If you 'Stand with Ferguson Protesters' please stand far, far away from me.

If you 'Stand with Ferguson Protesters', please stand far, far away from me. And do me another favor while you're at it, don't call them 'peaceful protesters' when I'm around; they are anything but peaceful and it is infuriating to hear them given such undeserved cover to hide behind. Which means of course, that there are plenty of media types doing just that, prattling on about the dastardly police donning riot gear just to 'confront peaceful protesters':

"The shooting took place shortly after midnight following what had been a mostly peaceful protest in front of the department Wednesday night demanding more action over the report."

Here are just a couple of the many things I'd like to say to that:

1. When you have a 'mostly peaceful' mob gathering in the street and making demands, if you don't prepare for a riot you're a f#$!$%& idiot - that or the Governor of Missouri, or, obviously, both.
2. There's nothing, nothing, peaceful about an unruly mob gathering in the streets into the night, milling and marching about, loudly chanting insults and threats, obstructing or intimidating passersby, confronting the police and calling them out, to say nothing of throwing rocks and bottles of urine at them, or setting fire to the town.

Peaceful? Really? Here's some of the latest peaceful offerings from the protestors gathered in Ferguson:

BREAKING: TWO #FERGUSON Police Officers Shot – One in Face – OUTSIDE POLICE DEPT. http://t.co/4ETKcdz425 -- OFFICER STILL BEING TREATED
— Jim Hoft (@gatewaypundit) March 12, 2015

From GatewayPundit:

St. Louis County Police Chief complained about the constant pressure put on the county police by outside groups.

StL County Police: Officers Were Purposely Targeted By Shooter – “We Cannot Sustain This Forever” http://t.co/JE70BUbzPH @gatewaypundit
— Jim Hoft (@gatewaypundit) March 12, 2015

If you support such 'peaceful protesters' as these, then you are supporting the effort to bring about political goals by force and violence, and evil will follow from that - how could it not? To expect anything less, or to pretend surprise when evil makes its inevitable entrance as it did last night, is nothing less than a lie.

This entire episode has been a sustained assault upon the public peace and upon the law, and it is no surprise that it has received gushingly sympathetic support, and millions of dollars of Pro-Regressive Leftist George Soros cash infusions, and even aid from those elected to uphold the law and keep the peace.

And what was it that brought Ferguson to the boil yet again? A double dose of appeasement with the the resignation of the embattled Police Chief of Ferguson, following on the heels of Eric Holder's shameful attempt to save face with his drummed up report against Ferguson.

This is a lesson that is lost on the Left in general, and the Obama administration in particular, don't let yourself be drawn into thinking that appeasement is just for prime ministers and presidents - that's the path of fools. It is folly and evil for them to practice, because appeasement is folly and evil for mankind in general - it encourages and leads to the same heart-breakingly avoidable results, an emboldened abuse if power, no matter what level it is practiced on.

Appeasement doesn't disperse the mob, it doesn't deliver "Peace in our time", it doesn't placate evil - it encourages and inflames it - and life is more than happy to teach us that lesson, again, and again, and again; and if that's the type of lesson you want to waste your life on not learning? Please, do it way the hell away from me.

The future must not be left in the care of fools who'd say such things

The last time islamists ruptured their funny bone over cartoons, President Obama said:

"The future must not belong to those that slander the prophet of Islam."

Yearghhh!!!

The future must not be left in the care of fools who'd say such things, or else it will be bloodied beyond belief by those beasts the fools set loose upon us all.

But I wonder, how aware are you of how many fools are saying the very same thing?

Look at these seemingly unrelated issues,

• President Obama appeasing those who are offended by cartoons,
• Islamic terrorists slaughtering people for publishing cartoons,
• Catholic league president Bill Donohue: Those Cartoonists Had It Coming,
• Ferguson protesters raising a banner in the Missouri Senate Gallery saying "Pledge allegiance to black people",
• Black Panthers in Dallas saying kill the pigs,
• "Howard Dean: To Call the Charlie Hebdo Killers “Muslim Terrorists” Is Just Wrong"
• Ron Paul: French Foreign Policy Fueled Paris Terror Attack
• Sharia patrols telling British citizens how they must behave in their own land "where's my freedom in your going unclothed!" (or for that matter, "A hungry man is not free!" - same thought).

