A Nation of Meddlesome Ninnies We've Become

We have become a nation of meddlesome Americans. It was not always so. There was a time when Americans did not nark on their neighbors. They didn’t inform on their coworkers. They have not, historically, been the comrades in a communist regime whispering, seeking favor from the authorities, and sending hated enemies to the gulag for minor infractions just for spite. Something in the last generation has changed. Americans have turned into a nation of busybodies, harassing strangers on the web, calling the police or their places of business, and generally feeling entitled to destroy someone's life with whom they disagree. Who needs Big Brother when anonymous strangers will seek to silence, defame, shame, and ruin innocent people when their target violates their personal moral code, not the law and not good sense?

There are a couple forms of this destruction. Over the weekend, I read two articles, one from the New York Times,  another at Gizmo, both detailing the menacing behavior of people who should have just minded their own damn business. It is a lost American art, and it needs to come back now as innocent people are having their private lives unnecessarily upended. In both cases, complete strangers distorted innocent activities by their fellow Americans and decided to invade and disrupt someone else’s life. What happened to minding one’s own business?

When did American life so completely change? A few things have happened. In small towns, everyone knows the Town Gossip, the loose-lipped Guttersnipe, the Babbling Drunk. These folks were the exceptions to the rule of minding your own business. Either through overt meanness or carelessness, a gossip passed along their stories at the knitting circle or at the bar. And while these people were often disliked, they were a known quantity and could be avoided. Or, the person who heard a tall tale from these folks could filter the contents through the lens of knowing the character assassin’s tendencies. 

Now, with the flat interaction online, filtering for character of a person on a Facebook page or fact-checking the veracity of a character assassin is impossible. An anonymous tip to a cop?  Another change happened, too: More mothers are in the workforce, so fewer parents are at home. People don’t know their neighbors and they don’t know the kids and they don’t interact with anyone. It’s easy to call the cops on people one doesn’t know. It’s less effort to be tattletale than a good neighbor.

Public shaming private citizens is now high art to be praised. People go onto the internet, take a picture, and write a post about some heinous sin that must be stopped: Like the crime of the peanut butter sandwich. It’s not your business if someone wears a MAGA hat. It’s not your business if someone wears a Che shirt (though they do reveal themselves as morons and it’s okay to point and giggle). It’s not your business if a parent lets her kid play in the park across the street or take a walk. It’s not your business if a kid is in a car playing a video game on a mild fall day.

Keyboard vigilantes might well expend some effort to better their own lives rather than seek some benign social media user to destroy. Tend your own little catastrophe that’s called life. What a narcissistic, overly sensitive, bitchy culture America has become.

Excerpts from Melissa Mackenzie @ The American Spectator

Thank You WHATFINGER NEWS for the 'Blog Explore' Linkage!

Irony Alert: The Godfather of Fake News Calls DJT 'Orwellian'

Disgraced 'Newsman Dan' Rather's face for some strange reason continues to appear on television screens. It's latest appearance was on Don Lemon's CNN basement rated talk feast in a deep intellectual discussion about outrage at the DJT presidency. At one point, Newsman Dan took the lead when he called the current administration “straight out of Orwell”, prompting Lemon to encourage Rather to expand on his comparisons of the Trump presidency and 1984, the classic dystopian Orwell tome. 

“Orwell, what he wrote it's practically a shooting script for Donald Trump. The point being here there is a method to this, and the method is to convince people that the only truth is the truth that comes from me, the ultimate power. I'm the man with the ultimate power. And he has made some way in that -- as several people have said before me he's not just attacking the truths, he wants to annihilate the truth. He wants to move us completely into the post-truth political era in which there's no such thing as objective facts. He is the only fact. He has all the facts, he has all the information, just listen to him.”  

Not only was The Godfather's TDS showing, but the hypocrisy just drips from his comments. Let me explain. 

