No, you useful idiots, white supremacy is not the greatest threat we face: it is no threat at all since it doesn't exist. A real threat we face, and a very serious one, is posed by an EMP directed against our unprotected grid. HT to JSO for the following two videos.
How would a nuclear EMP affect the power grid?
How long would society last during a total grid collapse?
Addendum 4/12:
A reader refers us to Are Aircraft Carriers Unsinkable? and comments,
The whole article is hair-raising, but this jumped out at me:
About the same time that tensions were rising over Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, reposts of a 2020 article by Major General Ed Thomas, the Commander of the Air Force’s Recruiting Service, began to pop up in the media. The headline? “Eighty-six percent of Air Force pilots are white men. Here’s why this needs to change.” Too many white men? Is that what our generals worry about? Like many other military top-brass, Major General Thomas seems to think that diversity wins wars. That’s why he put “improving diversity” on “the top of my to-do-list.”
What if, in the meritocracy the armed services are supposed to be, not enough nonwhites cut the mustard? Promote them anyway?
BV: This goes to the heart of the matter, namely the assault on merit in favor of 'diversity,' 'equity,' and 'inclusion' which in practice amount to governmentally enforced proportional representation, equality of outcome, and exclusion of 'racists' and 'white supremacists.' The destructive DEI agenda is predicated upon reality denial, in particular, the denial of the reality that we are not equal either as individuals or as groups in those empirically measurable respects that bear upon qualification for jobs and positions. The DEI agenda is dangerous and destructive because it allows the physically feeble and disabled, the mentally incompetent, the morally defective, and the factually ignorant and untrained to occupy high positions in government and industry. But 'allow' is too weak a word in this context; 'promote' is more to the point.
One reason this is dangerous is that our geopolitical adversaries do not subscribe to the destructive DEI ideology. While we self-enstupidate, they salivate.
How explain the popularity of DEI among the useful idiots? I suggest that it is due, at least in part, to the 'feel-good' nature of the DEI 'reforms.' They are found very appealing in this, the Age of Feeling.
How explain the popularity of DEI among the drivers of the demented doctrine? In the case of Major General Ed Thomas and his ilk it is probably sheer careerism. They go along not just to get along but to advance themselves career-wise, and the nation and the world be damned. It strains credulity to think that they actually believe the rubbish.
Missing nut on a wing-strut attachment causes fatal plane crash. Pilot also did not notice missing nut on his preflight walk-around. Flying is terribly unforgivine and the worst of all areas in which to indulge in "DEI." https://www.easthamptonstar.com/police-courts/2022113/report-probes-possible-cause-fatal-plane-crashhttp://507movements.com/">http://507movements.com/">https://www.easthamptonstar.com/police-courts/2022113/report-probes-possible-cause-fatal-plane-crashhttp://507movements.com/
Posted by: Joe Odegaard | Wednesday, April 12, 2023 at 03:03 PM
https://www.easthamptonstar.com/police-courts/2022113/report-probes-possible-cause-fatal-plane-crash
Posted by: Joe Odegaard | Wednesday, April 12, 2023 at 03:14 PM
The reality denial is ironic because it’s paired with a counterfeiting of reality. The deniers are inclined to deny (or at least ignore) factors that make us equal, such as human nature, according to which we are all human. And yet the deniers want to deny the various empirically measurable differences among humans by pretending they don’t exist and that we are all equal with respect to them.* In short, they deny that which by nature makes us equal, and then, as if desperate for some kind of substitute, they fabricate ersatz ‘equalities’ and ‘equities’ to replace what they’ve denied.
* Unless money is to be made or some other gain is to be had by recognizing and celebrating such differences, e.g., in professional sports. Nobody in the NBA pretends that everyone jumps equally high and runs equally fast. Nobody in MLB pretends that everyone can hit a ball 450 feet or throw a ball 100 mph with sufficient accuracy. In the nitty gritty of athletic competition, there is no forced equality of outcome. And there is no inclusion with respect to winning. The winners win and the losers are excluded from the winner's circle.
Posted by: Elliott | Thursday, April 13, 2023 at 08:52 AM
Good point about money, Elliot. As Lee Iococca said years ago, "When money talks, ideology walks." When money is involved even the wokiest wokesters start to think clearly. And so no one promotes D. E. and I in the NBA or NFL. Blacks are 'overrepresented' in basketball and football. Where's the proportional representation, the equality of outcome, the inclusion? Out the window.
As for competitive swimming, 'woke' feminists are helping MEN win the battle of the sexes by crediting the insane notion that a man can transform himself into a woman by simply 'identifying' as one with or without minor surgical and hormonal alterations. This also has the advantage FOR MEN of easy access to the girls' lockerooms and showers.
Posted by: BV | Thursday, April 13, 2023 at 01:07 PM
"How explain the popularity of DEI among the drivers of the demented doctrine?" First, military officers and corporate staff aren't the ones driving this. DEI is driven by the intelligentsia: college professors, journalists, and professional activists. Critical race theory was invented in Ivy League law schools. The careerists in other positions of power are buying support from the intelligentsia by pushing this stuff.
So the real question is why public intellectuals believe DEI and work to promote it. And ... well, I think they're trying to create the utopia of Marx's slogan from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. After all, the meaning of that slogan is that it's unjust to reward people according to their merits. The intelligentsia see themselves as the balm for all suffering, the satisfiers of all necessities, willing the good of all everywhere and forever, like God - in fact superior to Him, because God has allowed much suffering, and they would permit none at all. It's heady stuff, to think yourself greater than the omnipotent and more generous than the omnibenevolent.
Posted by: Michael Brazier | Thursday, April 13, 2023 at 02:15 PM
M. B.,
Your point about the primary drivers is a good one. I agree with your first paragraph. Military officers and corporate executives are second diary drivers.
Your second paragraph is even better. >>I think they're trying to create the utopia of Marx's slogan from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. After all, the meaning of that slogan is that it's unjust to reward people according to their merits.<<
Yes. We are back to the ancient question: What is justice? As I wrote elsewhere:
The liberal [leftist] tendency is to see justice as fairness, and to understand fairness in terms of material equality, equality of wealth and equality of power. A just society for a liberal, then, is one in which material inequality is either eliminated or severely mitigated. Along these lines the prominent political philosopher John Rawls puts forth his famous Difference Principle the gist of which is that social and economic inequalities in a society are justified only if they benefit the worst off, i.e., only if the worst off are better of than they would have been without the inequality.
See https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher_stri/conservatism/
Posted by: BV | Thursday, April 13, 2023 at 03:14 PM
Delete 'diary' in my third sentence above @ 3:14
Posted by: BV | Thursday, April 13, 2023 at 03:18 PM
The liberal "just" society of the "equality-of-the-amounts-of-stuff," is contradicted by the reality that some people like being "poor." If you have enough to eat and some basic shelter and clothing, happiness is very possible. Pepito Castruccio, my Grandpa's first cousin, whom I knew, he of the Italian medal of Honor, and who risked his life to save Jews in WW2, once said to me, "People were happy. The communists came in and MADE them unhappy." Pepito was speaking of the Italy of the early 20th century. But I have a current friend on the Low-Rider bicycle scene, Mr. Art Ramirez, who builds beautiful bicycles and teaches kids to weld, who has said "I like being poor." And the Leftists, in their arrogance, never bother to ask if someone would like their kind of "help." It is much more just to leave people alone as much as possible, and only give material help when the need is dire.
Posted by: Joe Odegaard | Thursday, April 13, 2023 at 08:59 PM