Democratic party gains, Democratic party losses

Republican opportunities abound, but will they be taken?

Michael D. Shaw Nov 12, 2025 @ Mike's Point of View

There was much crowing about Dem wins in New Jersey, Virginia, and New York City. Let’s unpack this. Notwithstanding the usual voter fraud, such as “mysterious” voting machine breakdowns in largely Red precincts, it is worth noting that unsuccessful candidates Jack Ciattarelli (NJ) and Winsome Earle-Sears (VA) were not exactly MAGA Republicans.

Moreover, New Jersey is a traditional Blue state, so for a Republican to succeed there, it would take more than an old-style political hack, who had already lost a gubernatorial primary in 2017 and a gubernatorial election in 2021. In theory, Winsome-Sears had a better shot, but she was plagued by weak fundraising, and poor messaging, that seemed to focus on attacking transgender hegemony (which worked for incumbent Youngkin), while failing to adequately address economic issues.

Evidently, Trump was not terribly impressed with Winsome-Sears either, only giving her token support. And, don’t forget that Northern Virginia, which is suburban DC, is as deep Blue as any liberal stronghold you can name. The area is rife with government employees, contractors, and Beltway Bandits. Funny, but I’m old enough to remember when a substantial number of federal employees and contractors were conservative!

As to New York City, Muslims make up 9% of the population, and Mayor-elect Mamdani’s Socialism/Communism has its traditional appeal to NYC’s liberal elite. Few Blacks and Hispanics voted for him, but he cleaned up on the disaffected vote: Angry White Women and the rest of the educated (read: “indoctrinated”) class.

Some fuss was made over his supposed Jewish support, including a pro-Mamdani demonstration led by three female rabbis. At least one of these rabbis was revealed to be an atheist. Suffice to say that Jews who actually practice their religion did not vote for him.

Moving to the other side of the country, in Seattle, socialist Katie Wilson defeated traditional Dem incumbent Bruce Harrell. Meanwhile, the government shutdown (longest in US history) ended with no gain whatsoever by the Dems.

“We have two parties here, and only two. One is the evil party, and the other is the stupid party. Occasionally, the two parties get together to do something that’s both evil and stupid. That’s called bipartisanship.”—Sen. Everett Dirksen R-IL (1896-1969)

SO…The Evil Party is turning most socialist, and the Stupid Party is forgetting how to win.

The trend on the Dem side toward socialism is nothing new, dating back at least to the Woodrow Wilson administration (1913-1921). The difference these days is socialism’s increased popularity among the upper classes. Sure, back in the day all the young revolutionaries came from privileged backgrounds, but presently, we seem to have a much more widespread socialism of guilt, with large swaths of the wealthy embracing this philosophy—at least for virtue-signaling purposes.

Meanwhile, far too many Republican candidates, not to mention the political leadership, never learned that MAGA is nearly always a winning strategy. Why, you could virtually define “MAGA” by opposing what the Democrats favor:

• Illegal aliens
• Criminals
• LGBTQ+ hegemony
• Unlimited welfare
• Suppression of private schools by preventing a voucher system
• Overpriced and incompetent bureaucratic healthcare system
• Functional atheism
• Economic disaster for the middle class, to promote expensive “solutions”
• Political correctness to suppress freedom of thought and speech

Attacking any of those bullet points is a sure winner, only Republican leadership has to THINK like a winner to move forward.

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Stuck in the 60s

Protesting for fun and profit

Michael D. Shaw Oct 16, 2025 @ Mike's Point of View

 For most of us who lived through that period, it ended —in every sense—either when we graduated from college, or entered the workforce. Realistic assessments of this fractious era would rightly view it as pretty much a terrible time, replete with war, assassinations, and unrest. On the positive side—for many—was the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, although the rampant drug use harmed many more lives than is acknowledged even now, nearly 60 years later.

Yet, as we Boomers grew older, we all knew contemporaries, who seemed to be stuck in that era. Some would follow the Grateful Dead, while others, who had achieved some degree of success, seemed locked into the naive politics and mores, and even fashions of the 60s, although in no rational manner did they apply to their current lives.

Admittedly, hippie sightings became increasingly rare, but these people are still around. I recall attending a public meeting in DC in 2007, organized by the EPA regarding regulation of a particular chemical. A few minutes after the meeting was called to order, a high-ranking EPA scientist was scheduled to speak. And, then it happened…

In what can only be described as a time warp, the very image of a 1968 hippie chick walked into the room. I whispered some inquiries to a few people around me, and I was assured that, yes, she really does dress that way all the time. Do I need to add that her “scientific” presentation was dripping with flower child sentimentality, and actually called for the chemical in question to be regulated to a concentration lower than what occurs in nature.

Several people, myself included, challenged this absurd notion, but she earnestly replied that this was what “their models” called for. Bear in mind that the chemical in question here is essential to healthcare, and needed better analysis than might be proffered by someone viewing her job as protecting the public from EEE-VILLE chemical companies.

Viewed in the context of a 60s protest, this attitude makes perfect sense, right?

Of all the protests that occurred then, up to the ones occurring now, other than the demonstrators being against something, has a practical solution to the problem at hand ever been put forth?

You can hate ICE all you want, but how does that solve the problem of massive illegal immigration and open borders? The Vietnam War was a disaster from the get-go, but I never saw any demonstrator or politician offer a detailed critique, along with recommendations on how to better handle the matter. And, in retrospect, such a critique would not have been difficult at all.

“Boy genius” Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara consistently argued that “on paper” our strategy should crush the enemy. I guess he didn’t realize that running a war is a wee bit different from production planning at Ford. Of course, Bobby Mac took care of number one, by resigning in 1968 at the very height of the war, to take over the World Bank.

Good luck finding a single media story of the time either criticizing McNamara or the military leadership falling into the old cliche of “the generals fighting the last war.” Oh sure, we were reminded on a daily basis how many of our soldiers were dying, but when the whole tragedy came to an end on 30 April 1975, there were no stories about how Ambassador Graham Martin was a hero, who saved American and allied lives.

And, even though public opinion was vastly against the war by then, no one in the media had the courage to state, flat out, that 58,200 of our men died for nothing.

But there were protests then, and there are protests now—featuring some of the same people. Relics from the 60s trying to relive their glory days. Full marks for noticing that the entire Democratic Party platform is essentially one big protest against Donald Trump.

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Charlie Kirk, Morality, and the State of American Society

Enough is enough 

My Mike Shaw Sep 14, 2025 @ Mike's Point of View 

Way back in 1931, Archbishop Fulton Sheen published a book entitled Old Errors and New Labels. On page 95, we find the following quote:

America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance. It is not. It is suffering from tolerance: tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so much overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded…

In the face of this false broad‐mindedness, what the world needs is intolerance. The mass of people have kept up hard and fast distinctions between dollars and cents, battleships and cruisers, ʺYou owe meʺ and ʺI owe you,ʺ but they seem to have lost entirely the faculty of distinguishing between the good and the bad, the right and the wrong. The best indication of this is the frequent misuse of the terms ʺtoleranceʺ and ʺintolerance.ʺ There are some minds that believe that intolerance is always wrong, because they make ʺintoleranceʺ mean hate, narrow-mindedness, and bigotry. These same minds believe that tolerance is always right because, for them, it means charity, broad‐mindedness, American good nature…

What is tolerance? Tolerance is an attitude of reasoned patience towards evil, and a forbearance that restrains us from showing anger or inflicting punishment. But what is more important than the definition is the field of its application. The important point here is this: Tolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons. Tolerance applies to the erring; intolerance to the error….