If you think that one of these things doesn't go with the others, well that's the thought that just doesn't belong - you're being distracted by the shiny attention getters, instead of looking for the principle that unites them - and can defend you from them.

I blog on about this stuff ad nauseum, I'm gonna take the day off and give you a chance, so you tell me... what is the One in these Many foolishness's?

Let me give you a hint, if you think it has to do with race, or religion, or politics, you're being distracted by the shiny attention getters. And those shiny attention getters can make the fundamental issues appear to be different, but that's only because you're looking at them, instead of looking into them.

And that just will not do- those aren't the 'skills for the 21st century!'... or for any other time either.

Do these examples have wildly varying conscious motivations? Absolutely. Are they relevant?

No, not really.

Don't allow yourself to be distracted by inconsequential particulars, look through the surface to the principles which are driving them.

If you do not want the future to belong to fools, we'd better fill it with people who choose to think, and who choose to make sure that how they think valid, or in other words, those who fill our future will need to choose whether to make Progress, or Regress.

What do you think it will be? One more hint: It has to do with what they aren't concerned with.

The future hinges upon the choices you make today.

Is the combination of Racism and Communism Newsworthy? Nyahhh!!!

Our local evening news just drove home the point of my last post, which might be summed up by the line:

"Does anyone really not realize the significance of an entire people having little or no reaction to being wronged and lied to?"

It's cold here in St. Louis, and my wife flipped on the evening news for the weather, and then up popped a story that just stunned me to the couch. The cracker-jack Channel 2 News team announced a Ferguson story, entitled"“Black People’s Grand Jury” indicts Officer Darren Wilson", and I looked up to see several people giving a press conference while standing behind a big banner that read: "Black People's Grand Jury", which all by itself was enough to drop my jaw, but on top of that, sitting on top of two of their heads, one the spokesmen, were big fur hats with a large golden emblem set with a blazing red star and a hammer & scycle on the brim.

The Death Star

The spokesmen, identified only as   Omali Yeshitela - Lead Prosecutor, Black People's Grand Jury" (BTW, you might find Omali Yeshitela's history of interest), said:

"We cannot trust our children, the future of our community, in the hands of this establishment that has proven to us over and over again its disregard for black life,"

What I noticed, and my friend Patch at Progressives Today (read his post!) noticed, was something that our local Fox 2 News team failed to notice. But not only did they fail to make a high school level observation (and yes, my 15 year old girl noticed it) in regards to a story that is allegedly about racism and injustice, as bad things mind you... this 'News team' not only failed to make any mention of the avowedly racist nature of the group (hello? Did you read their name?!), but that it had two members (not to mention the banner's iconography) who were deliberately giving prominent display to a political ideology that is responsible for policies of gross injustice, massive human rights violations and well over 90 million deaths over the last century. Let me say that again: their local Fox 2 News Report, by virtue of their silence, helped to promote, without so much as a cautionary comment, an ideology that is responsible for well OVER NINETY MILLION DEATHS over the last century, an ideology which vowed then, and still vows now, to bury the United States of America... and this crack news team had NOTHING to say about either point.

That wasn't worth even a mention?

Nyahhh. Why worry?  Not even so much as a dorktastic anchor-to-anchor joke about the fashion faux-paux of their head wear.

But no worries, no doubt some Common Core equation (excuse me) 'math sentence' can be found to clearly prove to all that Racism + Communism = Justice. Socially speaking. And I'm sure that that whole problem with combining racism and fascism the last time around, ending with WWII, was a total fluke, right?

(sigh).

I haven't had the stomach to check and see if our other local news stations ran the story.

