The endless war against merit

 

This blog frequently links to historian Victor Davis Hanson’s essays. At his recent essay at American Greatness, he considers the definitions and consequences of socialism and its derivatives ("Do We Even Know We Are All Socialists Now?”).  Here’s his conclusion:

. . . A final note: the Orwellian police state is central to socialism, since the ideology is contrary to innate human nature and when fully implemented quickly ruins all that it touches and is commensurately despised in its fruition. So to force compliance is a 360 degree, 24/7 project that transcends all our institutions and culture.

That is why the woke FBI goes after counter-revolutionary parents at school board meetings or traditionalist Catholics rather than Pentagon leakers or Islamic terrorists.

That is why the FBI and the CIA respectively tried to warp the 2016 election with the phony Steele dossier and in 2020 probably did so by suppressing the truth about the “bombshell” evidence found on wayward Hunter Biden’s laptop.

That is why news disappears off Facebook and the old Twitter. That is why the order of Google search results seems bizarre. That is why Disney or Budweiser suddenly virtue signal their nihilist politics, or why Nike makes the mediocrity Colin Kaepernick a multimillionaire, or Stanford University attempts to purge vocabulary such as “citizen,” “immigrant,” and “American.”

Once socialism takes hold, every mediocrity, every ossified bureaucracy, every constipated careerist, every hack writer and nobody actor, comes out of the woodwork to find his socialist “fair share” of what he lacked in talent or accomplishment.

In the end, perhaps the best definition of socialism is simply “The endless war against merit.”

Read the rest here.

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Super Bowl Sunday: to watch or not to watch

 

P.F. Whalen at GenZConservative has some thoughts about Super Bowl Sunday.  He concludes:

This Sunday, there will undoubtedly be millions of fans who tune-in to watch the Super Bowl. They will check the printouts of their office pools every time a team scores, hoping that the current score will pay off with a nice chunk of change and bragging rights. They’ll pay closer attention than normal during breaks in the broadcast for fear of missing a clever Budweiser or Doritos commercial. And at halftime, some will enjoy the show more than the game while others take a moment to socialize.

But there will be less of such folks; much less. Ratings for the NFL have been plummeting since 2017, including Super Bowls. The Thursday Night game during week four of this past season saw ratings drop a whopping 70% compared to last year, and ratings for both the divisional and wildcard rounds of playoffs were down double-digits for every game. Compare those numbers to 2017, and the drops are even more significant.

Less Americans are tuning in to the NFL, and that trend is sure to continue. And you should consider being one of those viewers who change the channel this year. The NFL doesn’t care about you, and they don’t care about our nation. They’ve got an agenda that aligns with the most radical leftists in our country, and that is their top priority. There are plenty of other shows to watch or things to do this Sunday that won’t result in you rewarding leftist radicals with your loyalty and financial support. It might seem impossible to imagine watching anything but the Super Bowl, but it’s not that difficult; and it’s the right thing to do.

Mr. Whalen’s full article is here.  At our house, we’ll be grilling gala burgers, with or without football.

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