#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
You know The Complete List of SJW is going to be important, because the SJWs are already starting to criticize and vandalize it. Time to lock it down, Cynic in Chief. Email me for some admins.
My suggestion is to protect the main page so only admins can edit it, protect the existing pages that have decent proof of SJW already, and have the admins add the new pages to the main page as they come in.
Also, block the vandal’s account. Be a hard target.
It’s been interesting to see the reaction of SJWs on Twitter to The Complete List of SJW. The mere announcement of its existence has both SJWs and moderates alarmed:
time cube denier @yung_kacho
oh vox. never stop being batshit insaneAna @ #SweetsJam @SpaceDoctorPhD
Excuse me, why am I not on your blacklist? Can’t even bully people properly, what a mess./wooo/’sDolphZiggler @DZwooo
“Have you now, or ever been, a Social Justice Warrior?”Mariconcito @armlessphelan
You’re an idiot. You don’t fight censorship and blacklists with censorship and blacklists.Big Dog Barack @BarackSaysWooo
I HAVE IN MY HANDS A LIST OF 50 STATE REPRESENTATIVES WHO HAVE TIES TO THE SJW PARTY/M/ischief Reborn @Mischief_Arises
Can you build a waiting list for the gas chamber and put yourself on it? ThanksAnonymous Damn Crow @CrowReturns1
What is this? A list of people you plan to harass? Don’t even think about it.Anonymous Damn Crow @CrowReturns1
Looks like a list of people targeted for harassmentAnonymous Damn Crow Retweeted Supreme Dark Lord
This is a list of people targeted for harassment. Really sucks. #Anonymousdeepseadiva @thedeepseadiva
LMAOO this is the funniest thing I’ve ever seenNightwing @Daltimus_Prime
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HOLY SHIT. Whatever happened to “being the bigger person” and “not stooping to their level?”
Notice the wide variety of conventional responses. We have the Lolipop response, the “I’m telling Dad” response, the “it’s not me, it’s you” response, the “aren’t you above this?” response, and the McCarthy response.
Translation: the idea that their actions will be tracked and they will be identified and potentially held responsible scares them.
This is why it is absolutely vital to be accurate and conservative in identifying SJWs. They are going to try to transform what is quite clearly a list of harassers into a false claim of being harassed. Don’t give them any ammo; only definite and self-defined SJWs who can be confirmed to have attempted to disemploy or no-platform people in defense of social justice ideals should be included. And take the time to provide the archived evidence of their SJW activity or self-designation. The stricter we are, the more effective the list will be over time.
As for the idea of not stooping to their level, I am the Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil. We delve deeper than they even imagine.
Is it possible David Cameron is a secret Leave? Because short of growing a Hitler stache and dressing in a EU fascist uniform, complete with a blue-and-yellow armband, it’s hard to imagine how David Cameron could more aggressively drive the British people towards #Brexit:
Thousands march on No10 calling for Cameron to quit over tax revelations: Under-fire PM admits ‘I should have handled it better’ and agrees to publish his returns amid Panama Papers scandal
Protesters called for Mr Cameron to resign after he admitted profiting from more than £30k in an offshore tax haven. Revelations about Mr Cameron’s financial affairs followed a leak of 11 million documents held by Mossack Fonseca. PM’s ratings now lower than Jeremy Corbyn with 56% saying they did not think he had been ‘open and transparent’. Speaking at the Tory Spring Conference, Mr Cameron admitted he botched the handling of the row over his finances.
He’s also botched the handling of the most important political decision of his time, which is the recovery of British sovereignty.
Wonderful timing from Wikileaks.
I don’t know if the Prime Minister will resign, but he most certainly should follow the lead of Iceland’s prime minister and do so. He’s a horrendous hypocrite, he’s openly taken sides against the nation he is supposed to govern, and he has zero credibility.
This looks like a Labor protest, but if the Conservatives join them, as they should, Cameron will have no choice but to step down in disgrace. It’s time for Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage to step up and demand his resignation.
