I Want a New Left

Strange Google Translation

A while ago, I noted that someone had noticed a completely distorted Google translation from Arabic (here), a translation that rendered some supremacist Islamic rhetoric by a Palestinian into something harmless. I’m not sure if the leftist who thought that he had detected perfidy on the part of a human translator ever did learn that it was Google and not the human being that was misleading him.

Anyway, today’s translation of a headline is not quite that reprehensible. In fact, it renders the Arabic intelligible. It is just that when taken in pieces, Google translate gives some quite different translations. Specifically, the words “promotion,” “virtue,” “prevention,” and “vice” are translated as “order,” “favor,” “prohibition,” and “denial.” Let me add that my dictionary, which I thought was comprehensive, listed none of the definitions that Google translate came up with when translating the full quote, but came up with all of the ones for individual words.

Let me repeat: the translation of the full quote renders it intelligible, unlike that earlier episode (in which the Arabic was given a very different meaning). Still, I have to wonder how this was done.

More on the Mistaken Views that Progressives Have of Muslims

To continue with the theme of the last post, I want to talk about a brief footnote in the book Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind. To digress a bit, when I travel by plane, I like to have a good book to read, and I didn’t have one on our recent trip till we changed planes at Chicago’s Midway airport. In a bookstore there, I found Fossil Men by Kermit Pattison. I am not going to discuss it, though I highly recommend it.

Now on p. 356, Pattison described the reaction of the media to a particular anthropological team’s find of fossils in Ethiopia and the conclusions they reached. The team declared that we hadn’t evolved from chimps since chimps themselves had been evolving even more than we have (so the actual ancestor was not chimp-like). Pattison says that the media had covered this properly, but then adds the following in a footnote:

One news story did stray off message. The Al-Jazeera news network reported that western scientists had renounced Darwin’s theory of evolution. The leading news network of the Arab world twisted the “not from chimps” message into a refutation of evolution itself and quoted an Egyptian geologist expressing relief that “Westerners have begun returning to their senses.”

I keep telling progressives that Muslims are cultural conservatives, but they never believe me.

She Should Be Fired for Stupidity

The other day I talked about an idiot professor at Syracuse who thought that the 9/11 attack was an attack on “heteropatriarchal capitalistic systems” that America uses to oppress other countries. I pointed out that the terrorists’ attack was, if anything, the very opposite of an attack on heteropatriarchal systems. The terrorists are some of the most patriarchal people on earth, and everyone ought to know this, especially given all the attention that their allies, the Taliban, have received in recent weeks.

Anyway, now her college, Syracuse, has defended her on free speech grounds (see here). That is, of course, correct, though plenty of people have pointed out that Syracuse has not been consistent in this regard. But her saying something controversial and unpopular isn’t the reason why she should be fired. She should be fired for her stupidity. See here for another example of this. A philosophy instructor didn’t think that Australia was a country and got let go. Institutions of higher learning have reputations to protect. We expect them to hire smart and knowledgeable people, just like we expect judges and religious leaders to be morally upright. If a professor proves to be incredible stupid, they need to go. Free speech or academic freedom has nothing to do with it.

So, why does she think that the terrorists had such strange motives? Presumably, she is making an elementary logical mistake. She thinks, “I am oppressed by America, and they are oppressed by America, so therefore we must feel oppressed for the same reasons and share the same values.” But this reasoning won't survive even the slightest knowledge of what al-Qaeda actually favored, which she obviously hasn't bothered to investigate. Unfortunately, her ignorance is widely shared.

The Virus: We Lost

An elderly friend now has the virus, and she is the first close friend who has gotten it. That is, she is the first close friend who has gotten it for sure; others think they had it very early on in the pandemic, but it’s hard to know. Anyway, she complains that she did everything right in terms of masks, social distancing, and getting vaccinated, but it didn’t help.

My thought was that we ought to think less along these lines and more along traditional lines: getting enough sleep, taking vitamins, etc. The idea is to keep one’s resistance up since one probably has the virus already (or will be exposed to it soon enough), but it is not going to cause much distress if one keeps one’s resistance up.