(Note: Fox 2 News has since updated their story by tacking on a paragraph at the end which notes:

"This grand jury is an effort of activists connected to the Leadership Coalition for Justice, formerly the Justice for Mike Brown Leadership Coalition, and the African People’s Socialist Party"

)

A Weeks Worth of Perspective
To put that into perspective, last week's 'News!' treated us to blaring and lurid tales of a GOP congressional leader, Steve Scalise, who, 10 years ago mind you, gave a speech to a 'White Supremacy' group (say, did they call themselves anything like "White People's Grand Jury"? Nope, 'Euro'), and the media burned up the wires with that 'Story!' on CBS, NBC, CNN, USA Today, and all the rest.

Dis-Friggin-Gusting.

How did they even get by themselves with this? Was it because the group is black? If so, then that is, by their standards, RACIST. Or is it because they don't mind Communism? because 'we're all socialists now'? Then that is gross intellectual negligence and unforgivable idiocy. And if it passed unnoticed by their attention because they did notice both points but considered them to be a 'non-story', then that is horrifying.

What was it again that we were supposed to 'never forget!'?

Was it really only to beware of one particular nasty totalitarian party whose leader sported a silly mustache?, or was there supposed to be something a bit more to it than that? Do you think it just might be possible that that particular party brought about the deaths of millions of people (only about 10% the kill rate of the Communists BTW) due to something more than their party name and leader's mustache? Might there possibly be something worth noticing about how such a political social justice movement slowly, then swiftly, swept aside an entire people's standards, laws and common sense resistance?

Nyahhh... why bother.

We live not only in an apathetic world, but one that is apathetic because of the dominant nature of 'critical thinking' (aka skepticism) that is promoted into us as education, and as such we now no longer seem to have either the ability to recognize right or wrong - without being told it is so (and who knows if it is?) - nor the ability to be outraged at an insult to those ideals (if any) we hold as true. As I noted in the previous post:

"...But someone who is skeptical of even our ability to know what is Right or Wrong? It is entirely within such a person to express either apathy, or violent indignation, at the emotional prodding of a demagogue, because there is no substance within them to resist his beguiling appeal.

The Skeptical mind, far from being mentally tough, is a mind with no substance, no form, they can be molded into either riotous frenzy, or just as easily convinced to bring their apathetic efficiency to filling out death sentences in triplicate - they are without heart. The Skeptic, via their dis-knowledgeable apathy, will be unperturbed over pits full of corpses, its evil found entirely unmoving, and unremarkable, and as invisible, to them, as the water a fish swims in...."

When those charged with bring us 'the news!' show no signs of even a meager enough wisdom to draw a connection between groups that identify themselves by race, that call for 'justice' by pre-judging guilt and insisting upon a conviction before even a hearing was ever heard, and a political ideology that historically and avowedly uses propaganda protests to gain position and power, with the aim of eventually seizing power... when that is all missed by those who are suppose to be ready to

"...stand ready to sound the alarm when necessary, and to point out the actors in any pernicious project...."

, then we are in far more trouble than will ever make the local evening news.

Forward Pro-Regress!

Goodby 2014: From Gruber to Ferguson, Evil is the new Good - The History of Progress begins with its absence, part 5 a,b, c & d

a) Evil is the new Good
I know what you're asking, 'Why this?' Right? I mean, we've got Ferguson exploding again, and what with all the rest of the News Cycle churning around and more, why am I continuing with this odd... sort of History-ish series of posts pursuing the nature of Progress and Regress?

Let me answer that question with another question.

Why are these situations so common, rather than uncommon?

Consider that since I first began writing this post, we've passed through several news cycles, led by Jonathan Gruber admitting that ObamaCare was a lie to fool the 'stupid people', Obama has declared his intention to issue an Executive Order to let in illegal immigration, Ebola has come and (or so we hope) gone, ISIS is still beheading fast and furiously, Houston's Mayor launched an assault on religious liberty (forgot about that one, didn't you), Gruber is back, ongoing efforts against the 2nd Amdt, or Common Core#Ferguson has exploded with rioting against against the judicial system, and now Korea closing our movies and Taliban slaughtering a school... and that was within hardly more than a month's time.