A freshman at the University of Texas receives a Very Important Lesson in diversity:
University of Texas freshman Haruka Weiser wrapped up a class at the drama building about 9:30 p.m. She called a friend to say she was on her way, according to an Austin police affidavit.
She never made it.
The remains of Weiser, a first-year theater and dance major, were found about 10:30 a.m. Tuesday in a creek near the Etter-Harbin Alumni Center, on the university campus in Austin, not far from the school’s football stadium, officials said. An autopsy noted trauma to the body and the death was termed a homicide.
Investigators “don’t have a clue what the motive” was for the homicide, Acevedo said….
Not a clue. No idea at all. Who could possibly figure out what might have led to the first murder on the UT campus since 1966? I guess we’ll never know.
Say what you will about diversity on campus, but you cannot deny that it is educational.
It occurs to me that it will be helpful to begin compiling a list of confirmed SJWs, both for those who work for SJW-converged organizations and want to add to their collection as well as for those who wish to keep their organizations free of the creatures.
In either case, it will be useful to know if an individual is an advocate of an ideological movement that promotes the politicization of the workplace, insists that all individuals and organizations make social justice their primary objective, and seeks to disemploy or no-platform everyone who rejects their principles or refuses to submit to their ever-shifting Narrative.
Here is a useful start:
The organizers of LambdaConf, now in its third year, describe it as “one of the largest, most diverse gatherings of functional programmers in the world”. This year, it selected Curtis Yarvin as a speaker—a man known as a founder and advocate of an ideological movement that promotes racist bigotry, and as an apologist for slavery.
Yarvin’s selection as a speaker says to marginalized people that their humanity is considered merely another matter for debate. LambdaConf cannot live up to its goal of being a “friendly community of like-minded souls” when it does not protect current and potential members of that community who are vulnerable to those who would deny their humanity.
We believe that functional programming should warmly welcome those who have been systemically excluded from participating in programming communities. We strongly object to LambdaConf’s actions, which are a step backwards as we work together to share functional programming with a wide audience.
April 8th, 2016
Joseph Abrahamson (LambdaConf 2015 speaker)
Andy Adams-Moran
Carlo Angiuli (Carnegie Mellon University)
Mario Aquino (co-organizer of Strange Loop, The Climate Corporation)
Morgan Astra
Lennart Augustsson
Timothy Baldridge (developer at Cognitect)
Gershom Bazerman (co-organizer Compose Conference, LambdaConf 2015 speaker)
Josh Bohde
James Brechtel
Travis Brown (Typelevel)
Kevin Burke
Harold Carr (LambdaConf 2014, 2015 speaker)
Chris C Cerami
Manuel Chakravarty (UNSW Australia; Haskell language, libraries & tools contributor)
Tim Chevalier
Kat Chuang (co-organizer Compose Conference)
Athan Clark
Alex Clemmer (Microsoft, !!Con co-founder)
Declan Conlon
Laurence E. Day (Haskell developer, Standard Chartered Bank)
Reid Draper (Helium)
Richard Eisenberg (U. of Pennsylvania, GHC implementor, LambdaConf 2015 speaker)
Mark Farrell (LambdaConf 2015 speaker)
Richard Feldman (LambdaConf 2015 speaker)
Jonathan Fischoff
Adam Foltzer (Galois; Haskell.org Committee; LambdaConf 2015 speaker)
Kenneth Foner (U. of Pennsylvania, co-organizer Hac Phi)
Phil Freeman (PureScript; speaker, LambdaConf 2014, 2015)
Harry Garrood
Gabriel Gonzalez
Austin Haas
Coda Hale
Elana Hashman
Pat Hickey (Helium)
Jenn Hillner (Cognitect)
