Deporting Milo

Milo Yiannopoulos, the British subject who once dominated right-wing punditry, has been arrested by ICE and is now in detention until he can be deported.  The man who adoringly called Donald Trump "Daddy" overstayed his visa.  It is amazing that Milo allowed his visa to lapse.  It is even more amazing that he didn't immediately self-deport.  However, this is a good object lesson.  Trump supporter deported by the policies of Trump.  Does he still support Trump?  I haven't heard from Milo in years and things may have changed.  Nope.  I should have looked that up before I started.  Turns out that Milo worked on Kanye West's presidential campaign as he felt Trump betrayed his loyal supporters.

In any case, deport him.  Let's have no exceptions.  Keep deporting until everyone still in the country is a citizen or has a valid visa.  That's how the system is supposed to work.

Deplatforming is the New Censorship

Alex Jones is a crackpot.  I had heard about him from time to time, always in a negative light from one of the various sources I read or watch.  One day, about a year ago, I decided to watch one of his videos.  I don't remember the topic he covered but I knew very quickly he was a conspiracy crank.  And that was that.  I haven't watched him since.  His crackpottery has not troubled me since.

 

Alex Jones is big news today - at least in the places I visit.  He has been banned from Facebook, YouTube, Apple, and Spotify in the last 24 hours.  That's odd.  Why?  Well, each of these sites claim that he has broken the rules by spouting hate or some such.  Uh huh.  So, people voluntarily clicked on his show and were then offended by his crackpottery and demanded that he be banned less they voluntarily click on yet another of his offensive rants.  Okay.  If you find him offensive, don't go to his site.  Ah, but that isn't the problem.  Others go to his site and the would-be censor can prevent them from accessing Jones by lodging complaints.  It's a variant of the denial of service attack.

 

This is a bad precedent.  It is the most recent bad precedent in a string of bad precedents.  Too many have accepted the idea that it is appropriate to obstruct the speech of others.  Berkley had a riot to prevent people from hearing Milo.  Speakers on one side of the aisle are heckled or attacked to prevent or at least disrupt their speech.  Free speech is the fundamental principle of a free society, which is why it is listed in the 1st Amendment.

 

Alex Jones is a nut who spouts conspiracy theories and crazy interpretations of current events.  These four social platforms acting in unison like this might be good fodder for a conspiracy theory.

 

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

Thomas Paine

 

They came for Milo Yiannopoulos, and I did not speak out - because I was not a homosexual.  Then they came for Alex Jones, and I did not speak out - because I was not a crank.  Then they came for me...

Beware the Right-Wing Terrorists!

Yahoo has the most ludicrous headline: Most Terrorists in the U.S. are Right Wing, Not Muslim.  There is a picture of KKK members around a burning cross.  Well, this ought to be good.  The story quickly reveals that police have only foiled 35% of the 115 right-wing attacks vs. 76% of the 63 Islamic attacks.  Clearly, the focus is in the wrong place.  But wait, there's more!  Right-wing attacks were often more deadly.  Define "often."  This is a meaningless sentence that manages to send a very specific implication.  That is not accidental.  So I read on.  A third of right-wing attacks involved fatalities while only 13% of Islamic ones do.  However!  Oh, yes, there is a 'however.'  The Islamic death toll was 90 vs. 79 for the right-wingers.  Let's run some math!

 

Right Wing Terrorists: 115 attacks of which 35% (40 attacks) were foiled.  Of the 75 that succeeded, a third (25 attacks) had fatalities.  79 killed divide by 25 attacks with fatalities comes to 3.2 people killed per fatal attack or approximately 1 killed per attack that wasn't foiled.

 

Islamic Terrorists: 63 attacks of which 76% (48 attacks) were foiled.  Of the 15 that succeeded, only 13% (2 attacks) had fatalities.  90 killed divide by 2 attacks with fatalities comes to 45 people killed per fatal attack or approximately 6 people killed per attack that wasn't foiled.

 

Wow, I would far prefer to have the authorities foil the vastly more lethal Islamic attacks.  Of course, this is just math and it is right there in the story but the entire tone is that the country is Islamaphobic and ignoring the far bigger problem of these far right-wing terrorists.  Speaking of the right-wing terrorists, who are they?  The story offers zero examples but there was a link to Newsweek at the bottom.  Let's check that out.

 

Homegrown Terrorism and why the Threat of Right-Wing Extremism is Rising in America.  Well, that's a big headline.  The article opens with the murder of Richard Collins III, an African-American who was murdered by a racist who was a member of Alt-Reich: Nation on Facebook.  Why does being racist place him in the far right-wing?  Does the author realize that the Third Reich, to which Alt-Reich surely alludes, was a socialist state?  Socialism is not right-wing.  Still, this is one murder and doesn't explain the Yahoo story that links to it.  So I read on...