I didn’t say any of this to our friend because she’s a hopeless liberal who believes all of the “experts” and who thinks government advice or action will do the trick. I prefer to go along with this essay by Scott Morefield, who insists that we’ve lost and that those who keep trying to fight are like those pathetic Japanese soldiers at the end of WWII who didn’t want to believe that the war was over. It should be clear enough by now that the vaccine doesn’t prevent anyone from getting the virus; it only mitigates the virus’s effects. (And it may make things worse since those who have been vaccinated have been thinking they can get back to normal when they have probably been spreading the virus around unknowingly.) A lot of students at a nearby college have both been vaccinated and have gotten sick. They are young, so they don’t have to worry because they will recover soon, but it is ridiculous to keep pushing people to get the vaccine when we know it isn’t going to stop anyone from getting sick.

Basically, we were lied to. They told us that getting vaccinated would help us get back to normal, but it didn’t. And now we have idiots with power who still think people need to get vaccinated, even though we know it isn’t working.

Here is a good, though long, essay explaining things.

Those Idiot Environmentalists

Here’s a headline in today’s Wall Street Journal (on the front page of the Business & Finance section):

European Energy Prices Surge
Lack of North Sea wind curbs an electrical source just as stocks of natural gas are low

We just aren’t ready for the use of wind for power because of its intermittent nature, yet environmentalists keep pushing wind and other dicey sources on us, while ignoring sources like nuclear.

I’m surprised they aren’t demanding that we go back to clipper ships.

9/11: Plenty of People Still Don’t Get It

Just weeks after the Taliban very kindly reminded everyone that the goal of the Islamo-fascists is to impose Islamic law on the entire world, there are still people in denial about this. See here. No, Professor Jackson, 9/11 was not an attack on the “heteropatriarchal capitalistic systems that America relies upon to wrangle other countries into passivity.” It was an attack that is part of an ongoing campaign to impose Islamic law on us, and if that happens, then you as a female will be vulnerable. You will be lucky to keep your job as a professor. Also, the last thing that could be said about the Islamo-fascists is that they would attack heteropatriarchy.

Our Recent Trip

For the first time in nearly two years, I took a trip by plane. This was not very much fun because we had to wear masks the whole time (that is, from the time we stepped into the airport we flew out of till we left the airport we flew into). I hate these masks, and during the lockdown I wore a plastic face shield, and even then I didn’t have to wear it very long (while in the grocery store, for example). But this was hours and hours of wearing a mask, except when eating or drinking. I feel sorry for those who must wear masks at work, but there is nothing I can do about it. I can point out to people who believe in masks that they are being inconsistent and irrational. The people who make these policies often break them themselves, but it doesn’t matter to the true believers. Our elites think that a Trump rally is a super-spreader event, while leftist gatherings are not, but pointing this out to them doesn’t change anything. I can point to studies that suggest that masks don’t work, but they aren’t interested, unless Fauci has sanctioned the study. I can point out that masks haven’t seem to helped, but this doesn’t stop them. I can point out that the statistics show that the disease isn’t that deadly, but they refuse to listen. In short, they are completely irrational.

We traveled to Boulder, Colorado, for my sister’s daughter’s wedding. I had a nice time seeing cousins I haven’t seen in a while, plus of course it was fun seeing my niece. What struck us about Boulder was how dry it was. It got into the upper 90s, but it was so dry, we didn’t notice it very much. Here in central Ohio, the upper 90s is miserable because of the humidity.

Let me talk about an incident on the flight back. We flew Southwest, and we paid extra to be in the first group to get on. After getting our seats, a man who had just boarded asked another man who was seated in an aisle seat if the two seats next to him had been taken. That man affirmed that he was saving them for family members. The other man rather loudly pointed out that he had paid good money to get good seats, and he didn’t think that what the other man was doing was allowed. He asked the flight attendant about it, who said it wasn’t allowed, but said they didn’t enforce it. The man stowed two carry-ons – one for himself, and one for his young daughter – in the overhead bins, and then asked the flight attendant once more about the policy, and the flight attendant repeated what he had said earlier. Then the man said to the seated man, “I’m claiming those two seats, bud.” The seated man was older, while the man making this demand was young and virile. The seated man caved, and eventually went to the back. It was clear that his family’s plan was to pay the extra amount for him and that he would then save seats for the others, who had paid the cheapest fare. This is cheating, but as the flight attendant acknowledged, it isn’t enforced. The cheaters in this case lost out because the man protesting was clearly not going to back down, and it seemed likely that if the authorities were called in, he was going to insist that he had paid good money for seats near the front, while the other man was cheating.