Tolerance does not apply to truth or principles. About these things we must be intolerant, and for this kind of intolerance, so much needed to rouse us from sentimental gush, I make a plea. Intolerance of this kind is the foundation of all stability.

Even as a young child of perhaps eight or nine, I noticed two alarming things:

There seemed to be substantially more strange, nasty, and anti-social characters extant than was publicly acknowledged; and perhaps 20 percent of teachers (at all levels of education) seemed to be very disturbed individuals who appeared to dislike—if not hate—young people. Moreover, at least one-third of teachers would use their status as instructors to a captive audience to pontificate on matters completely unrelated to the subject they were supposed to be teaching.

At the same time, many schools had in place a brief morning prayer, that was assiduously—for the most part—nondenominational. This practice would end, of course, with the infamous school prayer court decisions of the early 1960s. Privately, President Kennedy was troubled by the landmark decision (Engel v. Vitale), given that it was extremely unpopular, and that it could—and did—lead to Southern states abandoning the Democratic party.

To this day, JFK’s lukewarm public reaction to the decision, in which he says that we should support the Supreme Court, pray more at home, and attend Church with more fidelity, is labeled as his “endorsement” of the decision by virtually all so-called “historians.” At that, without a single public law being passed, the US became a secular, if not atheistic country. It is difficult to overestimate the damage done by the school prayer decisions. Among other things, an amoral Leftist movement, more closely identified with Stalin than a socialistic flower child, would be spawned.

Now, fast-forward 50 years from Engel v. Vitale to the founding of Turning Point USA in 2012. Schools, especially colleges, are hotbeds of leftist indoctrination and vicious cancel culture. It is straight into the Belly of this Beast that Charlie and his team venture, debating students and taking on all comers. Heck, they were creating converts to the conservative side.

But, Charlie’s greatest sin was promoting the sadly true conclusion that “College is a scam.” Talk about hiding in plain sight. Anyone who has gone to college, even if you did obtain particular job-granting skills, is only too well aware of the gargantuan bureaucracy; textbook cartel; inflated tuition (owing to the proliferation of student loans); questionable required courses; and the ridiculous overemphasis on athletics—to garner financial support from a pathetic cadre of “jock-sniffing” donors.

The latter point is especially egregious in that it attempts to co-opt the legitimate notion of “school spirit,” as it applies to high school, into a setting whereby 20 or more times as many students are involved, with precious little in common, beyond being students at a university.

In the wake of Kirk’s assassination, truly sick celebratory postings sprouted up all over. Only this time, there were immediate consequences, with many job terminations. I guess that organizations did not want to be identified so overtly with the many nutcases they employ.

94 years after his breakthrough work, Fulton Sheen is more right than ever.

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From Bud Light to Cracker Barrel

From toxic masculinity to deadly gender dysphoria

By Mike Shaw @ From Mike's Point of View

Only a short time ago, Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino was adamant in “modernizing” her restaurant chain—to the tune of around $700 million. Of course, the backlash was huge, and at the very least her inane logo change is being reversed. Naturally, this sort of brand vandalism will call to mind Bud Light’s incandescently stupid appointing of trans activist Dylan Mulvaney as a brand spokesman in 2023.

In the case of Bud Light, brand vandal Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid was fired, and is now working for LIV Golf. As to Masino, there are plenty of voices calling for her to be sacked, but so far, she remains on as CEO.

Although n=2 is admittedly a small sample size to garner significant conclusions, we might ask ourselves how such long-established brands chose these epicene—and there is no other suitable word—women to grow their business. And, why would an outfit like LIV Golf would mess with such damaged goods as Heinerscheid?

The unfortunate answer seems to be DEI virtue signaling. As always, the same question arises: Surely, qualified women are available for these high-level corporate executive jobs. Why on Earth would you hire a Masino or Heinerscheid? Probably for the same reason you would hire a Hillary Clinton, Claudine Gay, or Kamala Harris: High profile and big titles, masking precious few actual significant accomplishments, not to mention mistakes.

And, no, I am not singling out women here, since the most glaring example is recent memory of someone who has accomplished virtually nothing, rather than accumulate fancy titles is…Joe Biden. It’s just that there seems to be a trend these days of hiring women for top jobs whereby their only “qualification” is a stacked resume of positions carefully placed three to four years apart.

As to DEI, if we can believe the hype, even BlackRock seems to be moving away from it. We shall see. A prominent conspiratorial view is that “they” gave us the Cracker Barrel victory only to lull us into submission.

Meanwhile, another ridiculous trope, “Toxic Masculinity” seems to be emerging into a parody of itself. While there are as many definitions of the term as there are articles written about it, it simply comes down to cases whereby men, in the minds of the predictably academic feminist observer, cause some sort of harm to others—real or imagined—by acting in a manner expected by societal norms.

It is hardly a surprise that the term “toxic femininity” refers to damage that women can do to THEMSELVES by being overzealous in acting out their expected gender roles. So, you see, it’s all about the horrible Patriarchy ruining everyone’s lives.

And what’s the solution? It simply comes down to feminizing men. In the extreme, it morphs into gender dysphoria, which until quite recently was considered a mental illness. Actually, it still is, but now that it can be monetized, by way of hormone treatments and mutilation surgery, most of the medical community is all in. Whatever happened to “First do no harm”?

The notion that gender is simply a social construct was created by the despicable “sexologist” John Money. Oddly, it doesn’t seem to matter that Money was a proven quack having utterly failed in the notorious case of the Reimer twins.

The twins, Bruce and Brain, were born in 1965, and Bruce suffered a tragic accident during a botched circumcision. Money convinced the parents that Bruce should be raised as a girl, Brenda, and trying for some years—without success—to convince him to have “corrective” surgery done giving him a vagina. Bruce, being a product of his genetics refused, and eventually had the proper corrective surgery, giving him a penis.

Money’s therapy included sexual role play between the brothers as early as age six. Money also published false results as the “John/Joan case” portraying it all as a success. The two boys would eventually commit suicide. And, yes, Money had a career at Johns Hopkins of around 50 years.

We know for sure that the recent Minneapolis school shooter was trans. According to Benny Johnson…

"The pattern is undeniable: Today's Annunciation Catholic Church shooter identified as trans. The Nashville Christian shooter identified as trans. The Lakewood Church shooter identified as trans. The Colorado Springs shooter identified as non binary. The Denver shooter identified as trans. The Aberdeen shooter identified as trans. The Iowa high school shooter was a trans activist."

Most notions of “toxic masculinity” would agree that a mass shooting is pretty toxic. How ironic that in at least the latest case, the perp didn’t want to be a man at all.

