LEAVWORLD: GRAFFITI POLITTI

       I wonder sometimes about what motivates progressives. Then, I look at my granddaughters, and I see something that may hold a clue. They are three and one years old. The older one seems to have a problem with her sister enjoying anything. If little sis has one piece of a building block toy, big sis screams, and cannot stop, even though she has dozens of similar blocks. She just doesn't want to see anyone else be happy. Does that sound familiar?    It's kind of sad, but because as a really cool grandpa, I have taught big sis to share, although with limited success. It's always beautiful to see her offer little sis a toy. Of course, she's a three year old, and little sis is only one, so I really can't apply it to adult politics. The thing that links them in my mind is the tantrums. Why do the "woke" progressives have tantrums over things that don't affect them, personally?     Elon Musk is buying Twitter, and they act like my three year o...

   Progressive Democrats in the USA are a troubled group of diverse people. Apparently, they are being led by a minority of highly educated white men and women, whose agenda does not reflect either the Democrat party as a whole, much less the rest of the country. Blacks, Latinos, and Asians are waking up to the problems with the progressive agenda. It amazes me that the progressives have gotten away with it for so long. Sure, there are people of all races that are "progressive." My point is that most minority people don't share the progressive agenda, and they are starting to speak out.    It sickens me to see the promotion of concepts with names like "antiracism," which actually advocate racism. It was preceded by, and might have been informed by the "Antifa" movement, which used Fascist tactics in the name of opposing "Fascism." What Fascism were they opposing? The democratic governments of Western nations, and capitalism, which stands for ...

   It should shock no one that the "51 intelligence officials" who wrote a letter stating that the Hunter Biden laptop story "had all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation" aren't backing down . The letter itself had a CYA caveat , so they think they can just sit pat. What they did was classic "disinformation," planting the seeds of doubt, and letting the friendly left wing media run wild selling it as Gospel truth. Of course, many of these people are employed by those same left wing media outlets, which now admit the laptop story is true. The outlets allow their contributors to fall back on their "caveats," while continuing to ignore the voluminous damning material contained in the laptop.     This may be old news to some, but for a growing number of people, these media outlets are being exposed as the true purveyors of "misinformation," while pointing fingers at outlets like Fox News , the NY Post, and others that are considered...

   Let's review some of the words that the progressive left has tried to alter the historic meaning of. We'll start with "Other." That's a simple enough word, which means "something different or distinct from one already mentioned." However, in the new liberal lexicon, it has taken on a new, sinister meaning. It means "other than white," because everything is racial, and it has also been adapted into a whole new group of words: Otherism, Otherize, and Othering among them, though I'm sure there are others. I liked the Oxford Languages definition of "othering": view or treat (a person or group of people) as intrinsically different from and alien to oneself.  "a critique of the ways in which the elderly are othered by society"    The best part is that they used age, not race, in their example, so they get credit for that. Further searching says the term was coined in 1985 by a woman named Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak . She is...

    One of the biggest causes of our ongoing extreme political divisiveness is that we "talk past each other," to use a cliche. By this, I mean that we don't actually listen to each other, but interpret all statements through our political biases. We respond to things that weren't said. A simple example regards immigration. When a person says "I oppose illegal immigration," a political opponent may hear "I oppose all immigration," or even "I hate immigrants." This is a common reaction, when people suspect the worst of someone with a different opinion. Similarly, when a person says "I want undocumented immigrants to have a legal status," a political opponent may hear "I want to let all illegals stay here," or even "give them all citizenship." This is also a common misinterpretation, because the legal status is not specified, in the statement. While some people may actually believe what their opponents...

   It's almost certain that Ketanji Brown Jackson will be approved by the Senate to the Supreme Court, because the Democrats have enough votes, and no dissenters. That makes the hearings and questioning of her almost a pro-forma theater. What is interesting is the d ifference in the media coverage between Democrat and Republican nominees, and the scrutiny of the nominees. The Left wing media has decried the GOP senators' questions, and tone toward Judge Brown Jackson, while they supported the much rougher and insulting questioning that Justice Kavanaugh received at his hearings. That's partisan political media at work, but I also saw some other reporting, that wasn't as one-sided.     Let's face it: Republicans tried to go for the jugular, but they didn't go as far as Dems did, in creating a fictitious rape story against Justice Kavanagh. They stuck to factual matters, but many of their attacks were a waste of time. Sen. Graham going after her for representing ...

      When Pres. Obama came into office, he had at least two concrete foreign policy goals: Step away from Israel, our only democratic ally in the Middle East, and rapprochement with Iran, the biggest state sponsor of global terrorism in the Middle East. He succeeded in both of these, and the whole region suffered for it. Iraq, Syria, and Libya all were devastated by the rise of ISIS, and every nation that was touched by the "Arab Spring" ended up worse off, thanks to unfocused, if not non-existent US leadership.     In Iraq, the unconditional withdrawal was a disaster that directly led to ISIS filling the power vacuum. Worse was Pres. Obama's denial of it, until they had established a caliphate that spread across much of both Iraq and Syria. His focus on appeasing Iran for the JCPOA nuclear pact blinded him to anything other that doing what they wanted, which was for the US to just leave. Only when Iran realized they couldn't fight ISIS alone did Pres. Ob...