law-abiding citizens.

Before leaving that first erroneous assumption to move on to the second one, consider the racism of it: The left operates under the assumption that racial minorities are criminals.

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Making America think and speak again

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Two menstruating persons walk into a bar and sit in a booth. The cocktail waitperson inquires, “What are you having today?” One of them moans, “What I’m having at the moment are killer cramps! I don’t suppose you serve arsenic, but what else can you offer me?”

“Oh, dear,” replies the waitperson. “Being a transgender gal, I’m afraid I’m not the right person to ask. I mean, I always wanted cramps, so I could bond more completely with the other girls, but my surgeon . . . . Forgive me. Tell you what, though, my manager is a menopausal birthing person, who probably knows a thing two. I’ll ask her to come out and talk to you . . . .”

OK, by now you realize that the only joke here is on you, if you have an employer or a teacher or a civil servant who thinks and speaks like this.

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Democrats weren’t always the party of stupid

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No, that mostly happened with the election of somnolent, senile, drowsy, sleepy, lazy, sluggish, lethargic SlowJoe Biden (in Joe’s case, one such adjective is just not enough) and an ex-bartender called “AOC” which may stand for Auditory Out of Control.

In the old days, by contrast, the Democrats used to say some wise things. For example:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Martin Luther King Jr.

Today’s Democrats say that statement is racist. They say it’s not only permissible to judge people by the color of their skin, but mandated.

Those having white skin must be judged evil-doers, and those having black skin must be judged their victims. Skin color is real, while “character” is a white construct. That’s the thrust of the Critical Race Theory that is indoctrinating our children.

The Dems promote this divisive victimology because they think it keeps blacks on the Dem plantation. It works only so long as blacks stay there.

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“Woke” is now a term of mockery, and the left has only itself to blame

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“Woke” was coined by the left some years ago to describe a person who had become sensitive to the left’s pet issues, especially racial and “social justice” ones. It implied that a person disagreeing with the left about those issues was not just wrong, but unconscious. Becoming woke was unintentionally analogous to the Christian concept of being born again — which is appropriate since leftism is the left’s religion.

This catchy term was initially successful. But the left never succeeds at success. That’s because what’s important to them is not being successful in resolving grievances, but parading those grievances as evidence of their victimhood.

Victim status is more important to the left than winning – and easier too. If the left were a sports team, they’d be lazy and winless but they would always say, gleefully, that it’s because the referees robbed them.

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I was an engineer for Boeing – before they got woke

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Back in your correspondent’s Version 2.3 or thereabouts, he was an engineer for Boeing. This was back in 1978-79.

My starting salary was $15,400. When I left Boeing to start my personal Version 3.0, my salary was still less than $17,000. My parents thought I was crazy to give that up and take on debt to go to law school.

Boeing was booming. Airlines were being de-regulated, airline travel was becoming less expensive while still being slightly sexy, and everyone wanted to go to Europe for the first time.

Several things about Boeing stick out in my mind. First, they didn’t compromise on quality. The airline customers could specify whatever bells and whistles they were willing to pay for — I worked on a few custom planes for Saudi princes that included frivolities like solid gold ashtrays — but the airworthiness of the plane was non-negotiable.

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“Trigger” is being canceled because it triggers

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In the theater of the absurd that passes for wokery, they ban words and phrases that purportedly trigger unpleasant emotions in the audience. These include:

“Mumbo jumbo” because it’s a corruption of the name of the African god Maamajomboo. Who knew?

“The most qualified person should get the job” because it triggers feelings of inferiority in persons who are inferior to the most qualified.

“Peanut gallery” because it triggers memories of the old days when black people sat there and ate peanuts. Don’t use that phrase, especially around a black person because the painful memories may reduce him (er, I mean them – see below) to tears.

“Cannibal” because it triggers the Carib tribe (oops, “tribe” is triggering, I meant the Carib cannibal community – see below) of the West Indies who ate people. But only as many as they needed to feed themselves.

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Making Satan great again: The glamorization of evil

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“. . . leftists are morally disordered people . . . . perhaps the best way to prepare yourself for contending with them is to pretend you’re dealing with Satan.”

— Selwyn Duke

“Pretend”?

Satan may not be much more to you than a medieval caricature, looming large only in the minds of 17th century Puritans. The European Enlightenment, after all, disinfected such bogeymen with the light of Reason.

But one is tempted to ask, to what end? As Goethe wryly observed in Faust, thanks to The Enlightenment “The Evil One is gone, the evil ones remain.”

Who is this dude Satan? Jesus spoke of him a lot. As told by Matthew, he’s the subject of Christ’s first two parables. The second is particularly chilling, reading like the original screenplay for The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

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