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Politics, theology, pop culture, health, and the environment

Living with Neo-Marxism

A fantasy only academics could like 

Michael D. Shaw Jul 31 @ Mike's Point of View

 

As with many “Neo-” theories, Neo-Marxism was introduced to bolster the already-failing notion of classical Marxism. (cf. Neo-Darwinism). First promoted by a group of sociologists out of the University of Frankfurt in the 1920s, these members of what was to be called the “Frankfurt School,” endeavored to develop a theory of society that was based on Marxism and Hegelian philosophy, but which also incorporated the insights of psychoanalysis, sociology, existential philosophy, and other disciplines.

This method of analysis became known as "critical theory”—a term that is simultaneously opaque and grandiose.

Many influential articles were published in the Frankfurt School’s journal Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (Journal for Social Research). Prominent contributors included:

** Theodor W. Adorno—Theorized civilization’s tendency to self-destruction; fled Nazi Germany in 1934 (ironically to capitalist Britain and even more capitalist United States); returning to Frankfurt in 1949 to pick up where he had left off.

** Walter Benjamin—Possessed great intellect, trying to reconcile Marxism, Kabbalah, free love, and the Arts scene; alienated some colleagues, and lived in exile, in fear of the Nazis; committing suicide when he realized he would be turned over to the Gestapo.

** Erich Fromm—Yet another German Jew who had to flee the Nazis; a disciple of Sigmund Freud before turning against him; Zionist for a while but functional atheist, calling himself a “nontheistic mystic”; held that modern man has become alienated and estranged from himself within consumer-oriented industrial society.

** Julian Gumperz—Born in the US, before returning to Germany with his parents; hard-core Commie who renounced it all after World War II to become a stockbroker; wrote Pattern for World Revolution (1947) under a pseudonym, this work analyzes the structure and strategies of the Communist International and its role in promoting world revolution.

** Herbert Marcuse—Followed the Frankfurt School members first to Geneva, and then to Columbia University; hired by the OSS (precursor to the CIA) in 1941; his Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (1955) attacked capitalism, and was described by some as “eroticizing Marx”; not surprisingly became popular with students in the 1960s for his Marxist and sexual liberation views.

Cutting to the chase, whether Marxism or Neo-Marxism, all focus is on the dialectic between the Oppressor and the Victim. However, this always requires a determination of which party IS truly the Oppressor and the Victim. In the US, ever since Affirmative Action (growing out of the Civil Rights Act of 1964), this distinction has become fatally flawed.

Under what rubric is a White job applicant denied a position in favor of a Black the “Oppressor”? What is the formula whereby society is healed by perpetuating discrimination in a modified context? Is a woman seeking an abortion a worthy Victim?

Indeed, the entire dialectic has deteriorated into pure travesty. How else to describe the new production of Jesus Christ Superstar, featuring Black Lesbian Cynthia Ervio as Jesus, and gay Adam Lambert as Judas. Surely, this arrangement will give new meaning to Mary Magdalene’s song “I Don’t Know How to Love Him.”

And, how can we forget the ridiculous incident (July 27th) in which WNBA player Kahleah Copper’s hair extension was inadvertently pulled off, and the game was actually stopped, followed by the ejection of a fan who apparently laughed at the absurdity of it all. Never mind that by all rights the league should not even exist since it has NEVER turned a profit since its inception in 1997. Who is the Victim here?

Make it make sense.

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The Democratic party is nothing more than a criminal gang

Cui bono?

Michael D. Shaw May 28, 2025 @ Mike's Point of View

 

The late Wyoming senator Alan Simpson is credited with labeling the two major American political parties as the Stupid party (Republicans) and the Evil party (Democrats). The early history of our country’s politics was fractious, whereby the Democratic-Republicans broke away from the Federalists, and the Democratic-Republicans themselves separated into factions—one led by John Quincy Adams, and the other by Andrew Jackson.

The Adams faction called themselves the National Republicans, and the Jackson group became the Democratic Republicans—shortened to the Democrats by 1828. Various splinter groups who disliked Jackson (calling him “King Andrew”) joined with former National Republicans to create the Whig party in 1834.

The Republican party as we know it today was formed in the 1850s, when antislavery leaders (including former members of the Democratic, Whig, and Free-Soil parties) joined forces to oppose the extension of slavery into the Kansas and Nebraska territories by the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854). This Act promoted the notion of “popular sovereignty,” allowing the residents of each territory to determine by vote whether they would be slave or free. As such, 1820’s Missouri Compromise was invalidated.

At meetings in Ripon, Wisconsin (May, 1854), and Jackson, Michigan (July, 1854), the idea to establish a new party was conceived, and was formalized at the Jackson convention. Thus, at the very outset of this two-party rivalry, the Democrats were pro-slavery, and the Republicans were anti-slavery.

Slavery was officially abolished, of course, with the 13th amendment (1865). 99 years later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would appear, opposed by the southern faction of the Democratic party. It is one of the greatest ironies in American history that the Democrats were able to somehow identify as the party of civil rights, merely because the Act was signed by Democratic president Lyndon Johnson—himself a profoundly cynical and Machiavellian southern Democrat.

Never mind that the Civil Rights Act would never have passed, but for significant Republican support. At any rate, by virtue of their bogus public posture related to this Act, the Democrats portrayed themselves as the party of Social Justice—mostly engineered to benefit NGOs, with little left for the supposed victims. And that has forced them down an absurd rabbit hole of ever more divisive causes, including mindless DEI, and a robotic adherence to the neo-Marxism of seeing the world through the prism of oppressor/victim.

Never mind also that the clients of the Dems (the minorities and working class who slavishly vote for them) have scarcely prospered. Many major cities have been run by Democrats for 80 years or longer, and seem to only be getting worse.

Now, the Dems are proudly supporting men in women’s sports, preferring criminal illegal aliens to their own citizens, and were trying to gaslight the world about the mental state of Joe Biden. The latter energized by their all-consuming irrational hatred of Donald J. Trump.

The collateral damage to our very culture has been far-reaching. On the same day, on the front page of the LA Times, two stories appeared: “Free speech” advocates decried Trump’s lawsuit against CBS for its shameless editing of the “60 Minutes” Kamala Harris interview, done solely to hide the fact that she can barely construct a meaningful and coherent statement. The other was the case of middle school student Liam Morrison, in which the Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal of a 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that he did not have the right to wear a shirt proclaiming that “There are Only Two Genders.”

So much for free speech. And, while we’re at it, where were all those “due process” advocates (regarding illegal aliens) when thousands of businesses were closed during the COVID plandemic, or when millions were forced to take the “vax”?

We will always have corruption and bad leadership. The real evil of the Dems is societal destruction. A hopeful sign is the public’s rejection of what these degenerates stand for.

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How Bad IS the Mainstream Media?

Bad enough to righteously kill itself

Michael D. Shaw May 15, 2025 @ Mike's Point of View

 

Let’s get one thing out of the way right now. If there ever WERE a “Golden Age” of the mainstream media—at least with respect to being factual and unbiased—only a handful of people alive today would even remember it. The most you can say about that bygone era is that at least there were plenty of media outlets, and given the sheer numbers, there were a few divergent voices.

In fairness, even though more than 90% of the mainstream media supported Franklin Roosevelt, you certainly could find dissenters at your local newsstand. Fortunately for us, as the number of mainstream media outlets decreased, and many cities had only a single newspaper, the Internet blossomed, finally giving ready access to all sorts of viewpoints.