Libby Horacek (Position Development)
John D. Hume
Juan Pedro Villa Isaza (Stack Builders)
Dan Peebles
Ranjit Jhala (University of California, San Diego; LambdaConf 2015 speaker)
Joseph Kiniry (Research Lead, Galois; CEO and Chief Scientist, Free & Fair, LambdaConf 2015 contributor)
Edward Kmett (Haskell developer, HacBoston organizer)
Geoffery S. Knauth (Lifelong Friend of GNU)
Lindsey Kuper (Intel Labs; !!Con co-founder; ICFP Steering Committee member)
Justin Leitgeb (CTO & Co-Founder, Stack Builders)
Aaron Levin (SoundCloud)
Simon Marlow (co-author of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler)
Vincent Marquez (LambdaConf 2015/2016 speaker)
Chris Martens (UC Santa Cruz)
Conor McBride (Mathematically Structured Programming group, University of Strathclyde)
Andi McClure (LambdaConf 2015 speaker)
Bartosz Milewski (keynote speaker: LambdaCon 2015, LambdaDays 2016)
Alex Miller (Organizer of Strange Loop, Clojure team at Cognitect)
Richard Minerich (co-organizer Compose Conference, NYC F# User Group)
Adriaan Moors (Scala team lead at Lightbend)
Jared Morrow (Helium)
David Nolen (Cognitect)
Liam O’Connor (UNSW Australia)
Erik Osheim (Typelevel)
Daniel Patterson (member/owner, Position Development)
Greg Pfeil (SlamData)
Isaac Potoczny-Jones (Author of Haskell Cabal, Former Haskell Prime Chair)
Prabhakar Ragde (University of Waterloo)
Tavis Rudd (Unbounce; Polyglot Software Meetup & Conference)
Miles Sabin (Underscore Consulting and Typelevel)
Tom Santero (Helium; MoonConf co-organizer)
Kyle Schmidt
Austin Seipp (Glasgow Haskell Compiler maintainer, ATX Haskell founder)
Amar Shah (LambdaConf 2016 speaker – cancelled)
Chung-chieh Shan (Indiana University; Haskell Symposium steering committee chair)
Ghadi Shayban
Satnam Singh
Aditya Siram (LambdaConf 2016 speaker)
Leon P Smith
Jon Sterling (SlamData; PhD student, Carnegie Mellon University; LambdaConf 2015 speaker)
Bodil Stokke (LambdaConf 2016 keynote speaker – cancelled)
Asumu Takikawa (Racket developer)
Patrick Thomson (Helium)
Seth Tisue (Scala team at Lightbend)
José Manuel Calderón Trilla (Galois, Inc.)
Stew O’Connor (Typelevel, speaker: Lambdaconf 2015)
David Van Horn (University of Maryland)
Malcolm Wallace (Haskell developer at Standard Chartered Bank)
John Wiegley
Brent Yorgey (Hendrix College; former Haskell core library & Haskell.org committees)Additional Signatories:
Colin Barrett, 4/9/2016
Rob Rix (GitHub, Inc.), 04/09/16
Morgan Chen, 4/9/2016
To this list we can add obvious SJWs such as Anita Sarkeesian, John Flynt aka Brianna Wu (SpaceKat), Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Amber Scott (Beamdog), Dee Pennyway (Beamdog).
If you know others, add them in the comments and eventually we’ll create a PDF that can be distributed with the SJW Attack Survival Guide.
It has been brought to my attention, by several critics, that we of the Rabid Puppies have unfairly focused our attention on the Hugo Awards, and that it is only due to the unique nature of the Hugo Awards rules that our presence is able to make itself felt.
It has been suggested, for example, that were we to turn our attention to other awards in the field, with other, more democratic systems, that our dearth of numbers would become apparent to all and sundry.
Which is why, sweet, slavering Puppies, I would direct your attention to the venerable Locus Awards, that bastion of science fiction history, where Tor Books has won the Best Publisher award for 27 straight years, and which we are informed is more representative of the science fiction mainstream than the elitist Hugo and Nebula Awards. For those of you who were unable to afford the entry fee or otherwise missed registering for MidAmericaCon II, this is your opportunity to respond to the Call of the Dark and run with the Puppies.
