Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
1. Persuasion
2. Lawfare
3. Violence
4. Pebbled
5. Commission
6. Maricopa
1. Persuasion. Several persuasion plays of note over the last week courtesy of Scott Adams. While most will work to varying degrees, the most important thing about all of them is the use of language against an opponent. Some of these will obviously work better than others. All are worth trying to some extent.
- First up is the notion of ‘identifying’. It is used by the LGBTWTF contingent as essentially a get out of jail free or shut up card. Trouble is that Our Side doesn’t use it enough. For instance, the growing call for vaccine passports, either papers from the CDC or yellow six-pointed stars sold in a couple stores in the SWUS, would logically lead one to simply replying that you identify as vaccinated and dare whoever is asking to do something about it. Identifying as vaccinated has more federal law backing it (HIPPA) than anything backing the LGBTWTF crowd ever thought of. Use it early and often. Might even want to identify as masked even when you’re not wearing one so as to do your best Abbie Hoffman impression as you maximize the contradictions.
- Second would be to figure out which arguments not to use. For example, calling someone (anyone) a Marxist, hypocrite or anything similar won’t work, as neither term has any persuasive value. So, figure something else to do. For the hypocrite, the play is to take a page out of Alinsky and hold the participant to their own rules as strongly as humanly possible. Another would be to engage in aggressive compliance in whatever the left wants you to do. Comply so aggressively that it demonstrates that whatever they are demanding is just as a large exercise in lunatic behavior that you believe it is. And never forget, that the most powerful word in persuasion is ‘yes” generally followed by you doing what they want most decidedly in a way they are neither expecting nor are wanting.
- Persuasive branding on Black Lives Matter is superb. From a pure persuasion standpoint, it is nearly bulletproof, and genius, as to criticize it means you are (in their world) racist. So how do you comply with and support the notion of Black Lives Matter? One way would be to take the High Ground (High Ground is an important persuasive strategy) and note that simply mattering is a terribly low hurdle for any human life. In the big scheme of things, it is a loser strategy. How about doing well? How about improving your lot in life and the lives of your children, family and neighbors? Shoot higher. Be inspirational. Looking backwards never works for those on the short end of the stick, though it works wonderfully for those endlessly reopening the wound, keeping that wound from healing, the leaders of that particular movement. Think of it as a poker game. You make your money playing the hand you just got dealt. You make no money on the last hand.
- Final thoughts are about Critical Race Theory, which is essentially a strategy used to transfer resources from one group to another (and particularly to their leaders) by guilting those targeted into submission. It is entirely based on guilt, “I’m having a hard time of it because you (and/or) your ancestors did this.” Once again, a strategy looking backwards at the last hand. Much like our discussion on racism, the solution is not to end racism, but to learn life strategies so that racism (or your color) simply doesn’t matter anymore. These would include getting a good education. Never resisting arrest. Getting married and staying married. There are many more, but embracing any combination of these is a good start. Anybody (especially minorities) who can figure out how to do all of these will excel in life rather than simply matter.
2. Lawfare. You know commercial space has hit the mainstream when the POS lawyers are getting involved and companies are using the legal system and government regulators against industry leaders. Two stories this week, both have SpaceX under fire by competitors using the legal and regulatory system to obstruct and harass them. The first story has satellite operator Viasat asking the FCC to stop SpaceX from launching more Starlink satellite internet and communications satellites pending an environmental review of the planned and approved 4,400 satellite constellation. Viasat provides broadband internet satellite service based on geosynchronous satellites and is about to be destroyed in the marketplace by Starlink as they go live (which they are already doing). The FCC granted approval of the Starlink constellation which includes considerations for light pollution, reentry debris, and orbital debris. Being based in Carlsbad, CA, I expect Viasat will find a Ninth Circus federal judge who agrees with them, though neither the FAA which licenses launches or FCC which licenses communications satellites agree with the complaint as they both continue to approve SpaceX Starlink requests. The second story took place a month ago, after Jeff Bezos Blue Origin and Dynetics filed challenges to NASA award of a contract for a lunar lander to SpaceX. The nearly $3 billion contract calls for a manned lander by 2024. NASA was supposed to issue two contracts but chose SpaceX as a single source, which makes some sort of sense as SpaceX is the only one of the three that has actually put anything into orbit. In response, NASA ordered a halt to SpaceX work on the lander which is expected to be based on the Starship design. This led to a rather blue Musk tweet about Bezos’ Blue Origin “Can’t get it up (to orbit)” April 26.