But this is the way our society seems to run these days. Elites do things that are illegal, but they don’t care. Unfortunately, there is no one with sufficient force who can put them in their place.

Twenty Years Ago

Twenty years ago something of extreme importance happened – we all know what it was – but to understand it, we must go back to 1989 when Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa against Salman Rushdie. I understood this to be a message to the West that said, “We Muslims intend to rule you Westerners.” At the time, I assumed everyone understood this message, but it’s now clear to me that almost no one did. I was puzzled by the lack of demonstrations supporting Rushdie, but I now know that the vast majority of leftists did not get the message (or if they did, they didn’t care).

After 9/11, I thought that the silver lining in that event was that the Muslim question would get settled. That is, most Westerners would finally understand that Muslims weren’t over there someplace with no access to us, but rather they were here and could do a lot of damage and would ultimately try to rule us. Were we in the West going to stick up for the West or not? It became clear fairly quickly that most leftists did not see 9/11 as a follow-up to the fatwa. Instead, they saw it as a justifiable reaction to grievances that Muslims had against Americans for supporting the Palestinians, having troops in Saudi Arabia, and so on. Or else they thought it had nothing to do with Muslims and was instead perpetrated by our own government.

However, I thought that at least those on the right knew what was going on. But more and more this doesn’t seem very likely, either. Just as “truthers” exist on the left, so they exist on the right, too, though with the difference that those on the right who are truthers blame the Jews rather than our own government.

Then there are those who believe that the struggle we are in is limited to the “war on terrorism.” If we can somehow stop the terrorists, then we will be fine. This is wrong. We are in a struggle with Islamic supremacists who are sometimes terrorists, but who, as a result of our misguided elites (both on the right and the left) having let in massive numbers of Muslims, don’t really need terrorism as much as they did twenty years ago. They can simply bide their time and gradually take over by chipping away at Western institutions and sources of power and also by simply outbreeding us. We cannot count on our elites to figure things out and stop this slow takeover of the West, for our elites (at least the leftist variety) are weak and conflicted about Western values. For example, they believe that a culture infused with feminism is superior to those cultures that are not infused with feminism, but at the same time they think it is wrong to think any other culture is inferior to ours. The result is that we cannot count on our elites to understand what is happening to the West, because even if they did, they might say we deserved it.

All I want is for our elites – all of them – to tell Muslims NO. I want them to make it as clear as possible to Muslims that they are not going to take us over. But I have been trying to get through to our elites about this for twenty years, and they stubbornly refuse to see the problem, much less see the necessity of saying no. (And of course, the more time that passes, the harder it will be to say no.) Now recently, the State Department whined that the Taliban’s rulers weren’t diverse. Everyone with sense thought that this was stupid, but maybe it was their way of saying no. They were sticking up with Western values (though not the ones that are the most basic to the West: why not mention freedom of religion?) If so, it was not very effective, eliciting scorn from both the Taliban and many Americans. It reminded me of the scene in some Marx brothers’ movie in which Groucho is being harassed by some thug. He eventually responds, “I’m not the kind of man to make threats, sir, but there’ll be a letter about this in the Times tomorrow morning.” Of course, what is ridiculous and pathetic about Groucho’s threat is that the thug almost certainly doesn’t read the Times, nor is he likely to be dissuaded by anything but force. Likewise, the Taliban, having just outlasted us, are hardly likely to be persuaded to have women as rulers just because we Americans tell them to.

And so we wait for the next terrorist incident, or else for a flood of Muslims coming in and acting as though they own the place. And our elites remain clueless. The strange thing is that so many of our elites will hate being dominated by Muslims. What will feminists gain by having Muslims in charge? In Iran in 1979 when Muslims took over, all female judges were fired, plus many restrictions on women were put in place. Yet, feminists act as though it is Christian conservatives who are the threat. Homosexuals, trannies, and secularists are equally clueless.

Against such stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.

No Blogging till Saturday

We're traveling out of town. It will be my first time flying since before the virus took over, and I'm not looking forward to it.

Quote of the Day

I can no longer find it, however, so you’ll have to trust me that I actually saw it. It was someone pointing out that Australia had succeeded in flattening the curve for the virus. It’s just that they are doing it on the wrong axis. That is, the number of cases is shooting up (making that part of the curve flat with respect to the y axis rather than the x axis), despite their ridiculous lockdown.