CULTS... POLITICS...AND THE DEMISE OF HUMOR

 

The "Progressive"  movement like all proto-totalitarian movements has morphed into a thug like cult of fanatics who are humorless, insensitive and intolerant of anyone who gets in their way. 

 

They take on  pseudo sacramental symbolic  rituals speech and actions of the religions they so despise because their lives are empty and divorced from  the reality of the human condition. 

 

They want a society where the collective will as defined by a select elite few squashes individual wants, needs and rights like a bug.

 

To get to the utopia of automatons they desire, they have to dismantle  western civilization, brick by brick.  In the process of doing this  they have become the purveyors of truly asinine and idiotic ideas due to their lack of connectivity to historic norms that have stood the test of time... hence the circus we are threatened with being imprisoned in at the present.

 

America is in the midst of the of the rise of neo-Jacobin  politics trying to create a French Revolution "deux" to replace ex post facto, the revolution which gave us our freedom and liberties.  Ironically it is also simultaneously going down the "Red Book road" via a domestic version of China's "Cultural Revolution" where those who don't demonstrate sufficient ideological purity and zeal, first become pariahs while on their way to becoming enemies of the state.

 

We all know how both revolutions ended.  Citizen Genet is somewhere in hell smirking that the Americans have finally taken his advice, and are getting their revolution right.   But we can all  suppose that he is still fervently hoping for more blood and beheadings before we finally come at the place where all "Progressive" transformations eventually arrive.

 

Currently we now are faced with an ever growing and ever changing list of what is appropriate ( and safe) to both believe in and express  publicly.  Deviation from the Progressive party line now can mark a person for personal destruction.  Lose your job...lose your reputation...and somewhere down the line, history teaches...lose your life!

 

The progressives who occupy a space on the political spectrum sandwiched between Fascists...Maoists...Marxists... Stalinists... and Nazis are, like their comrades, all about grievance and outrage whether they are snotty coeds paying $65,000 a year at Dartmouth who demand unisex toilets as the way to combat all the "isms" they believe in their self indulgent minds oppress them. Or they are the Rainbow Swastika brigades   who demanded the "dismissal" of Brendan Eich at Mozilla because he gave money in 2008 to oppose same sex marriage. and therefor  is now somewhere between a monster and a non-person.

 

Then there is the honorary Doctorate that Brandeis was supposed to give to Ayaan Hirsi Ali who has spent her life exposing the evils of female genital mutilation, honor killings, child brides and all the other misogyny that Sharia has inflicted on Muslim women...including herself.  But the Hamas / Muslim Brotherhood  creation CAIR (Council on Islamic -American Relations) complained and now the degree has been withdrawn because in the words of its gutless President "her past words are inconsistent with Brandeis's core values".  Of course what past statements are not elucidated and one can now only imagine what the core values of Brandeis are today.

 

For over a decade we have been sounding the alarm bell about the rise of political correctness in our society, politics and culture.  The rise of PC in either or all of these areas is essentially the main tool for the Alinsky left to attain power by turning the world upside down by attempting to rewire human nature and rewrite human history.

 

PC keeps repackaging  itself as the tip of the spear of the forces of the historical vanguard...what ever the hell that means.  As you pick through the adolescent angst that is the substitute for reasoned and rational thinking ...the message seems to be... forget all you know and all you have been taught ...its all wrong and has made you the oppressor...the racist...the sexist...the homophobe...the  Islamaphobe...the 1%...and now you must be punished unless you are willing to be re-educated.

 

Today we are rapidly becoming prisoners of ideas and dogmas so bizarre  or so stupid  that sane people who are not paying close  attention usually end up  refusing to believe that these ideas are taken seriously by others.  The new truths being spread on college campuses and in the popular culture include the propositions that heterosexuality is deviant...Christianity is insanity ...marriage is slavery (unless you are gay ...then it is freedom)...the Israelis are Nazis..the Palestinians are the "Jews"....all clergy are sexual predators...Blacks cannot be racists...but criticism of Obama for any reason...is...   Discrimination is proved by statistics because  lack of  equal outcome in every aspect of life  demonstrates unfairness and unfairness is synonymous with inequality and inequality is caused by discrimination.

