Reality inversion of the day

But trust a book written by Bronze Age anonymities as a source of truth about everything, and count on your Invisible Friend Who Lives in The Sky to solve all your problems and, why, everything will be just fine.

So the question recurs once again: Are these guys idiots, or are they whores who specialize in servicing idiots?

Posted in General | Leave a comment

Stolen sheepskin

Now choose to perish or to learn that the anti-mind is the anti-life.

Ayn Rand; Galt’s speech, Atlas Shrugged

I had grown up among engineers, and I could remember the engineers of the twenties very well indeed: their open, shining intellects, their free and gentle humor, their agility and breadth of thought, the ease with which they shifted from one engineering field to another, and, for that matter, from technology to social concerns and art.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Of the Trump family’s many offenses against ordinary decency, this one will probably draw the least attention but is, personally, the most annoying.

Melania Trump’s professional biography says the wife of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump began modeling at age 16, but she only began working full-time after obtaining a degree. She graduated “in design and architecture at University in Slovenia,” according to the bio as of Monday night:

[ … ]

It’s a good story, but it doesn’t appear to be true.

Melania Trump never earned a university degree in architecture ― she dropped out of college after her freshman year, according to her biographers. Still, she claims to have a degree from “university in Slovenia.”

There is more:

Later, in America, after meeting Donald Trump and officially becoming his partner, Melania Knauss told the media that she got her degree in architecture and design. This was almost certainly done in consultation with Trump and his advisors, as they were desperate to give off the impression that the Slovenian model was not just beautiful, but also smart and well-educated.

I feel about these claims, I guess, about as ex-soldiers must feel about loudmouth barflies who claim to have been part of some dramatic military action but who were never even inducted.

Dawn and I hold four engineering degrees between us, and Dawn had begun work on the Ph.D. at Virginia Tech when we adopted John. What is more, we paid for those degrees ourselves. We’ve done the hard work, and passed-up plenty of entertainments to instead master the arcana of our fields, and a glittery fake who plagiarizes and drops-out and tries to get by with one scam after another is not one of us.

But she is perfect for the intellectually corrupt embarrassment that the Republican Party has become.

Posted in General | Leave a comment

Quote for the day

“I’m worried that I will be the last Republican president.”

George W. Bush

Honestly, at this exact moment I’m worried that he might not be.

Posted in General | Leave a comment

God is still a Republican

Personally, this is painful to watch. Y’all have been warned.

Posted in General | Leave a comment

Trump’s achievement

I am obliged to confess I should sooner live
in a society governed by the first two thousand
names in the Boston telephone directory
than in a society governed by the two thousand
faculty members of Harvard University.

William F. Buckley, Jr.

If Donald Trump may be said to have achieved anything this dismal campaign season, it surely is this: He has killed that sentimental con about the ‘wisdom of the people.’

An awful lot of the people, ladies and gentlemen, are vicious, amoral, short-sighted idiots who want only to jab a thumb in their betters’ eyes (evangelicals fall overwhelmingly into this group) — no matter the cost. Thus Trump, who has offered only insults — and not yet even one serious policy proposal.

America has been here before. Recall H.L. Mencken’s magisterial dismissal of William Jennings Bryan.

He was born with a roaring voice, and it had the trick of inflaming half-wits. His whole career was devoted to raising those half-wits against their betters, that he himself might shine.

And that, really, is everything that needs to be said about Trump.

Posted in General | Leave a comment