3. Violence. Lee Smith in Tablet last week wrote about how the new democrat party of oligarchs and technocrats enforce its unpopular oligarchies on its blue state clients. They do it the old fashioned way via the use of street violence to keep their clients in line. Last week’s example were rampages of pro-Palestinian protesters hunting down Jews on American streets in LA and NYC and beating them. The current democrat party is a top-down structure paid for by the corporate establishment. It controls almost all institutions, including today the (In)Justice Department. It has lots of money. What it doesn’t have are voters. Solution? Pack together various interest groups and turn them into clients and threaten the ever living rat whoozits out of them on a regular basis. On the outside, this looks really strange, with LGBTWTF democrats marching with Palestinian democrats in support of a pro-Palestine Terror Wing, Hamas. For the most part, these paid blue militias have stayed out of red areas, opting instead to loot and burn blue inner cities and their businesses over the course of the last year. This is all about fear, as should you mouth off in opposition to whatever your democrat masters want, you won’t like what happens to your business, your family and your home, which is a little more serious than losing your job when you buck the internal consensus. In this, democrat political activities have turned into little more than a protection racket.
4. Pebbled. Mark Hamilton, MGen, USA, (Ret) has been writing essays on the saga of the Pebble Mine in Suzanne Downing’s Must Read Alaska over the couple months. The series is entitled Pebbled. These pieces are quite good and describe the internal machinations leading to the current situation. Newer pieces have links back to all six previous pieces, all well worth your reading. After leaving as President of the University of Alaska, he worked for the Pebble Partnership for three years. His most recent column laments the head start that the anti-development crowd gets here in Alaska against any (all) projects. What he is missing is that this is once again a persuasion play, which the pro-development people simply aren’t playing. This allows the anti’s to run around endlessly threatening the end of the known universe (or something near it) should any project proceed. I’ve been up here nearly 30 years and have seen every single thing used as the gateway drug to the next great nuclear winter. They even managed to delay and obstruct for three years widening of an existing rail tunnel through five miles of mountain so road traffic could make it from Anchorage to Whittier. If I were to engage on Pebble today, I would talk about the Green Nude Eel and all the rare earth metals needed for renewable energy. I would point out that those metals are found at Pebble (a gold and copper mine) and at the end of the proposed Ambler Road into the mining district on the south side of the Brooks Range. I would talk about the CCP, who has been importing fentanyl into the US for decades, murdering tens of thousands of Americans yearly now in control of most of those rare earths mostly because like the proverbial honey badger, they just don’t care about the environment. There is a rock solid case to be made for Pebble as a rare earths mine here in Alaska. Or would the greens rather trust the CCP who refuse to stop shipping fentanyl into the US? Tie ‘em together and go for it.
5. Commission. The Pelosi – Schumer 1/06 Commission failed to override a filibuster by senate Republicans last week. Six Republicans voted for the Commission including Lisa Murkowski (R, AK), Susan Collins (R, ME), Ben Sasse (R, NE), Bill Cassidy (R, LA), the never disappointing Mitt Romney (R, UT), and Rob Portman (R, OH). Four of these voted to unconstitutionally impeach then private citizen Donald Trump in Feb, claiming he incited an insurrection. As an aside, the notion that a selfie-taking, unarmed mob would be able to successfully complete an insurrection against the remaining superpower on this planet is laughable on its face. That being said, Murkowski and Romney, still feeding on their notion that all things Orange Man must be summarily removed from the face of the earth happily played into the democrat attempt to investigate Trump supporters into traitors. None of these supposedly competent US Senators asked any obvious questions or made any obvious demands of either house or senate leadership. These questions would include but not be limited to:
- Why has the complete video captured by Capital and Capital Police during the event not been released to the public?
- What happened to the Capital Policeman who shot Ashli Babbitt? Why was he not prosecuted? What evidence was presented? Who made the decisions not to prosecute?
- How many requests for additional forces by Capitol Police were made to house and senate leadership in the weeks before the event? What happened to those requests? Who (if any), turned them down and why?
There’s a lot we don’t know about the event. Perhaps it is time that we found out. Difficult to do that if your only interest is in bashing Trump supporters for being Trump supporters.
6. Maricopa. Final piece is perhaps the most fun, where the Arizona Secretary of State, one Katie Hobbs, a democrat, sent a letter to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors warning that she may decertify election machines used by the county in the 2020 election if they were turned over to the organization conducting the Arizona State Senate audit of those election results. On the face of this, it seems that this is yet another in a long line of efforts to obstruct the audit. But if you look just a bit deeper, it is an acknowledgement that these machines can be hacked, something no single democrat or media outlet has admitted might be true over the last 6 months. She claims to be worried about chain of custody, cyber hacking, security and integrity of the machines, something alleged by Republicans since Nov 3 to the deafening dismissive laughter of the democrats and their media cheerleaders. If the Board of Supervisors lose chain of custody of the machines, they shouldn’t be used in future elections. I couldn’t agree more. Nice of her to admit there is a problem.
More later –
- AG