 

Arie Perliger states that domestic terrorism deserves more attention than it gets.  He then offers some numbers for 2002 to 2016: far-right perpetrators conducted 18 attacks that killed 48 while Islamic terrorists conducted 9 attacks that killed 45 people.  See!  Domestic terrorists are more deadly.  Well, except for this:

...excluding the Orlando nightclub massacre.

So if you eliminate more than half the deaths attributed to Islamic terrorism, right-wing terrorism has been deadlier.  See!!!!  After all, the Orlando shooting has a "mix of apparent motives" and is therefore "hard to categorize."  Seriously!  Omar Mateen swore fealty to ISIS on Facebook then talks to the police during the standoff and says it is for ISIS but he's hard to categorize.  He could be a far right-winger or Islamic so let's just remove him from our calculation.  This story has just lost all credibility.

Let's see some of these 'far right-wing' terrorists.  Oh, look, the Bernie Bro who voted for Jill Stein and stabbed two men to death on a train in Oregon is classified as far right-wing.  Huh.  He's openly racist and anti-Muslim and thus a clear right-winger.  The KKK, an organization founded by Democrats after the Republicans had freed the slaves, is also rated as right-wing.  Dylan Roof, who longed for the good old days of segregation (who were the segregationists?  Oh yeah, the Democrats), is a pot-smoking racist and thus classified as far right-wing.  Was Robert Byrd, the former KKK Exalted Cyclops and high-ranking Democrat Senator, a right-winger?

 

But let's ponder Professor Perlinger's definition of terrorism: "...the use of violence in a political and social context that aims to send a message to a broader target audience."  Would the Berkeley rioters who prevented Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking meet that definition?  Yes, they would.  How about the rioters in Chicago last year who managed to upend a planned Trump Rally?  Yes, they would too.  What about James Hodgkinson, the man who shot several Republicans at a baseball practice?  Yes, he also meets the definition.  Would they be left-wing terrorists?

 

I briefly skimmed Perlinger's paper and it looks like even people with left-wing politics (e.g. socialist, communist, Democrat) would be counted as right-wing if their terrorism had a racist or ethnic foundation.  Therefore, when the KKK was at its peak in the 1920s, it was a right-wing terrorist organization that was supporting the left-wing political party, Democrats; that makes no sense but is really useful for left-wing propaganda.  After all, how many people would have dug this deep into the story?

Target: Milo

The noted polemicist who was recently run out of Berkeley by rioters has spoken in favor of older men have relations with young boys.  Or so it is reported.  Milo states that he offered imprecise language and is demonstrably opposed to pedophilia, having exposed several.  However, his definition of pedophilia appears to only cover prepubescent youths.  He states that he lost his virginity at 13 and feels he was sufficiently mature to make that decision.  Uh huh.  He does say that the current legal age of consent is "about right."  This is not a good topic to offer equivocation and it has opened him to a barrage of criticism.

 

Milo has risen like a rocket in the last year.  He is a Free Speech absolutist, an evangelist for the 1st Amendment, a man who delights in goring the sacred cow of Political Correctness.  I first took note of Milo in October 2015 when he was ejected from the Amber Rose Slut Walk.  Since then, he has gained infamy for his college appearances and his outspoken support for Donald "Daddy" Trump.  His growing popularity and recent book deal demonstrated that he was having an impact.  As such, he should expect to be a target - effective advocates always draw the most fire - and he has provided excellent fodder that has already canceled his book deal, gotten him kicked out of CPAC, and may cost him his gig with Breitbart.  Live by the outrageous comments, die by the outrageous comments.

 

Of course, this sort of career-ending faux pas only happens to those on the right.  Lena Dunham wrote about sexually abusing her younger sister and also wrote about an easily debunked rape by a 'Republican' at Oberlin College but HBO greenlit another season of Girls in the wake of these stories.  Bill Clinton settled with Paula Jones in a sexual harassment case and the blue dress proved he did have 'relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky' but he remains a revered figure in the Democratic Party.  Ted Kennedy left Mary Jo to drown in his car and went on to be the Lion of the Senate.  Robert Byrd had been a member of the KKK and also had a very successful career in the Senate.  Milo says something stupid that he recants immediately and all must denounce him and ostracize him as a pariah.  Those on the left can be forgiven for their errors but those on the right must be destroyed.

 

I suspect Milo will recover from this foot in mouth blunder but his brand is damaged.  Unlike 'Daddy,' he doesn't have a Twitter account - they banned him - and he can't sign executive orders and call press conferences.  College invites are likely to dry up after this too.  However, all publicity has value and he will surely be able to find another publisher for his book.  He may be down but he's not out.

