I Want a New Left

Xi versus Xi

We couldn’t call the new variant of the virus the xi-variant because it might upset Xi in China, even though his name is pronounced she (or so I’ve been informed), while the Greek letter is pronounced ksee (according to my Greek professors) or else is anglicised as zai. Either way, it shouldn’t be a problem. But it is. Sheesh!

A Strange Kind of Nationalism

According to leftists, who dominate the discourse in the West, I am a nationalist and maybe even a white supremacist. However, here is a column with a translation of Eric Zemmour’s speech for seeking the presidency in France (hat tip: Mark Spahn). And it strongly resonates with me, as it does with the commenters at the site. It’s a strange sort of nationalism that has Americans like me cheering on some French guy.

But then this isn’t really about nationalism as such. It’s about being anti-elitist. I first noticed the problem with our elites shortly after 9/11. I assumed we could have unity because leftists had their own separate reasons (going back to Iran, 1979) for disliking Muslims. But it turned out that nearly every leftist had never known about those separate reasons, and all we have been hearing for a couple decades now has been their expressions of love for Muslims and hate for anyone who doesn’t share that love. One had to look outside of the West to find sane elites, but one could find here and there in the West a few brave souls who were standing up to our elites, whether in Britain, France, or Germany.

I’ve been told that the far right in Germany would be considered leftist here, but so what? We are all fighting the same elites. And while the elites think that what they see as the rise of nationalism would eventually give rise to yet another war between France and Germany, what seems more likely, if there is to be a war, is that each country would have a civil war between the elites and the anti-elites, with the anti-elites of the two countries allied with each other and the same for the elites.

This isn’t the nationalism of old.

Expel Them

All the students whining about Kyle Rittenhouse and demanding some kind of action from the colleges they attend need to be expelled. As this column points out, people who complain about the verdict are either ignorant, stupid, or evil, and our colleges should not tolerate any of these three. Plenty of people have acknowledged that they were misled by the ruling-class media, so there is no excuse for ignorance anymore. Our colleges should be disseminating the truth about this case and not allowing students who are ignorant of the facts to make demands. See here and here for examples of students making demands.

Quote of the Day

From Theodore Dalrymple, here:

The British Empire was once described as outdoor relief (that is to say, old-fashioned social security) for the younger sons of the aristocracy, and the aid sector often seems to me like the way in which educated young people can see the world, have tax-free salaries, and feel they are doing good at the same time.

The only thing I would change is to add that those educated young people mostly come from the upper-middle and upper classes. Anyway, it took me a long time to realize that much of the money collected by the government for “redistributions” in fact goes to such people. The poor don’t see much of it.

Even Charities Decide They Have To Become Woke

We usually give just to local charities as it is, but we also have donated many things to our Goodwill. No more. Don’t these outfits ever think to do a little market research before they make these stupid decisions?

Just for Fun

Someone has plotted old Roman roads in Britain onto a map so that it looks like the Underground map. See here (and scroll down a bit to see it in higher resolution).

An Important Video – from Dems Criticizing Dems

Here. The basic theme is that it is in the “blue” states that there are big problems with housing, education, and just plain inequality. That is, when the Dems have power, they screw things up, but blame the Republicans.

Notice that at about 8 minutes, they talk about how in the state of Washington, the state and local taxes take a bigger chunk from the poor than from the rich, in terms of the percentage of their income. I’ve been telling people for ages that we need to get tax rates for the poor down, but both sides focus on the tax rates for the rich. Here’s your chance, Republicans.

Muslims and the Left: A Sea Change among Europe’s Elites?!

See here for an article about how Sweden’s elites have turned against the refugees. I first noticed the change, though not really registering it fully, a little over a year ago when Greece began using everything they could to prevent refugees from Turkey from entering, and they seemed to have the full backing of the EU. I wondered what the leftists would think (see here), though I never found out. Also, Macron seemed to be displaying more resistance to Muslims than I would have expected. See here.

More recently, the situation between Belarus and Poland has shown how things have changed, though elites here in America still haven’t gotten the memo and are now accusing European elites of racism (see here).

Now, there was never any announcement of this change. It seems to have happened gradually as more and more people began reporting on problems with these refugees. It would be nice to hear some conversion stories. Or did most leftists all along have misgivings but were afraid to express them?

Anyway, it would be nice to know if there was some one event that changed people’s minds, like the dreadful New Year’s Eve in Cologne a few years back, or just the accumulation of more and more stories about crimes.

Getting the News: Broad and Shallow versus Narrow and Deep

My recommendation for getting the news is always to have a number of sources that are different from one another rather than just one source or else a number of sources that are very similar, the reason being that any one source is likely to get things wrong. Unfortunately, highly educated liberals and leftists rely on just a limited number of sources, generally the NY Times or the Washington Post, the Nation, NPR, and maybe also CNN. The problem here is that all of these tend to make the same mistakes, so any mistake that one of them makes will be made by the others.

One would think that these people, many of whom can read foreign languages, would look at foreign newspapers just for a different perspective, but they don’t. I knew one such woman who said she started her day by reading every article in the NY Times. I can’t remember if she said she read anything else, but that would require such an enormous amount of time that I can’t imagine that she had time for much of anything else. And she had spent much of her childhood in Europe before coming to America, yet she still was taken in by the idea that one ought to read the NY Times.

Anyway, the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse has apparently awakened a few liberals to the idea that the ruling-class media isn’t always reliable. See here. Actually, we’ve seen this before with the Duke lacrosse team case, in which the NY Times and all the other ruling-class media were waiting breathlessly for those boys to be put away for years when they suddenly had to report that the prosecutor had been disbarred and the case had been dismissed.

That must have been a big jolt for their readers.

Anyway, it’s the same with the Rittenhouse case. There still seem to be highly intelligent and powerful people out there who think he killed some blacks rather than a couple of white guys. They need to stop what they are saying and doing and figure out what led them to make such a stupid mistake. Can we get them to vow not to be taken in again? Probably not.

Good News and Bad News

Kyle Rittenhouse has been found innocent of all charges, and instead of this leading to riots in Kenosha, it has led to lots of people celebrating. Hurray!

Of course, there are still people who think a massive miscarriage of justice has occurred. Some of these have been misled about the facts, while others know the facts but seem to think that it’s important that leftist rioters be allowed to do anything they like without being interfered with by anyone. They think this, presumably, because they imagine that it somehow helps the poor, or poor blacks, but whatever help it may offer in the short run is negated by the devastation in the long run. Neighborhoods get destroyed, stores disappear, and then we have to hear about how racism causes food deserts, though anyone who saw how it happened knows what really caused them.

In general, what our elites think will help the poor either doesn’t help them or positively hurts them.