 

The second amendment is no longer valid (if it ever was in their minds) and there is no room for religion in the public square.  Any one who expresses his or her religious beliefs in public is now more likely then not in certain areas of the country,  to be met by scorn or a law suit particularly if the discussion or action takes place in a public school or on public property.   And no one seems to argue back that mindlessly limiting where a person can express or practice his or her religion is a clear violation of their first amendment rights.  Moreover few if any put forth the increasingly obvious fact that the state has de facto adopted a state religion of non-religion or anti-religion. 

 

All of the above dogma is proclaimed with deadly earnestness  because progressives and their fellow travelers on their side of the spectrum in fact have no sense of humor and don't abide a sense of humor in others.  Imagine working a comedy club with people looking and acting like Saddam, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Khomeini, Osama, Kim Jung Un, Pol Pot, Lois Lerner and Harry Reid in the audience.  That is what many conservatives experience speaking on college campuses today about anything that runs counter to progressive PC orthodoxy. 

 

A prior guest, Professor F.H. Buckley of George Mason School of Law wrote a witty and perceptive book entitled "The Morality of Laughter"in which he pointedly said

 

"The loss of a sense of humor has impoverished academic discourse where nonsensical theories that could not survive the test of ridicule are now taken seriously.  Before adopting a fashionable idea, we ought first to  inquire whether it twigs our sense of humor'"

 

In other words if it is so stupid that Stewart, Miller Fallon, Kimmel, Letterman, Colbert or SNL see the joke ...we should flush it and send its authors for treatment. 

 

Erlandsson

 

THE CASE OF PRISONER JUSTINA PELLETIER

 

To those who have not heard the story of Justina Pelletier, prepare to be outraged.  To  those who are familiar with it ...prepare to be outraged again.

 

Her ongoing nightmare was first chronicled by Boston Globe reporters Neil Swidey and Patricia Wen in December of 2013.  Justina is now a 15 year old young woman from West Hartford, Connecticut who was diagnosed at Tufts University Hospital with Mitochrondrial Disease by the Chief of Metabolism Services , Dr. Mark Korson, who had been treating her for three years.  Mitochrondrial Disease is a group of rare genetic conditions that effect energy, the stomach, the muscles, the brain and the heart.  Justina was the second daughter in a family of four daughters to be so diagnosed.

 

In February of 2013 while suffering from the flu, she  was rushed by ambulance accompanied by her mother Linda, to Boston Childrens Hospital (BCH ) in Massachusetts at the recommendation of Dr. Korson to see her Gastroenterologist, Dr. Alex Flores who had transferred to BCH from Tufts.

 

When Justina and her mother arrived at BCH she was not seen by Flores.  Instead her case was taken over by the Psychiatry Department at BCH who within three days came to the diagnostic conclusion that instead she was suffering from Somatoform  disorder which in laymen's terms translates for some into something like "your condition and related manifestations are all in your head".

 

When Linda and her husband Lou, who was on the telephone were notified of this, they were also notified that the Doctors from BCH were unilaterally withdrawing several medications prescribed by Tufts.  Both parents were vehement in their objection to this and demanded that Dr. Flores examine their daughter.

 

The BCH team then further notified the parents that they were prohibited from seeking any second opinions including from Dr. Korson.  Dr. Flores later admitted that he was also prohibited by BCH from even talking to his patient, Justina.