Let's replace all references to Trump in Rather's above statement with references to "the Media" and see that Newsman Dan's comment demonstrates that he, like most in the media, have totally lost any sense of self awareness, or just a willing participant in a conspiracy of hate and propaganda. (my changes in bold)

“Orwell, what he wrote it's practically a shooting script for the anti-Trump Media. The point being here there is a method to this, and the method is to convince people that the only truth is the truth that comes from the media , the ultimate power. The Media is the ultimate power. And the media has made some way in that -- as several people have said before me they are not just attacking the truths, the media wants to annihilate the truth. The media wants to move us completely into the post-truth political era in which there's no such thing as objective facts. They are the only fact. They have all the facts, they have all the information, just listen to them.”

Watching the whole interview, other than the brilliant revelation that Trump was not descended from Sun Gods, the only real thing believable I heard coming from Newsman Dan was his statement "It is not an overstatement to say that what is going on now is a great and decisive battle for the soul of this country." Yes Dan, we know. And while you refuse to accept it, more and more Americans are coming to believe that in that 'decisive battle', we are led by the right man. Something your agenda driven opinion and blinding hate will never allow you to understand.

  
Thank You WHATFINGER NEWS and MJA for the Linkage!

A Good Monday Morning - Ansel Adams Style

And People Wondered Why Ansel Adams Wandered

 the Wilderness With His Camera for 50 Years. 

Will the APA Soon Designate TDS an Official Mental Disorder?

While the mental afflictions of reactionary, anti-Trump progressives have not yet been classified as an official diagnosis, the symptoms we have witnessed over and over and come to call 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' include uncontrollable crying, loss of bowel control, nightly pillow biting, helplessness, marathon viewing of CNN, screaming at the sky and spending excessive time on social media sites. Mental Health Professionals have taken note and are finally speaking up about this strange phenomenon. 

The Hill

"Therapists in the U.S. say they have seen a rise in politically-related anxiety. Though a condition has not been officially named, therapists and patients have referred to it as “Trump Anxiety Disorder,” according to a report from Canada’s CBC News. 

Elisabeth LaMotte, the founder of the D.C. Counseling and Psychotherapy Center in Washington, D.C., told CBC that there is a “collective anxiety” among her patients related to President Trump’s rhetoric and policies."There is a fear of the world ending. It's very disorienting and constantly unsettling." 

The American Psychological Association (APA) found in a recent online survey that stress levels following the election are the highest they’ve been in a decade. And the majority of respondents reported stress over the 2016 election and the future of the nation as factors. The APA also found a correlation between stress levels and electronic news consumption....."

In the earliest stages of the disease, TDS victims lose all sense of proportion. The later stages of have a profound effect on the victim's vocabulary as sufferers speak a distinctive language consisting solely of hyperbole. As TDS progresses, the afflicted lose the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality. In the advanced stages the afflicted lose touch with reality. Opinion becomes unmoored from fact and stuttering and uncontrollable slobbering may set in. 

Thank You MJA for the Linkage!

Middle Finger Symphony Theater

* No Tuxedos Required *

Brought to You by BLUESJUNKY: Honorary Chair of Music - Middle Finger Symphony Music Director

Thank You Bryce. That Was Lovely. You May Go Sit With the Other Special Children Now.

NYT & AP Target Supreme Court Nominee's Wife

NKT - The New York Times and Associated Press both have  filed requests under the state of Maryland's Public Information Act seeking emails that Ashley Kavanaugh, the wife of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, sent as town manager of The Village of Chevy Chase Section 5, according to documents obtained by America Rising Squared (AR2) .

According to the documents, the AP made a sweeping request for “all emails sent or received” by Ashley Kavanaugh’s Village of Chevy Chase email address. The New York Times is currently requesting that The Village of Chevy Chase Section 5 hand over “any emails to or from Ms. Kavanaugh that contain any of the keywords or terms  like “liberal,” “abortion,” “gay,” and “federalist,” while also explicitly asking for e-mails containing the names of certain individuals.

Here is a full list the Times requested. The list of terms reads like it was constructed in order to manufacture a hit piece on the wife of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. The documents appear to show that The New York Times is most interested in echoing liberal attack lines in the battle over Judge Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination, going so far as to target the nominee’s wife.