Help me out here…Who crowned Ed Murrow the patron saint of journalism? He became famous with his radio dispatches from England during World War II, and gained more notoriety with his attacks on Senator Joe McCarthy in the early 1950s. However, his attacks on McCarthy were a clever combination of his Leftist proclivities along with a cynical exploitation of the misgivings of many Americans after the War.

We had won the war, but lost the peace. And few wanted to face the sad fact that there WERE plenty of Communists in the government and military. Yet, by 1958, the John Birch Society was founded. And, in 1964, John Stormer’s self-published bestseller None Dare Call It Treason was published.

Murrow’s fellow Leftist Walter Cronkite also flourished during this period.

Let’s work backwards…

1. The Trump White House details dozens of examples of fake news, with documented rebuttals.
2. Although mentioned in item 1, it is worth noting that the canonization of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is laughable for a number of reasons. For all their fuss over the "Maryland man," by comparison the media virtually ignored the death of Maryland woman Rachel Morin, raped and murdered by an illegal alien. Does it matter that Abrego Garcia's wife took out two protective orders against him? Ah yes, the tired, tired Marxist trope of the Oppressor/Victim rears its head again--only which one is the victim?
3. While few today will defend the response of Big Medicine, Big Pharma, and Big Government to the COVID plandemic, there were absolutely no dissenting voices in the mainstream media. Fortunately, alternative sources prevented many from getting the vastly overhyped jabs.
4. Despite dozens of documented examples of obvious voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, not a single mainstream source breathed a word of it. What coverage that did exist was in mocking tones, and both elite media and the Deep State went all in to destroy the lives of such former heroes as Rudolph Giuliani.
5. While Trump was successful in 2016, the mainstream was solidly in Hillary's camp, idiotically repeating her "Russia, Russia" charges, while studiously ignoring that her only real accomplishment in life was marrying Bill Clinton, and building off that. And even then, given the high positions that did bring her, produced almost nothing.

As the prophet Nathan famously said to King David, “And if this were not enough, I could count up for you still more.” [2 Samuel 12:8]

The good news is that these days, it finally doesn’t matter anymore. The elite media is dying, as people are increasingly turning to alternative sources. Who in the world considers the Evening News “appointment television”? Check your phone or computer any time you wish and get fully updated. Now, that’s progress.

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Government agency Stockholm Syndrome

Brainwashing writ large

Michael D. Shaw Apr 03, 2025 @ Mike's Point of View

The titular syndrome is far better known than the event it’s named after. In August, 1973,  during a botched bank robbery in the Swedish capital, four employees of Sveriges Kreditbank were held hostage in the bank’s vault for six days. A strange bond developed between the victims and the captors, such that the victims identified closely with the perps, as well as with their agenda and demands.

The phenomenon has been explained as a sort of combination of the survival instinct, and gratitude that their lives have been spared. This gratitude can cause the victims to magnify small acts of kindness amid otherwise horrible conditions as good treatment. This distortion, in turn, morphs into the victims empathizing with the captors, making psychological links between the captors’ happiness and their own.

This empathy can quickly turn into hatred for police or other authorities, who might threaten the captive/captor relationship. And, this sort of brainwashing occurs quickly indeed, given the relatively short time frame of the Stockholm incident.

Interestingly, the American Psychiatric Association does not include Stockholm Syndrome in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)—although the seemingly related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is included.

Indeed, the public has quite a conflicted attitude toward this sort of thing. On the one hand, virtually everyone was quick to blame the 1978 Jonestown mass suicides on 900 people being “brainwashed” by Jim Jones. On the other hand, a jury refused to accept that former hostage Patricia Hearst was anything but a willing participant in the 1974 Hibernia Bank robbery, along with other members of the so-called Symbionese Liberation Army.

Compare all this to the anguished cries of (mostly) leftists, who bemoan the fat-trimming currently underway at numerous government agencies. Among these, thousands of layoffs have been announced at the Department of Health and Human Services, including positions in the FDA and NIH.

You will notice that no one is making any sort of argument based on what a great job these agencies have been doing. Rather, the arguments describe generic functions of the positions or departments being cut, as if their mere existence establishes how excellent they must be. Additionally, the fact that the public has been paying through the nose must make the agencies all the more valuable.

Yet, the overall state of American health is abysmal, so why continue in this manner? Simple. Many of us are Addicted to the Process.

Many of us are also afraid to ask the hard questions: Who is responsible for the catastrophic failure of the government’s response to COVID? Why has our military not won a war since 1945? Why is there so much fraud, waste, and abuse in government agencies? Why—until very recently—do we tolerate massive trade imbalances?

Sure, some Beltway Bandits and corrupt politicians have been making money on all the graft, but too many “useful idiots” are defending the status quo. And, in this manifestation of the Stockholm Syndrome, the victims have been captives for all of their adult lives.

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Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) vs. Snow White (2025)

What a difference 88 years makes

Michael D. Shaw Mar 26, 2025 @ Mike's Point of View

The Brothers Grimm

The reviews are in on the new Snow White, and to no one’s surprise, they are not positive. Here is a typical one, from Snarky Jay. And, if that weren’t bad enough, the movie will likely tank—badly—at the box office. All this, despite a year’s delay in its release, and extensive reshoots.

Consider that the 1937 feature made the Walt Disney Studios, and Walt risked virtually all he had on it. The 2025 version was launched despite negative word of mouth from the get-go, and represents yet another in a tiresome line of “girlboss” oriented pics, that have not fared well over the last decade.

2025 stars the insufferable Rachel Zegler in the title role, with Gal Godot as the evil queen. Neither of the leads can act, but at least Zegler can sing. And, neither is correct for the part. Indeed, these two could be the worst leads to be cast in a major motion picture in decades. Some critics are saying EVER.

One can only speculate as to why the Disney brass allowed Zegler to sabotage the flick with her obnoxious takes and condescending remarks. To top it off, Zegler took a pro-Palestinian position against Gadot’s pro-Israel stance, reaching the point where the two leads clearly hated one another. Say what you want about Goldwyn, Mayer, or Harry Cohn, but there’s no way they would have allowed their star to be so out of control.

However, for 2025, life evidently imitates art. The female leads are women, and are thus never to be questioned, any more than is the ridiculous screenplay—also from a woman, Erin Cressida Wilson. Wilson is perhaps best known for The Girl on the Train (2016), a half-baked psychological thriller that at least made money.

Disney has known—for at least two years—that they had a major flop on their hands, but only doubled down. 2025 was not to be a love story, a prince would not save Snow White, and—inexplicably—there would be no real dwarfs in the pic (except for a “bandit” added later). Instead, the geniuses at Disney chose to use grotesque CGI to represent these characters.

“Jonathan,” the prince substitute, is a bandit, and naturally Snow White saves him from the evil queen. Jonathan and Snow White do not kiss at the end, but there is a big dance scene with everyone dressed in white—and that includes all the diverse characters that would surely have existed in medieval Europe at the time.

It is no exaggeration to say that 2025 is one of the biggest failures in the history of movies. Consider that they started off with a beloved property, which no one asked to be remade. And then, the imbeciles at Disney unleashed their culture vandals. But, hey…Leftists can only destroy, right?