And we certainly don't need to limit our time frame to just the last couple months to see a virtual parade of more of the same. I mean, it's not as if these very same issues are really anything new, right? Ferguson/Watts? Ebola/AIDS? ISIS/Al Queda? Houston or Catholic Hospitals or forced fed healthcontrol? Marysville/Sandy Hook/Colorado? And Common Core/Race To The Top/every-educational-reform-going-back-to-1800? Don't let the seeming kaleidoscopic events snow you, instead ask yourself if there is some sense in which these very separate events are in some sense fundamentally similar?

I've questioned, answered and posted on these ever recycling news cycle issues enough times already - more than enough times. The reason why these issues are so common is because having the ability to look at these situations in a more productive way, has become so uncommon. All of these seeming changes, are the result of a long ago change that has too long remained unchanged and unchallenged, and that change is central to the reason why all of the progress made in recent centuries has been transforming into the rapid regress of today. Granted, beneath the surface of the news cycle, what has not changed is difficult to see, and while the superficial distractions of the recycling are easily mistaken for real changes - the only real changes taking place have been within us - all of which serves to mask what remains unchanged... and so... here we are.

Yes, that requires a bit of explanation.

Easier done perhaps by looking at one aspect of some of the more recent changes in us as a people, one that is very much worth noting, though maybe not for the reasons you might think. The embarrassing boastings of Jonathan Gruber, and the results of the #Ferguson Grand Jury verdict, though seemingly different on the surface, have quite a lot in common, with each other, and with the recycling of the news cycle.

I've already ranted a bit on the #Ferguson situation here and here, and even a quick hit on Gruber, but aren't Gruber's lies just politics as usual?

Nope, at least not the part that I see as being worth noting. What's easily noted is that we had a well respected MIT economics professor, Jonathan Gruber, who was a highly paid consultant to the administration precisely because of his position as a highly respected MIT economics professor (and who was previously employed by Romney, BTW, and for the same valuable 'insights' that the Obama administration payed him so handsomely for), who was caught on video - multiple times - cheerfully advocating for a policy of highly opaque administrative lies, so that they could take advantage of the 'stupidity of the American voter' - for their own good.

What Justice is to be found in the passionate rejection of the process for attaining Justice?

RedState's Ben Howe has been catching some flack for his tweets on the #Ferguson issue, which he's ably summed up in an article entitled: "Why I Said I’d Have Shot Michael Brown in the Face". If you find that too provocative of a title, you should read it yourself, he defends his position well and needs no help from me.

But if you've got a moment, I'd like to ask you a couple questions myself. It won't take long.

Do you believe that Justice is something most likely to be attained by a methodical presentation of evidence and deliberated upon by a disinterested jury of peers? Or do you think that 'justice' is what the more vocal and passionate demand as satisfaction, and which everyone else must be compelled to agree with as well?

If you believe that the Judicial process is a Just process - not an infallible guarantee of determining THE Truth of what happened - but as being the most just process, the path most likely to achieve a reasonable and justifiable conclusion about what may not ever truly be known; if so then you'll have to concede that the decision of a jury of 12 citizens, who, after hearing extensive testimony, considering evidence, deliberating carefully upon it, concluded that Officer Wilson's shooting of Michael Brown was not an unreasonable action.

Not because he one was a policemen, and not because of the race of the dead person, but because that that was the conclusion most supportable by the facts.

If, on the other hand, you believe that the demands of the more vocally aggrieved are what society must appease, if you believe that those who are so sure that they know best, should have the power to punish those who disagree with them, if you believe that the passionate certainty of some confers upon them the ability to Just KNOW what other mere mortals can have no direct knowledge of; if you believe that intimidation and the threat of violence, actual violence, assault, arson, destruction of property and the violation of everyone's individual rights are justifiable because a few claim to know best and that everyone else must agree with them or else be subjected to invective and cast out... then you will conclude that 'Justice' can only be served by those who agree with you, and that those who disagree with you must suffer the consequences of their opinions.

If you align yourself with the second, congratulations - you are fascist fodder and your time, your rise, and your fall, is coming.

If you align yourself the the first, but quietly allow the second to parade on by without speaking up, then congratulations - you will be the first to be consumed by the second group.