You can enter your ballot here; though keep in mind that the voting ends in one week, on April 15th. My recommendations are as follows, although in many cases you will have to write them in, since Locus mysteriously tends to leave books published by Baen Books and Castalia House off its list of recommendations.
An unfortunate oversight, no doubt.
UPDATE: SJW author Matthew Woodring Stover doesn’t take the idea of expanded inclusivity well.
Matthew Woodring Stover April 08, 2016 12:40 PM
You better hope we never meet in person, Beale. I will knock out all your nazi teeth. Same warning goes for Wright and Correia.”
It’s rather cute that he thinks he would be permitted an audience with the Supreme Dark Lord. Now, where were we? Ah, yes.
Best SF Novel
1 Golden Son, Pierce Brown (Del Rey)
2 Seveneves, Neal Stephenson (Morrow)
3 Somewhither, John C. Wright (Castalia House)
4 Agent of the Imperium, Marc Miller, (Far Future)
5 A Borrowed Man, Gene Wolfe (Tor)
1 Son of the Black Sword, Larry Correia (Baen)
2 The Aeronaut’s Windlass, Jim Butcher (Roc)
3 Uprooted, Naomi Novik (Del Rey)
4 The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro (Knopf)
5. A Net of Dawn and Bones, C. Chancy (Amazon Digital Services)
Best YA Book
1 Half a War, Joe Abercrombie (Del Rey; Harper Voyager UK)
2 Half the World, Joe Abercrombie (Del Rey)
3 The Shepherd’s Crown, Terry Pratchett (Harper; Doubleday UK)
Best First Novel
1 Agent of the Imperium, Marc Miller (Far Future)
2 Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho (Ace; Macmillan UK)
3 The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu (Saga)
4 Signal to Noise, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Solaris)
5 The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Natasha Pulley (Bloomsbury)
Best Collection
1 Dancing Through the Fire, Tanith Lee (Fantastic Books)
2 Three Moments of an Explosion, China Miéville (Macmillan UK; Del Rey 2016)
3 The Best of Gregory Benford, Gregory Benford (Subterranean)
4 Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction, Hannu Rajaniemi (Tachyon)
5 Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances, Neil Gaiman (Morrow)
Best Anthology
1 There Will Be War Vol X, Jerry Pournelle (Castalia House)
2 Hanzai Japan: Fantastical, Futuristic Stories of Crime From and About Japan, Nick Mamatas & Masumi Washington, eds. (Haikasoru)
3 The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-second Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois, ed. (St. Martin’s Griffin)
4 Old Venus, George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois, eds. (Bantam)
5 The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, Joe Hill & John Joseph Adams, eds. (Mariner)
Best Nonfiction Book
1 SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police, Vox Day (Castalia House)
2 Beyond Light and Shadow, Marc Aramini (Castalia House)
3 The Culture Series of Iain M. Banks, Simone Caroti (McFarland)
4 Ray Bradbury, David Seed (University of Illinois Press)
5 The Unique Legacy of Weird Tales, Jeffrey Shanks and Justin Everette, (Rowman & Littlefield)
Best Art Book
1 Julie Dillon, Julie Dillon’s Imagined Realms, Book 2: Earth and Sky (self-published)
2 Petar Meseldžija, The Book of Giants (Flesk)
3 The Fantasy Illustration Library, Volume One: Lands & Legends, Malcolm R. Phifer & Michael C. Phifer (Michael Publishing)
Best Novella
1 Fear of the Unknown and Self-Loathing in Hollywood, Nick Cole (Tales of Tinfoil)
2 Penric’s Demon, Lois McMaster Bujold (Spectrum)
3 Perfect State, Brandon Sanderson (Dragonsteel Entertainment)
4 Teaching the Dog to Read, Jonathan Carroll (Subterranean)
5 Slow Bullets, Alastair Reynolds (Tachyon Publications)
Best Novelette
1 Flashpoint: Titan, Cheah Kai Wai, There Will Be War Vol. X (Castalia House)
2 Folding Beijing, Hao Jingfang (Uncanny Magazine)
3 What Price Humanity?, David VanDyke, There Will Be War Vol. X (Castalia House)
4 Hyperspace Demons, Jonathan Moeller (Castalia House)
5 Obits, Stephen King, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (Scribner)
Best Short Story
1 Space Raptor Butt Invasion, Chuck Tingle (Amazon Digital Services)
2 Seven Kill Tiger, Charles Shao, There Will Be War Vol. X (Castalia House)
3 If You Were an Award, My Love, Juan Tabo and S. Harris (Vox Popoli)
4 The Commuter, Thomas Mays (Amazon Digital Services)