Even then, all they had to do was keep Zegler quiet. The movie still would have sucked, but word-of-mouth would only have started to kill it after the first week—not two years before it dropped. The company richly deserves the hundreds of millions in losses predicted.

Back in 2009, Virginia Hammerness, granddaughter of Bank of America founder A.P. Giannini excoriated the management—and rightly so at the time. Too bad that Walt’s heirs are keeping silent.

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Ethel Rosenberg and the Model UN

Michael D. Shaw Feb 22, 2025 @ Mike's Point of View

Ethel Rosenberg and her husband Julius were executed in 1953 for conspiracy to commit espionage. Julius was a key figure in a major spy ring, set up to pass secrets of the atomic bomb to the Soviets. While Ethel was certainly aware of what was going on, her role was limited compared to her husband’s.

Nonetheless, she was indicted to put pressure on Julius, to get him to give up more details of the conspiracy. Indeed, the government was willing to remove the death penalty, only if either of them were to provide more information. They both refused to cooperate. The Rosenbergs were ardent Communists, and believed that they were giving their lives for a great cause.

While the couple maintained their innocence, and were defended at the time by many “useful idiots,” documents from the Venona files, as well as KGB notebooks published by former KGB officer Alexander Vassiliev prove their involvement. Again, Ethel’s role was small. Even their sons now acknowledge that Julius was a spy, while their mother was a bit player, but argue that the death penalty was an overreaction.

The point here is that the term “Ethel Rosenberg” can be used to describe such a true believer that—even given the chance to save her life—would prefer to die for the cause, and leave her children orphans. Children, who were only adopted by Commie activist Abel Meeropol, as all her relatives refused to intervene.

The Model UN is a program that brings in students—starting in middle school and through college—“to cultivate skills and enrich their global affairs knowledge. UNA-USA is dedicated to empowering young Americans with tools and experiences that prepare them to be the next generation of global leaders.”

Typically, the program attracts high-achieving individuals, almost universally with a liberal point of view. These Model UN kids tend to be true believers, and for the most part retain their youthful political views forever—life experience be damned.

You can observe both the Ethel Rosenberg and Model UN stereotypes playing out in real time, as DOGE exposes the massive fraud in our federal government. Moreover, it is hard not to conclude that the entire purpose of many government programs is the opportunity to create graft—and what benefit might flow to the supposed recipients is mostly accidental.

• Despite clear evidence of unimaginable fraud in USAID, the best you’ll get from the Ethel Rosenberg/Model UN crowd is a half-hearted acknowledgement of waste (which “always occurs”) but any real efforts to stem this is “fascist,” promoting a “constitutional crisis.”
• Foes on the Left are quick to complain about Elon Musk and his team being “unelected,” while failing to acknowledge the hundreds of thousands of other unelected bureaucrats who have been part of federal government for more than 100 years.
• The ER/MUN cohort does not seem to care a bit about ungodly Treasury outlays, and somehow argue that the Chief Executive should not have access to audit the gigantic cash outflow. They’re cool with the Treasury essentially putting everything on auto pay.
• If these phonies really were concerned with social welfare and their countless causes du jour, they should welcome the audits—as it would free up money for more social causes, right? Only, they’re not. What does that tell you?

We can also use our old friend: Inductive reasoning.

Going back only to LBJ’s Great Society, we observe that trillions of dollars have been spent on myriad social causes, and yet…

• Poverty and malnutrition still exist
• Reading and writing skills have deteriorated, not improved
• Politicians earning $200K per year can have a net worth of $80 million or more
• Despite a virtually unlimited military budget, we have not won a war since 1945
• Untold thousands of NGOs and consultants have flourished on your tax dollars
• In the face of uncontrolled expenditure, America’s health is not great

You get the idea. As to NGOs, the current notion of a “non-governmental organization” is a misnomer these days, since so many of them are completely supported by government money. As to health, WAAAY too much money is going toward what is sardonically called “white man’s welfare,” in the form of pointless grants to academic medicine.

SO…use your best inductive reasoning, and ask yourselves what we got for all these federal expenditures—based on your overtaxed dollars. That’s why DOGE’s forced day of reckoning scares so many corrupt insiders.

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Victory

Per aspera ad astra

By Michael D. Shaw Nov 20, 2024 @ Mike's Point Of View

Donald Trump’s victory on November 5th has inspired hope in many, and self-absorbed meltdowns in others. As to meltdowns, I’m more interested in reactions OTHER than the obviously rehearsed histrionic performances that have been all over social media. Somehow, the prospect of “I think I’m going to have a breakdown, but first let me log into TikTok, so I can record it for posterity,” doesn’t exactly ring sincere.

Consider Allan Lichtman. Lichtman’s "13 Keys to the White House" was originally developed in 1981, and is claimed to have predicted nine of the last eleven presidential elections. Lichtman missed in 2000 and famously in 2024. People—including Cenk Uygur—heavily criticized Lichtman for his Harris prediction, and Lichtman went nuts on live TV, accusing Uygur of “blasphemy,” and noting that he didn’t need Uygur to call him “stupid.” Evidently not, since many others had already done just that.

In the matter of the 2000 election, Lichtman waffled by saying that he DID predict the popular vote—as if that matters. In short, he is not a gracious loser.

The 13 keys model utilizes the following precepts:

1. Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the US House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.  Advantage: Republicans

2. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.  Argumentative. Biden won the primaries, but to no avail.

3. Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.  Neither

4. Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign. Not a factor

5. Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. Controversial, but advantage to the Dems

6. Long term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.  Advantage: Republicans

7. Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.  Given Ukraine and Afghan wars, Advantage: Republicans

8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.  Advantage: Dems

9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.  Given that Biden was effectively kicked out, Advantage: Republicans

10. Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.  Per number 7, Advantage: Republicans

11. Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. Advantage: Republicans

12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.  Advantage: Republicans

13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. Advantage: Republicans 

If eight or more of the 13 keys are true for the incumbent party, its candidate will win the election—but if fewer than eight are true, the challenger will win.  Any way you slice it, the willfully blind Lichtman violated his own guidelines, and amazingly blamed his failure on an explosion of “disinformation”—in effect blaming the voters. Uygur, to his credit, criticized Lichtman for this condescending point of view.

But then, this idea of blaming the consumer for the failure of a product is not exactly new. In the wake of its many recent Star Wars and Marvel box office disasters, this has been the go-to strategy for Disney. One wonders just how big a bomb the live action remake of Snow White will be. Will anyone at the House of Mouse admit to being the brains behind hiring the insufferable Rachel Zegler?

As far as I can tell, blaming the consumer dates back to the failure of Sony’s Betamax video cassette format, versus VHS. At the time, purists rightly noted that Betamax had better quality, but did not reckon with the longer available recording time offered by VHS. In the early days, recording time was a factor, since the media were expensive. However, that all changed, but not before Beta disappeared due to lack of sales.

At any rate, Beta versus VHS had nowhere near the arrogant “blame the idiot consumer” vibe. It would take 30 or more years for such self-aggrandizement to develop among the elite.

That’s why the most important aspect of Trump’s victory could be the permanent deflation of the elite and the “expert” class. God knows, they’ve caused enough destruction to last several generations. From Robert McNamara’s idiotic fallacy, to Tony Fauci’s mendacious “Give us two weeks to flatten the curve,” these geniuses have had their mettle tested, and have come up snake eyes.