 

Lou Pelletier arrived at BCH the next morning determined to bring his daughter and wife home.  He noticed almost immediately that security guards were blocking every exit.  The BCH Doctors then told the parents that they had referred Justina's case to the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families with the recommendation that DCF take emergency custody of Justina on the basis that Linda and Lou Pelletier had been committing "Medical Child Abuse" which is a medical/legal "catchall phrase" as described by the two reporters.  It is controversial because it is very elastic and can stretch the meaning and substance of parents acting against the best interests of their child in a medical setting.

 

By Valentine's day 2013, Lou Pelletier had had enough and told the nurses he was taking his daughter home.  The hospital called security who again blocked all the exits and Lou called the the Boston cops.  When the police arrived they were informed by the medical staff that a 51A complaint had been filed against the parents and the case would be heard by a Judge the next morning.  The parents were then blocked from seeing Justina and the nightmare began in earnest.

 

The next day Suffolk County Juvenile Court Judge Joseph Johnston took custody of Justina away from her parents and transferred it to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on an emergency basis.  Justina was then sent to a unit called Bader 5 and placed in a locked room in the Psychiatric wing of BCH.  Bader 5 is reserved for seriously disturbed adolescents  even though there was no history whatsoever, that she had ever suffered or was suffering from any emotional or psychiatric malady.  This locked facility for at risk patients would be her home for the next nine months until her father broke an unconstitutional gag order from Judge Johnston and went public with his daughter's ordeal. As a result a contempt motion has now been filed against him.

 

Since Justina's incarceration, the family has retained legal counsel but their ability visit their daughter on a daily basis has been restricted for dubious reasons, to once a week under supervision.  Dr. Mark Korson has tried in vain to convene a meeting of all interested parties, including the parents in order to arrive at a consensus for the future treatment of Justina. 

 

The staff of both BCH and DCF have continued to treat the parents as both troubled and trouble makers without seemingly understanding the emotional toll being taken on them and her siblings.  The Judge appears to believe everything he is told by the hospital and the state while also being angry over the violation of his gag order which Allen Dershowitz has said is unconstitutional.

 

It has further been disclosed that the Pelletier case is just the latest in a series of at least five others at BCH where parents lost custody of their children to the BCH Psychiatry Department, one of whom  reportedly died while in their care.  This practice, which is not contained to BCH, has given rise to a sardonic appellation.  It has become known as "parent-ectomy".

 

Kathleen T. Higgins an RN who formerly worked at BCH and who is a mandated reporter for child abuse situations has accused BCH in a statement to DCF of "causing Justina to be unjustly and illegally imprisoned".

 

Justina's physical condition has deteriorated markedly since she became a ward of the state and was taken off her medication.  She cannot walk and is confined to a wheel chair while suffering from a variety of physical and emotional symptoms including edema of her lower extremities.  It should be remembered that just six weeks prior to her going to BCH, she was ice skating.

 

In late March of 2014, Judge Johnston granted permanent custody of Justina, a citizen of Connecticut who is now in a residential psychiatric facility in Framingham Mass., to the State of Massachusetts.  This done even while DCF was attempting to  transfer her to a facility in her home state.  Lou Pelletier is now seeking a writ of Habeas Corpus to have his daughter restored back to her family.  

 

This is about as frightening a case of violating both individual and parental rights and protections that I have ever seen in this country and the facts presented here today are just a synopsis of all that has unfolded.  The level of Judicial, Medical and Governmental malpractice is close to, if not actually, criminal.

 

The ongoing case of Justina Pelletier demonstrates in stark and dramatic fashion, how far down the rabbit hole the nation  has fallen.  The Judge and the staff at both BCH and DFC involved in this horror should  not just be removed and fired but arrested and tried for false imprisonment, for child abuse, and for violating the civil rights of Justina Pelletier who is an American Citizen who has an unalienable right to her life, her liberty and the pursuits of her happiness. She has the right that her dreams...the dreams that all young girls  have... should not turn to sackcloth and ashes  because she has become a pawn of the arrogant and powerful.  To help her and her family go to FREE JUSTINANOW.COM  ON FACEBOOK.