5 Asymmetrical Warfare, S. R. Algernon (Nature Nr. 519)
Best Magazine or Fanzine
1 Black Gate
2 File 770
3 Analog
4 Asimovs
5 Sci-Phi Journal
Best Book Publisher
1 Castalia House
2 Baen
3 Gollancz
4 Orbit
5 Del Rey
Best Editor – Pro or Fan
1 Jerry Pournelle
2 Vox Day
3 Mike Braff
4 Toni Weisskopf
5 Jim Minz
Best Artist – Pro or Fan
1 Michael Whelan
2 Rowena Morill
3 Lars Braad Andersen
4 Michael Karcz
5 Larry Elmore
Keep this sordid history of scientific consensus in mind every time you hear the AGW/CC charlatans selling their global government scam on that basis:
In 1980, after long consultation with some of America’s most senior nutrition scientists, the US government issued its first Dietary Guidelines. The guidelines shaped the diets of hundreds of millions of people. Doctors base their advice on them, food companies develop products to comply with them. Their influence extends beyond the US. In 1983, the UK government issued advice that closely followed the American example.
The most prominent recommendation of both governments was to cut back on saturated fats and cholesterol (this was the first time that the public had been advised to eat less of something, rather than enough of everything). Consumers dutifully obeyed. We replaced steak and sausages with pasta and rice, butter with margarine and vegetable oils, eggs with muesli, and milk with low-fat milk or orange juice. But instead of becoming healthier, we grew fatter and sicker.
Look at a graph of postwar obesity rates and it becomes clear that something changed after 1980. In the US, the line rises very gradually until, in the early 1980s, it takes off like an aeroplane. Just 12% of Americans were obese in 1950, 15% in 1980, 35% by 2000. In the UK, the line is flat for decades until the mid-1980s, at which point it also turns towards the sky. Only 6% of Britons were obese in 1980. In the next 20 years that figure more than trebled. Today, two thirds of Britons are either obese or overweight, making this the fattest country in the EU. Type 2 diabetes, closely related to obesity, has risen in tandem in both countries.
At best, we can conclude that the official guidelines did not achieve their objective; at worst, they led to a decades-long health catastrophe. Naturally, then, a search for culprits has ensued. Scientists are conventionally apolitical figures, but these days, nutrition researchers write editorials and books that resemble liberal activist tracts, fizzing with righteous denunciations of “big sugar” and fast food. Nobody could have predicted, it is said, how the food manufacturers would respond to the injunction against fat – selling us low-fat yoghurts bulked up with sugar, and cakes infused with liver-corroding transfats.
Nutrition scientists are angry with the press for distorting their findings, politicians for failing to heed them, and the rest of us for overeating and under-exercising. In short, everyone – business, media, politicians, consumers – is to blame. Everyone, that is, except scientists….
In a 2015 paper titled Does Science Advance One
Funeral at a Time?, a team of scholars at the National Bureau of
Economic Research sought an empirical basis for a remark made by the
physicist Max Planck: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by
convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather
because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that
is familiar with it.”The researchers identified more than 12,000 “elite” scientists from
different fields. The criteria for elite status included funding, number
of publications, and whether they were members of the National
Academies of Science or the Institute of Medicine. Searching obituaries,
the team found 452 who had died before retirement. They then looked to
see what happened to the fields from which these celebrated scientists
had unexpectedly departed, by analysing publishing patterns.What they found confirmed the truth of Planck’s maxim. Junior
researchers who had worked closely with the elite scientists, authoring
papers with them, published less. At the same time, there was a marked
increase in papers by newcomers to the field, who were less likely to
cite the work of the deceased eminence. The articles by these newcomers
were substantive and influential, attracting a high number of citations.