Identify the Fascist

During the recent excitement at Berkeley, there was a clash of opinion that turned violent.  One party is accusing the other party of being fascist while claiming the title of 'anti-fascist.'  Can you find the anti-fascist?

Option 1: A gay, Jewish immigrant with a black boyfriend was on campus for a scheduled speech.

Option 2: Protestors who oppose the views that will be expressed in said speech detonated home-made explosives, shattered windows, and lit property on fire.

 

Yes, Option 2 was obviously the correct choice.  Some microaggressions - like inappropriate opinions - entirely justify retaliatory macroaggressions.  To prevent such speakers from being heard, it is often necessary to use extreme measures.

 

It is amazing how violent and/or destructive these leftist movements keep proving to be.  Occupy Wall Street was a cesspool of litter, vandalism, and rape.  Those who protested at Trump's inauguration set fire to a limo and shattered windows at various businesses. The Women's March even had a speaker pondering the destruction of the White House.  Fascist means to anti-fascist end?

Too Much News

So much is happening in so short a period of time that I would have to be a fulltime blogger to get even close to commenting on all of it.  However, here are some thoughts on recent developments:

1. Senate Committee rule change: It has long been practice that members of both party need to be present for a vote on a nominee.  The Democrats have used this rule to prevent votes by not being present.  This was used to the extreme by Wisconsin Democrats trying to thwart Governor Walker's reforms, which included them fleeing the state!  Committee Chairman Hatch altered the rules to allow for a vote with those present.  I suspect the purpose of the rule was to prevent the majority from meeting secretly to move nominees and bills out of committee and intentional absence was not an expected tactic.  Such childish antics explain the low approval ratings of Congress and government.

 

2. Neil Gorsuch nomination: It is always best to have justices who understand that it is up to the legislature to write law, not the courts.  Far too many subjects are decided by courts writing laws and framing it as existing rights.  That he was unanimously approved for his current position in 2006 is good maneuvering by the Trump Administration.  It used to be that nominations were not so contentious, because the court wasn't nearly as important as it has become.  Antonin Scalia was approved 98 to 0 and Ruth Bader Ginsberg won with 96 to 3.  Gorsuch will be lucky if he gets 60 in favor.  If courts would refrain from legislating, we could return to the ho-hum confirmation process.  Yeah, that's not going to happen.

 

3. Betsy DeVos for Education Secretary: Though she is out of committee, two Republican Senators have stated their intention to vote against.  A party line vote would give her a 50-50 split which VP Pence would presumably decide in DeVos's favor.  As someone who would like to abolish the Department of Education, I am mostly indifferent to who is in charge.  When did the Constitution get amended to expand federal authority to education?  In any case, US education has been static - at best - since the creation of the department, demonstrating how useless it is.

 

4. Barack Obama speaks: Not even two weeks and Obama feels the need to offer his opinion.  I'm not sure George W Bush ever said anything in opposition to Obama though Obama spent most of his first term blaming Bush for the state of everything.  Even so, Bush remained silent and allowed the new president to take the world stage.  Some ex-presidents have class.

 

5. Military Action against Mexico: Apparently Trump had a phone conversation with Pena Nieto and suggested that he deal with the cartels or perhaps the US military might.  Wow, that escalated fast.  The US has intervened militarily in Mexico in the past.  When Pancho Villa raided into the US, President Wilson dispatched a Punitive Expedition led by General Pershing.  Wilson also occupied Vera Cruz.  It is extremely unlikely that US forces actually march into Mexico but hinting at the possibility could certainly prompt Mexico to crackdown.  Bullying or smart diplomacy?

 

6. Frenetic Trump: That may not be the right adjective but it certainly seems appropriate to an outside observer.  There is something new always happening.  No one would accuse Trump of being 'low energy.'  In a way, his tactics so far remind me of a military campaign.  Shock and awe is surely what Washington is feeling.  This high-speed activity is not how things are normally done.  However, that may be the point.  The opposition is off-balance.  Heck, even the allies are off-balance.  It remains to be seen how successful this strategy will be.  Did he use this technique in the many deals he has struck over the years?

 

7. Berkeley Riot: The self-described 'Dangerous Faggot' was scheduled to speak at Berkeley but protests turned to a riot.  Do these students not realize that this sort of 'tolerance' of opposing views is part of the reason Trump was elected?  Each time one of these protests make the news, more people wonder what Milo is saying to incite it.  Curious, they look on YouTube.  This is how I became aware of Milo and now he is a rising star with a huge book deal and multiplying appearances.  It reminds me of how every time Obama would call for reasonable gun legislation, gun sales would sky rocket.  Counter-productive.

 

I wonder how much has happened while I've been blogging.