If, on the other hand, you are one of the few who have bothered to learn the lessons of history, but are living in a society where such lessons were discarded from the educational system a century ago - then congratulations and pull up a seat, for we are very likely going to be stuck living through the lessons of history that everyone else seems so intent upon dooming us all to repeating.

Cheers.

So tell me America, you feeling fundamentally transformed yet?

After the #Ferguson Grand Jury decision, a unanimous decision[NOTE: I mis-heard the verdict tally at the press conference, there IS NO WAY to know if unanimous or not. My apologies.] by - it shouldn't need to be said but does - white and black jurors, who actually heard and deliberated upon all of the evidence, they concluded that there was not enough evidence to charge the police officer with wrong doing.

Auto parts store looted and burned

A short time later President Obama came out and said:

"First and foremost, we are a nation built on the rule of law. And so, we need to accept that this decision was the grand jury’s to make. There are Americans who agree with it, and there are Americans who are deeply disappointed, even angry. It’s an understandable reaction."

Understandable?! To Friggin' WHO?! Did any of those who 'are deeply disappointed', have any rational reason whatsoever for feeling that way?

Better yet, did they have any, ANY, basis for presuming the police officer to be guilty, but for the fact that he was white, and his assailant was black? Do you know what that's called? RACISM, that's what!

Walgren's looted and burned

And what were these 'disappointed' thugs upset about? 'No Justice, no peace'?

Justice?! For WHO?! The Grand Jury sat for an unusually long period of time, heard all of the evidence, and determined that justice would be served by not bringing an indictment against the police officer. Just how in the hell is it 'understandable' or a means of furthering 'justice' to demand that the officer be killed, for doing what the Grand Jury could not find fault with?

And where in the hell is the Nat'l Guard in ‪#‎Ferguson‬?! Our Gov. Nixon, putz in chief, declared that people's lives and businesses would be defended - How?! Where?! One of the primary reasons why we have a government, is to maintain law and order - we all saw endless loops of Nat'l Guard troops being trucked in to the well-to-do town of Clayton - where in the hell are they?!

Ferguson's business, Ferguson's people, Ferguson's property and livelihoods are not being defended! WTH Governor!

This poor neighborhood, its businesses are being burned & looted, and even for those that might manage to go untouched (somehow), this is Thanksgiving! The Thanksgiving shopping period is here, which they'd probably pinned their hopes of salvaging what the earlier riots damage had done to them - what are they going to do?! Most will likely be closed. And the businesses that served them will have certainly have their earnings reduced as well.

Little Caesar's Pizza looted and burned

What do you think is going to happen to their employees? To their families? To their kids? What do you think is going to happen to this community after all of this?

Every damn last one of you who've posted your idiotic 'hands up don't shoot' and 'no justice no peace' B.S., Every damn last one of you who've been supporting and egging this agitation on to this inevitable point of violence... let me put this clearly: You are scum.

How despicable.

When President Obama was elected he famously said that we were days away from:

"fundamentally transforming America!"

So tell me America, look around today, not only at Ferguson MO, but Oakland, L.A., Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Washington D.C. and all air traffic diverted away from St. Louis - take a good look and tell me:

Are you feeling fundamentally transformed yet?

Police Car set aflame

So you tell me America, does this fundamental transformation seem more like Progress, or Regress to you?

From Ben Howe:

I'm sending this to the New Black Panthers as a Christmas card. pic.twitter.com/hwuKYcBHUb
— Ben Howe (@BenHowe) November 25, 2014

Gwyneth Paltrow & Moral Mondays: The Recognition of Progress begins with its absence - Progress or Regress pt.4a

Movement is only progress if it moves in the right direction. That's a fairly non-controversial remark to make, right? I can't imagine that there'd be too many who would argue with that, saying "Nah, it doesn't matter which way you move, forwards or backwards, it's all progress, right?!" Right?

Vis consili expers mole ruit sua. Power without wisdom falls by its own weight: Horace - Odes Book III, ode iv, line 65.