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Celebrity endorsements in this presidential election

Res ipsa loquitur 

Michael D. Shaw, November 4, 2024 @ Mike's Point of View

As has become abundantly clear, candidate Harris is incapable of uttering a single original thought. Thus, she is a slave to the teleprompter. Indeed, there have been several incidents on the campaign trail in which her speech stopped dead when the teleprompter failed.

Who better, then, to speak on her behalf than a rogue’s gallery of celebrities, including Monica Lewinsky, Jennifer Lopez, Michael Keaton, Harrison Ford, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey, and countless others. I guess Harris’ people haven’t got the memo that star power isn’t quite as strong as it once was. You can count the number of movie stars that can “open” a film on the fingers of one hand. And, the music industry is but a faint shadow of what it once was.

As to the celebs, one wonders what’s in it for them, to purposely turn off at least one-half of their market. The only upside is that they will continue—for a while—to be part of that exclusive club of conformists, sycophants, and toadies to “the cause.” Much of Hollywood, except for management, was all in on supporting the Hollywood Ten, choosing to ignore their traitorous affiliations. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

At the same time, there is a not insignificant number of celebs supporting Trump, although most of them are silent about it. I know that there are conservatives in Hollywood, since some years ago, I was a member of a particular organization, and met a lot of them—some of whom would decline to give their names. Really. Others were stars of the Golden Age, and had long ago stopped caring about peer pressure.

There is one important celebrity endorsing Trump, and that is Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. Viganò, of course, is no stranger to the American scene, having been Apostolic Nuncio to the United States from 2011 to 2016. Viganò has been outspoken in his criticism of the current pope, which earned him a charge of “schism” and eventual excommunication.

Before that, he spoke out on the financial scandal of 2012, and had some harsh things to say about how COVID was handled. At this point, his excommunication has about the same effect as Trump’s felony convictions.

On 22 October, he posted an “Open Letter to American Catholics.” But, it can include all people of good will.

Here are some key excerpts (emphasis in the original):

[Y]ou are not simply called to choose between two candidates who happen to be on different political sides but who both nevertheless have the common good at heart in compliance with the Constitution and the Law. No; in this election you must choose between two radically opposed ways of conceiving the government of your Nation: you are called to choose between democracy and dictatorship, between freedom and slavery.

On one side we have candidate Donald J. Trump, who, despite serious problems in his positions – especially in the matter of abortion and assisted procreation – has as his objective the common good and the protection of the fundamental freedoms of citizens. In Donald Trump’s America, every Catholic can practice their Faith and educate their children in it without interference from the State.

On the other side we have a candidate and a party that promotes everything that directly opposes the Faith and Morals of the Catholic Church. In Kamala Harris’ America, Catholics – but also Protestants – are considered fundamentalists to be marginalized and eliminated, and their children are considered the property of the State, which arrogates to itself the right to lead them astray from an early age in both body and soul. Trump’s America can become great and prosperous again. Harris’ America is destined for invasion and for moral, social, and economic destruction: the most ferocious dictatorship.

I repeat: the choice is between a conservative President, who is paying with his very life for his fight against the deep state, and an infernal monster who obeys Satan. For a Catholic, there can be no question: voting for Kamala Harris is morally inadmissible and constitutes a very grave sin. Nor is it morally possible to abstain, because in this war declaring oneself neutral means allying oneself with the enemy.

In these four disastrous years of the Biden-Harris administration, we have had a puppet in the White House and a corrupt and incompetent Vice President who has never stopped lying and deceiving voters about her past and her future. Power is managed by the criminal deep state – whose names and faces we now know – that is responsible for the destruction of your great Nation. And to ensure that the crisis is endless, new war scenarios are continually opening up, in conflicts that no one actually wants, except for those who make enormous profits from them, sacrificing human lives and compromising international stability.

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris: we are not talking about two visions that are a bit different but still part of the normal political back-and-forth. No; we are talking about two diametrically opposed and irreconcilable worlds, in which Trump fights against the deep state and is committed to freeing America from its tentacled grip, while on the opposite side we have a corrupt and blackmailed candidate, an organic part of the deep state, who acts as a puppet in the hands of warmongers like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, of self-proclaimed “philanthropists” like the criminals George Soros and Klaus Schwab, or of characters like Jeffrey Epstein and Sean Combs.

Viganò is about as plain-spoken on this matter as you can get, and joins the proud tradition of those prelates who spoke out against slavery, Nazism, and government tyranny.

A famous ad campaign once proclaimed, “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s real Jewish rye bread.” Likewise, you don’t have to be Catholic to know that Viganò is right.

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Gaslighting for fun and profit

 

Not just a movie anymore 

Michael D. Shaw, Oct 24, 2024 @ Mike's Point of View

The Newport Institute defines “gaslighting” as a form of psychological abuse or manipulation in which the abuser attempts to sow self-doubt and confusion in their victim’s mind. They continue: Typically, gaslighters are seeking to gain power and control over the other person, by distorting reality and forcing them to question their own judgment and intuition.

The term is derived from the title of Gaslight (1944), a classic film based on an earlier British film and a 1938 stage play. In the movie, a man is trying to drive his wife crazy—using a series of deceptions—to allow him to take full charge of her estate, locate missing jewels, and escape a murder rap. The “gaslight” reference refers to flickering gaslights seen, and not imagined, by the wife. The flickering is the result of her husband sneaking into the attic snooping around, and its illumination causes the lights in the rest of the house to flicker.

According to Merriam-Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, “gaslight” was first used in this context in 1956. For you etymologists, the Oxford English Dictionary disagrees, and pegs it as 1961. Who’s gaslighting whom?

As to when we first realized that we were being gaslit, this becomes a little more complicated. In the halcyon days of the mainstream media, when they had a stranglehold on all information, we mere mortals might have gotten the feeling that we were being lied to. But, reliable sources of alternative information were hard to come by in that era. Thus, it was extremely difficult to prove that we were being misled.

Indeed, that’s why the powers-that-be have always hated inductive reasoning.

 Many people would cite the COVID pandemic as the first time they knew they were being gaslit. “Sage” advice from the health authorities was changing on a weekly basis; lockdowns were enforced in a flagrantly inconsistent manner; and the destructive effects of the idiotic public health policies were plain to see, while being officially denied.

Worst of all, the highly touted vaccines did not prevent infection or transmission, even though they were falsely claimed at first to do just that. Never mind the catastrophic side effects.

Gaslighting also occurred when we were told by our betters that old Joe Biden was at the top of his game, even as we observed him fumble around, and have difficulty putting two sentences together. Of course, Biden was removed from the Democratic ticket, even if he currently is the “president.”

No word on how he can be too impaired to run, but be just peachy keen to remain the leader of the free world. Where are all those “investigative journalists” when you really need them?

In the movie, the heroine Paula ultimately realizes that she has been the victim of an elaborate con, and has learned to never listen to her husband anymore. Heck, she taunts him at the end, playing off her supposed insanity.

But what about us, here in the real world? How can so many of us recognize the gaslighting, but yet treat each instance as a “one-off”? That is, after been lied to by the mainstream media countless times, why do we believe a single word they say?