 

ERLANDSSON

 

THE GIRL WITH THE BOOKBAG WALKING THE RICE TERRACES OF BANAUE

 

In the northern mountains of Luzon in the Philippines lies the remote Province of Ifuago, home to the historic Rice Terraces of Banaue.  The terraces, 5000 feet above sea level were built by hand two thousand years ago, carved into the mountains and still worked by people living along their rims  and in the valleys that separate one set of terraces from another.

 

 

• The people in the valley in particular live largely without electricity eking out a living as harsh and primitive as you will find in the developing world.  This is a hard life for all who depend on the rice, but one that illustrates the indomitable strength and will of the human spirit.

One day at dawn from the balcony of my hotel in the village of Banaue, which looked over a portion of the terraces which go on for many kilometers, I watched a speck of a person  on the far side of the valley that separated the terraces, begin an hour long trek down one set of terrace steps, then across the valley floor and the stream that split one side of the valley from the other and then up the corresponding terrace steps to the top of the other rim.  The speck was a schoolgirl with her book bag and she made this pilgrimage by foot over hard terrain every school day  be it monsoon season or dry season because not going to school is not an option to her and her family.

 

Elsewhere in southeast Asia, Viet Nam specifically, school children in rural areas that flood during the rainy season, are put in large plastic bags and carried or dragged through fast currents of muddy brown water to the far bank.  One by one they are taken across to go to school and one by one are brought back the same way at the end of the school day. 

 

These are the faces of the third and second world poor who want a future and know that education is the road, however rough, muddy and sometimes impassable, that leads to a better life.

 

When you come face to face with this, you cannot help comparing these children to American  children.  The former live in a world where poor here would mean rich there.  And while comparisons may be odious, it is almost an imperative to make that comparison because somewhere along the way to becoming the richest and most powerful nation on the globe, we seem to have lost the spark to overcome adversity and now just accept it as a "new" normal.  In the not so distant past, we as a nation  used  the sheer force of our collective and individual will to become great.  We understood the lesson of history that teaches that while the climb to the top is long and hard, the fall to to the bottom or to the merely average can happen in the blink of an eye.

 

I had the occasion on another trip to the Philippines to interact with the teacher of an unruly grandchild who had been expelled for a variety of infractions. The teacher was without sympathy for my granddaughter who in truth had been lost to us for many years and then found.  The period when she was gone... living in the slums of Manila or with elderly relatives had taken their toll on her,  but in a society which had rules with teeth, she was not nor would ever be, the object of pity.

 

"Life is hard here" her teacher told us " and each child has to learn early that if you break the rules you are no longer welcome  and if you do not work hard ...you doom yourself".  My grand child was not reinstated but we found another school that accepted her.  Two weeks after we left to come home to begin efforts to adopt her, she vanished again.  I pray for her every day.

 

Here in America she would be probably passed from one grade to the next automatically, if in a public school.  If she was lucky she might get counseling which God knows she needed as well as a battery of psychological tests, but more likely she would probably not get as good a basic education as she would have gotten in the Philippines.

 

The lesson of her difficulties have not been lost on my other grand children nor I suspect on her former class mates.  She became a very real example of what happens when you don't try...when you don't follow rules with practical and valid reasons behind them.

 

These anecdotes vividly demonstrate for me something basic that spells out a sickness at the core of what has become our educational industry.

 

In order for education to succeed from generation to generation, it must start with the culture, the family, the child and the teachers. All must be in sync with one another ...all must believe in a shared set of values.  It used to be that way here but instead we have "progressed" to a culture of mediocrity and justification for failure.  As we enter into the most competitive economic, political and commercial period in world history...the weak, ill prepared and dependent will fall to the wayside and the strong, determined and disciplined will survive and prosper.

  

So for now...my money for that future... is on the girl with the book bag walking the Rice Terraces of Banaue

 

ERLANDSSON

 

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