Yet many people blithely, even enthusiastically, promote those political actions they find superficially pleasing, without bothering to consider whether or not those actions are good, or even can be good. And forgive me if my bias is showing, but yes Gwenyth Paltrow, I'm looking at you, for saying this:

“It would be wonderful if we are able to give this man all the power he needs to accomplish the things he needs to,”

, because I do take it as uncontroversial - I pray that it is - that wanting to give an already powerful head of state even more power, and with fewer restraints upon that power to do as they please, is an exceedingly poorly thought out... thought.

Any arguments with that? No? Good.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but if you don’t know whether or not the actions you are taking are good, if you haven’t carefully considered what those actions mean, what premises they rely upon, and what they are likely to lead to, and yet you advocate for them because of the fond feelings you have for them (whether Left, Right or Center matters not), can you really be said to be for ‘Progress’? You might be Pro-Furthering your personal agenda of the Left, Right or Center, but that cannot legitimately be called Pro-> Progress. True?

Can any of you tell me how taking any action at all, differs from taking an action you find pleasing but don't understand? Anyone? Personally I find it difficult to see the difference between the two. And unfortunately many of our leaders, intellectuals, business leaders, reporters, legal counsels, members of congress and legislators, are more of Paltrow's mind, than mine.

How could such a thing possibly be Progress? And the answer of course, is that it can't. A further answer is that when people speak of Progress... they don't know what they are talking about - and worse - they don't know that they don't know what Progress is, or what it could not be.

That's a problem. Especially since everyone is running around urging us to make progress, could anything come of that but Regress? No. Which means that what such people are actually advocating for is Pro-Regressive. That's disturbing. Isn't it?

This is not simply a political matter, it is far greater than that, and I'm continually amazed that the question of Progress vs Pro-Regress is not seen as a bi-partisan, tri-partisan, if not entirely non-partisan affair. But too many otherwise intelligent people that I know are oblivious to the fact that the positions they are advancing, have far more to do with ideas that are entirely regressive, rather than progressive - and it is their ignorance which has enabled the dangerous state of foolishness we have today, where people laugh at 'brainless' starlets, yet nod at 'deep thinkers' who say the very same things, but with more words.

For those who may be riled up by that, can you explain why? Can you base your explanation upon anything other than a reference to what some party, politician or other such person said or did? And can you explain in your own words, why? If you can, please do, I've been waiting a very long time to hear from you. Otherwise, I'll continue.

Ranting against rioting in Ferguson, MO

I too am upset at how the police and our governor have handled the rioting in Ferguson; not for their use of force, but for the lack of it. No one can be secure in their rights in the presence of a mob. There is no right of peaceful assembly if what you are assembling as is a riotous mob gathered in the middle of our public streets, violating everything from traffic laws to disturbing the peace, engaging in the destruction of property and violence, well into the night, and chanting threat's against the community and against the police. And on top of that, we've got communist agitators from Chicago who've inserted themselves into the rioters to egg them on to the violence they much prefer to voting booths.

Honestly it is such a clear cut case for the legitimate use of force as I can imagine. My uninformed non-professional law enforcement advice would be something along the lines of giving the order:

"Disperse or be shot. 10 seconds". Count to 10. Shoot and arrest whoever is still there 1 second later.

If the actual professionals have a more effective tactic that will cause less harm and loss of life, fine, but if that tactic leaves a mob such as this in place for even an hour longer, let alone night after night, then that tactic is doing actual damage to the real rights and safety of those living and working (!) in the immediate surroundings, as well as to the wider community at large. Ya know what happens when you depend upon tear gas to disperse a mob? They move their mob and destruction to another location! There's video on Facebook of the screaming mob running from where they were being tear gassed, to another QuikTrip down the road, which had nothing to do with the original 'cause', but was being overrun and looted!

This prolonged rioting and looting is doing real damage to the safety and security of the entire area and to credibility of the police who are the representatives of law and order for all, and as such it is absolutely unacceptable to allow it continue one moment longer.

To concern yourself with the self-esteem or safety of the rioters, at all, rather than with the people who live in that community, and those surrounding it, who are losing sleep, work, businesses and even forcing children to stay home from school day after day, if your first concern is not with those who are being forced to survive under such a blatant and direct threat to their peace, security and safety which such mob violence poses... well, that is as disgusting a display of ignorance as our modern educational system can boast of.