Too bad that in this case, life doesn’t imitate art.

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The Devil Made Me Do It

Now, that explains everything

Michael D. Shaw Oct 10, 2024, @ Mike's Point Of View

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” An earlier version of this appears in the book Quakerism Examined (1836) by John Wilkinson: "One of the artifices of Satan is, to induce men to believe that he does not exist."  There are many other similar quotes extant.

In "Suspects", master criminal Söze hides in plain sight under the persona of Kint, and is thus able to arrange an elaborate scheme to kill off a boatload of rival gangsters. Ironically, this hit list includes the very individuals he hires to pull off a supposed drug heist on the boat. The precise details of how all this comes about are murky, since Kint—being interrogated by US Customs agent Dave Kujan—fabricates a fantasy version of what actually happened.

Belying his “convincing the world he didn’t exist” narrative, Söze is very well known to exist, at least to one of the occupants of the boat, who survives the attack. His description of Söze is transmitted to Kujan, but just a bit too late, and Söze makes good his escape.

The Devil—considered in Jewish and Christian theology as the personal supreme spirit of evil and unrighteousness—is also known as Satan, sometimes referred to as “the Satan” in scriptural references. The word “Satan” is the English transliteration of a Hebrew word for “adversary” in the Bible. “Satan” appears 45 times in the Bible, and has differing roles.

Famously, in Job, he challenges God’s praise of the title character, suggesting—correctly—that Job’s perfect, uncomplaining nature would be shattered by giving him a strong dose of adversity. In essence, God works to build up human righteousness, while Satan strives to undermine it. Thus, Satan cannot create; he can only pervert and destroy. It is then profoundly disturbing that evil Satanic rituals are so common in our everyday life.

How else to explain the debased fascination these days for transgenderism and mutilation surgery? Can there be a more literal destruction of God’s creation other than murder itself?
How else to explain the massive promotion of homosexuality in today’s culture? What can be more unrighteous than perverting the very roles of men and women? And, as if that weren’t enough, the supreme tenet of women’s rights these days is abortion. How monstrously pernicious is this?

Never mind that effective birth control methods and “morning after” pills are readily available. Abortion as a “right” defies the very act of Creation itself, but it’s even more perverse than that.

A fundamental precept of Christianity is that Jesus died for our sins—as in “This is my body, which will be given up for you.” With abortion, the Satanic ritual has it, “This is YOUR body, which will be given up for ME.” For those keeping score at home, the number of abortions actually increased after Roe was overturned.

The notion of “Slouching Towards Gomorrah” was explored by both Joan Didion and Robert Bork. Cold comfort, indeed, that modern scholars try to recast the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah as being inhospitable to strangers, rather than homosexuality. I know…the Devil made them do it.

The Biggest Losers in the Debate

Yeah, this is fun to watch 

By Michael D. Shaw July 6,2024 @ Mike's Point of View

I'm only calling what occurred on June 27th a “debate” because that term was universally applied to the no-audience/muted microphone weenie roast in which Joe Biden’s…uh, limitations were exposed for all to see. (As if this had not been evident for years.)

The Media—It is worth remembering that even though FDR garnered heavy support from the media, there were nonetheless some major outlets, including the Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News, that went against the trend. Lest we forget, there was definitely some pushback at a press conference on February 17, 1942, mere weeks after Pearl Harbor.

These days, though, based on a sick combination of Trump Derangement Syndrome and a complete lack of awareness of what the media is supposed to be about in a free society, the Fourth Estate has become nothing more than stenographers for the Democratic Party. Thus, they would have you believe that they were shocked…shocked at how impaired Biden appeared during the debate.

Perhaps, some of them really were shocked, given that their minds had been clouded for so long.

The media’s problem now is how to proceed. Amid calls for Biden to step down, there were an equal number for him to stay the course. Presumably, the prospect of a Trump presidency is so terrible that having a demented old man in office to face the likes of Putin and Xi—among a host of other responsibilities—is preferable.

In certain cases, those who did call for him to get out of the race felt it necessary to soften their position by referring to him as a “beloved” figure. Biden can be called a lot of things, but “beloved” would not be on a list of the top 500. Further gaslighting included references to his wonderful policies, without mentioning any specifics at all. Maybe because there aren’t any, what with inflation, crime, and open borders.

Perhaps, the media’s pathetic performance will finally cause the public to lose all confidence in this institution—which has been a national travesty for more than 50 years.

The Democratic Party—Apparently, the brain trust in charge figured that Trump’s goose would be cooked with their vile lawfare—only that didn’t work out quite the way they planned. Whoever is running things was quite happy with the status quo, whereby a corrupt and senile puppet, along with his grasping wife and joke of a vice president, can be their puppets. In fact, they were so happy with this arrangement that they didn’t seem to notice how things were deteriorating.

So…what to do now? Biden and Dr. Jill will surely not go gently into that good night. And, even if they do, who becomes the new standard bearer? The widely mocked and disliked Kamala Harris? The man who arguably destroyed paradise more than Jerry Brown…Gavin Newsome? Michelle Obama? Hillary Clinton? Will they try to find an effeminate, non-threatening Halfrican American state senator again?

Don’t forget that bypassing Kamala Harris will be a massive turn-off to that most ardent faction of Democrats—black women. And, there’s a chance that this same faction may start to think about why they should even identify with a half-Indian half-Jamaican, who is married to a Jewish white guy. Heck, maybe they’ll even wonder why they ever supported Biden—a big pal with the likes of ardent segregationists James Eastland and Herman Talmadge.

But, the biggest Biden problem of all is articulating exactly when he became impaired.

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Will the circle be (un)broken?

Beating the unbeatable FDR Democrat coalition

Michael D. Shaw May 16, 2024  @ Mike's Point Of View

Many readers will recognize the title of this piece as being from an old gospel tune, written way back in 1907. The lyrics were reworked a few decades later, but the basic idea remains: A bereaved person wonders if he will meet his departed loved one when he himself leaves this mortal coil. Here’s a nice rendition of the song.

The circle under consideration in this article is a collection of disparate groups that have enabled the stranglehold maintained on much of this country by the Democrat party. I’m certainly no fan of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945), but give credit where it’s due. He broke the power of Tammany Hall, and he created the “collection” I speak of.

FDR’s Democrat power grouping included the poor of all races; essentially every conceivable minority group; union members; a large percentage of Catholics; nearly all Jews; a significant number of farmers; anti-Establishment types of all description; white Southerners; and those who hated Prohibition.

As to Prohibition, it should be noted that the Republicans were the dominant political party from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of the Depression, and saw fit to wrap themselves in the supposed “morality” of the temperance movement. Few Left-wing historians (and that’s most of them) are willing to admit that Republican Herbert Hoover, who ran against FDR in 1932, proposed a far more socialist agenda than did Roosevelt.

Unfortunately for Hoover, he was perceived as the captain of the Titanic, and that, coupled with his relatively lukewarm support of Prohibition, did him in. With his loss came the Democrat steamroller.

So how fares FDR’s collection currently? Today’s poor are of course far more affluent than in the 1930s, and since they are already the beneficiaries of scores of entitlement programs, are less interested in politics than their 1930s predecessors.