They moved the whole field along.A scientist is part of what the Polish philosopher of science Ludwik
Fleck called a “thought collective”: a group of people exchanging ideas
in a mutually comprehensible idiom. The group, suggested Fleck,
inevitably develops a mind of its own, as the individuals in it converge
on a way of communicating, thinking and feeling.This makes scientific inquiry prone to the eternal rules of human
social life: deference to the charismatic, herding towards majority
opinion, punishment for deviance, and intense discomfort with admitting
to error. Of course, such tendencies are precisely what the scientific
method was invented to correct for, and over the long run, it does a
good job of it. In the long run, however, we’re all dead, quite possibly
sooner than we would be if we hadn’t been following a diet based on
poor advice.
It is always necessary – it is absolutely vital – to carefully distinguish between scientody, or the scientific method, and scientistry, which is the scientific profession. The evils described in this article are not indicative of any problems with scientody, they are the consequence of the inevitable and intrinsic flaws with scientistry.
To simply call everything “science” is to be misleading, often, but not always, in innocence. Science has no authority, and increasingly, it is an intentional and deceitful bait-and-switch, in which the overly credulous are led to believe that because an individual with certain credentials is asserting something, that statement is supported by documentary evidence gathered through the scientific method of hypothesis, experiment, and successful replication.
In most – not many, but most – cases, that is simply not the case. Even if you don’t use these neologisms to describe the three aspects of science, you must learn to distinguish between them or you will repeatedly fall for this intentional bait-and-switch. In order of reliability, the three aspects of science are:
We might also coin a new term, sciensophy, as practiced by sciensophists, which is most definitely not an aspect of science, to describe the pseudoscience of “the social sciences”, as they do not involve any scientody and their additions to scientage have proven to be generally unreliable. Economics, nutrition, and medicine all tend to fall into this category.
It’s not that I expect everyone to have read SJWs Always Lie. But it amazes me that people are still failing to notice that backing down and attempting to virtue-signal in the face of manufactured SJW outrage only leads to additional attacks:
The furore began when Atonement author McEwan gave a speech to the Royal Institution last week about the representation of the self. He had said: ‘The self, like a consumer desirable, may be plucked from the shelves of a personal identity supermarket, a ready-to-wear little black number.
‘For example, some men in full possession of a penis are now identifying as women and demanding entry to women-only colleges, and the right to change in women’s dressing rooms.’
The Man Booker Prize winner then reportedly clarified his comments to a member of the audience, saying: ‘Call me old-fashioned, but I tend to think of people with penises as men.’
His remarks prompted criticism from the transgender lobby and he was accused of being ‘backward-looking’ by cross-dressing comedian Eddie Izzard.
Whilst appearing to back down on his views, McEwan’s statement indicates he was surprised by the reaction to his comments. He wrote: ‘In response to a question, I proposed that the possession of a penis or, more fundamentally, the inheritance of the XY chromosome, is inalienably connected to maleness. As a statement, this seems to me biologically unexceptional.’
He went on to condemn discrimination against the transgender community and to say that changing or redefining gender is an ‘extension of freedom’.
‘That the transgender community should want or need to abandon their birth gender or radically redefine it is their right, which should be respected and celebrated,’ he wrote. ‘It’s an extension of freedom and the possibilities of selfhood. Everyone should deplore the discrimination that transgender communities have suffered around the world.’
LGBT charity Stonewall, which last week described McEwan’s views as ‘uninformed’, said yesterday: ‘Although it’s good to see that he has acknowledged the hurt that has been done to the trans community, his comments at the lecture and statement do nothing to help their situation and in fact further isolate trans people and entrench transphobic attitudes.’