The minority groups—many of whom have benefited from decades of Civil Rights legislation—are steadily being turned off by the very non-FDR issues of abortion, gay and transgender rights, the decline of public schools, and the deteriorating economy. Blacks are waking up to the fact that they are heavily campaigned to every four years, but see scant attention being paid to high crime rates, and the culture rot being promoted by the elites.

Jews who are not Orthodox have been some the staunchest supporters of the Dems, but are finally waking up to the fact that antisemitism has always been the purview of the Left. One can hardly imagine a greater perfidy than the notion—eagerly portrayed by propagandists of the Allies—that Nazism was a movement of the Right. I guess no one noticed that “Nazi” was an acronym for National Socialist German Workers' Party.

And, at the very same time, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was regarded as a dominion of the Left.

Those arguing that the socialist movements of Hitler and Mussolini were on the Right hung their hat on the fact that nominal private ownership of business was still allowed, conveniently forgetting that those very businesses were strictly controlled by the government.

At any rate, all but the most diehard Tikkun Olam Jews are acknowledging the virulent antisemitism of the Left. Practicing Catholics have long been turned off by amoral proclamations of the Dems, but some are still laboring under tired prejudices of the past. Biden making the sign of the cross before an abortion speech was not a good look.

With improvements in technology, farmers are doing a whole lot better than they did in the 1930s, and are drifting away from the Dems. The white South became 100 percent Democrat during the Civil War, but that started to change 50 years ago.

The last remaining Democrat bastion consists of the major cities, but owing to crime, massive corruption, and minorities leaving the fold, this too is starting to disintegrate. The disgraceful performance of such degenerate officials as Alvin Bragg and Fani Willis are proving to be a major embarrassment, and a “Come to Jesus” moment for Blacks trapped for generations in the Dem swamp.

I think that THIS circle will be broken.

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Isms and hate crimes

Forget the mind control

Michael D. Shaw Apr 30, 2024 @ Mike's Point of View

The modern civil rights movement was jump-started by the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision of 1954. Brown reversed the doctrine of “Separate but Equal” that itself had been established in the other landmark case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). While diehard segregationists bemoaned Brown, cynics at the time observed that precedent is vitally important—until it isn’t.

Racial segregation still exists in housing and schools, but the Civil Rights Act (1964) represented the first major federal foray in its quest to eliminate racism. Indeed, as a child of the 1960s I can recall that a day scarcely could go by without hearing about how we must clear our hearts and minds of the eighth deadly sin of racism. Soon after came sexism. In the wake of the October 7th attacks, we hear anew of antisemitism.

With the 1998 murder of James Byrd, Jr. came a new term: “Hate crime.” Somehow, Byrd’s brutal murder was even worse, since the offenders apparently hated him. Or did they simply hate all Black people? Are there other classes of homicides whereby the killer loves the victim? Can a hate crime only be perpetrated on a minority victim? Is it a crime if I simply hate someone, but do them no harm? Is it OK for MSNBC to hate Donald Trump?

Of course, none of these questions was ever explored, and those who—by their own testimony—do not hate anyone, can feel proud of how virtuous they are. Yet, it was noted at the time that the very notion of a “hate crime” opens the door—wide—to the dangerous realm of thought crimes.

Prejudices of all sorts, originally fueled by ancient tribalism, have been with us since the beginning of time, and they always will be. In many cases, it is simply prudent to pre-judge an individual, for your own safety. Proverbs notwithstanding, everyone judges a book by its cover. If appearances didn’t matter, there would be no fashion or makeup industries, all cars would look the same, and all packaging would be generic.

In the most practical sense, it really doesn’t matter whether or not you hate that guy, and for whatever stupid reason, as long as you do not harm him.

To be sure, we are admonished in the Sermon on the Mount “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) And, famously, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’  But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27-28)

These passages, and those that accompany them, are attainable, but to Jesus’ audience—and to most imperfect humans—are aspirational. We can start off with the Golden rule: “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 7:12)

Self-control and the Golden Rule will take us a lot farther a lot faster, than trying to cleanse someone’s heart and mind of hate and prejudice. Even if we lose that opportunity to virtue signal.

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Whatever happened to... (Part 3)

Yet more painful observations

 Michael D. Shaw April 17, 2024 @ Mike's Point of View

Whatever happened to… 

Morality—A good working definition of “morality” is “A doctrine or system of ideas concerned with conduct.”1 Bad conduct goes all the way back to Genesis chapter 3. In chapter 2, Adam is expressly warned by God not to eat the fruit of a particular tree—the tree of knowledge of good and evil—or else he will die. Evidently, this message is passed on to Eve, who informs the serpent in chapter 3 that she is forbidden to eat that fruit lest she die.

Ah, but the cunning serpent knows only too well that Eve believes that the fruit is poisonous, and would kill her instantly, rather than her simply dying eventually. So, Eve is tricked in a way, but nonetheless exercises her free will, and disobeys God. Likewise, Adam takes the fruit, and later tries to blame Eve for his indiscretion. For this act of willful disobedience, the couple is expelled from Eden.

Consider that the entire system of morality in Eden consisted of only one rule. Yet, the sole residents of this paradise were only too happy to chuck it all, and be sent out to the real world, where they would have to earn a living by the sweat of their brows.

Alas, things don’t improve from there. The eldest son of Adam and Eve, Cain, murders his own brother Abel (Genesis 4:8). In chapter 6, God decides to destroy the world—except for a small remnant—since people had become so wicked. Genesis chapter 27 gives us the story of Jacob’s deception of his father Isaac—as orchestrated by his mother Rebekah. Chapter 37 describes Jacob’s son Joseph being sold into slavery by his own brothers.

The more detailed moral code of the Ten Commandments would come generations later (Exodus 20). Even so, the Old Testament chronicles all sorts of immoral behavior, not the least of which was King David arranging for the death of Uriah, to get his wife Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11). Cold comfort, indeed, that David was a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14).

The New Testament provides more lessons for good conduct, including the beautiful Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5). Yet, slavery is seemingly tolerated (Ephesians 6:5).

Turning to the secular world, evil has always been with us, and as governments grew stronger and technology improved, it could be carried out on a far grander scale—all for a good cause, of course. Thus, the inconceivable devastation of World War II— whereby horrible dictators in Europe and Asia were replaced with different horrible dictators in Europe and Asia—is celebrated by many to this day as some sort of triumph of civilization.

In the aftermath of this war, except for Pearl Harbor, our own American homeland was unscathed; so attention turned to making “improvements” on our domestic situation. All sorts of “rights” were discovered, including one to be free of religion. Not surprisingly, within ten years of the school prayer cases of the early 1960s, we would see promotion of abortion and homosexuality.

Voices at the time, including the Vatican’s, warned of the consequences, but these were mocked as being contrary to our newfound Sexual Revolution. Still, few could have predicted the travesties of gay “marriage” and mutilation surgery to advance transgenderism.

So…what happened to morality, you ask? Our human race started off compromised, and while the boundaries of civilization hold back the Law of the Jungle, our collective mortality has certainly not improved. Some might argue that it has only deteriorated.

“Morality.” Merriam-Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/unabridged/morality. Accessed 17 Apr. 2024.

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