But the message is getting out there nevertheless, and so strongly that the SJWs are afraid of it. I did an interview recently that was intended for the Huffington Post, but when the editors there saw it, they spiked it. They are terrified of exposing their left-liberal readers to alt-right ideas, because even when presented with all the usual spin and virtue-signaling, those ideas are proving more convincing, attractive, and in harmony with reality than their dogma.
Actual headline and subtitle at the increasingly mistitled Reason:
The Alt-Right Is Wrong: Trump Is an Enemy of Western Civilization, Not Its Champion
If your candidate opposes free trade and free speech, he’s not a defender of classical liberalism.
This is almost astonishingly ignorant. It amazes me to have to point out that classical liberalism is not Western Civilization, which predates classical liberalism by literal centuries.
Moreover, it is free trade that poses a deadly danger to Western Civilization, as the combination of cheap travel and communications technology, relaxed border controls, and the free movement of people that is necessary for the operation of free trade are putting Western Civilization in the greatest peril it has known since the Turks were knocking at the gates of Vienna.
It’s not just a stupid headline writer either, as Robby Soave doubles down in the body of the article itself:
No presidential candidate who fails to grasp why unrestricted trade across national borders is the hallmark of a civilized society is fit to lead one, and no leader who seeks the power to shut down newspapers who criticize him can be trusted to defend classical liberalism from its enemies.
Apparently Robby is not only ignorant of European history, but of American history as well; no American president has ever favored unrestricted trade across national borders, not even Bill Clinton or George Bush.
And, again, classical liberalism is not Western Civilization. The temporal and conceptual subset should never be confused with the set.
A few people have asked me what is wrong with Trump lately, given his recent media missteps and his bigger-than-expected loss in Wisconsin. I think the answer is very simple. He’s tired. This nomination campaign is a marathon, not a sprint, and it is an exhausting process. In every human endeavor, we see the pattern of ebb and flow, the fractal Elliott Wave pattern of 1-3-5 with the 2-4, the back-and-forth swing of the momentum pendulum.
Trump has had two big surges, one that began in New Hampshire and carried through Super Tuesday, the other that carried him through big victories in Florida and Arizona. The question is if he can summon up the energy required for the final push to victory.
The last two weeks have been what happens when a candidate who depends upon his high energy to carry his campaign through finds himself flagging. And, as usual, all the short-term linear thinkers who look only at the present assume that it’s all over and his trajectory is downward.
I suspect that being back home in New York will energize Trump and he’ll roar back into aggressive action after he is remotivated by a landslide win over Cruz there. Whether that will be enough to carry him through California, I don’t know, but remember, what he absolutely needs to win before the convention are: a big win in proportional New York, solid wins in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, a minor state win, and then a clinching victory in California.
That’s not certain, but it is far from being impossible, or even unlikely. April 26th looks to be an interesting day, as Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware will vote and the finalists for the Hugo Awards will also be announced.
UPDATE: Nate adds an important observation:
I think this is a fair assessment. but you’re also ignoring Trump’s weak spot, which is also one of his strengths. Trump doesn’t handling failure well. Oh, he’s fine losing one or two while winning 10. But he’s had a bad couple weeks and it is clearly showing. You can see it in his temperament. Looking back at the debates where Cruz and Rubio were ganging up on him he was clearly off-his game in the post debate interviews.
When he’s winning he appears to have a better grasp on what attacks to address and what attacks to ignore. When he isn’t winning he appears to lose that ability and lash out at everything and everyone that says anything negative about him.
This is an excellent point, and it is one reason why I’ve been saying New York is so important even though it’s not winner-takes-all. Trump is a high-energy front-runner who feeds on momentum. He’s a steamroller, he’s not a counterpuncher who is energized by finding himself on the ropes, a die-hard who will fight until the bitter end, or a comeback kid who needs to be knocked down once or twice before he even starts to get serious.