Captain Ahab Aims Harpoons at Trump’s Tweets

The New York Times reports that special counsel Robert Mueller “is scrutinizing tweets and negative statements from the president about Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the former FBI director James B. Comey.” The Old Gray Lady did not divulge whether the special counsel also seeks the names of books checked out on the president’s library card. As far as fishing expeditions go, this one evokes one such adventure told 167 years ago — and still checked out of libraries today.

“But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship’s company down to doom with him?” No Starbuck sails on the Badship Bob Mueller. Ahab fixates on the whale and loses sight of the mandate of his mission, the collateral damage that his monomania unleashes, and, ultimately, reality itself. The 140-characters-or-less presidential prose strikes as somewhat less esoteric and metaphorical than Moby-Dick. Do literary offenses amount to legal ones? They do when zealous prosecutors cannot find real crimes. The New York Times notes in its report, “Prosecutors who lack one slam-dunk piece of evidence in obstruction cases often search for a larger pattern of behavior, legal experts said.”

To produce a mighty book, Herman Melville explains, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it. Robert Mueller, who couldn’t convict Hells Angels and tried to frame Steven Hatfill as a domestic terrorist, now tries to write a mighty book with Donald Trump as his Moby Dick. This one figures to end for Ahab the same way the first one did.

Beware of fishing expeditions. You might catch something; monomania more likely than Moby Dick. They tend to hook the fisherman more often than the fish. But the man attached to one end of the line never sees it that way. - READ MORE

Obama Didn't Ban Reporters, He Just had Them Thrown Out.

The WH press corps, or maybe it better said 'activists masquerading as journalists', and their at-the-ready outrage went full tilt and made the story about them after a CNN reporter was banned from a Rose Garden ceremony for previously screaming at the President during a photo op and then refusing to leave when asked. To listen to them today you'd think this is a disgraceful historic first by a US presidential administration. Well, not quite. Barky Obama limited and pushed around his lapdog media like no one else, especially after being reelected.  And remember how people laughed at the comment he had made that his would be the most transparent presidency in history?

Let's Take a look at a few examples of how Barky treated the press in past shall we? 

Obama The Puppet Master

“The way the president’s availability to the press has shrunk in the last two years is a disgrace,” said ABC News White House reporter Ann Compton, who has covered every president back to Gerald R. Ford. This is different from every president I covered. This White House goes to extreme lengths to keep the press away.”

Obama Shuts Out White House Reporters Yet Again

"On Wednesday, while Obama met with donors from the House Majority PAC, the reporters were not even told where the meeting was taking place. The press corps has rallied together in recent months to protest restrictions on White House access, but despite their demands they continue to be locked out of major events in and out of the Oval Office.The White House Correspondents Association filed a formal complaint with press secretary Josh Earnest on Tuesday......"

Here’s just one of the times Obama had a reporter removed for interrupting him “in his house” the press claps wildly, even starts chanting Obama’s name while the reporter is being removed for yelling “NO MORE DEPORTATIONS”
 
And let not forget this reporter who was kindly asked to leave AF1.....

Even during the 2008 campaign Barky dissed the press:
Obama Boots Reporters From Conservative Papers while nonpolitical publications like Glamour and Jet magazines remained on board, at times even eliminated from the plane's traveling press were the Washington Times, the New York Post and the Dallas Morning News. 

And this from 2015: Washington Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo ejected from a State Department media briefing in Vienna and senior department officials threatened to call security on him, without him even saying a word.

But we wouidn't want all this to get out. Some people might be a bit embarrassed.......

Historic City to Change Name in Response to LGBTQ Protest

Middle Finger News Exclusive

D.F. Krause Reporting

Detroit Bends Over to Gay Protest of Homophobic City Name  

I guess this was inevitable. It was only a matter of time before the LGBTQYXZ social justice warriors figured out that Detroit was French for “of the straits,” and even though “strait” in no way means the same thing as “straight,” who cares? Things that come alive on the Twitter make as much sense as an episode of Will & Grace, and don’t ask me to explain any of those. It’s 2018 and SJWs get results quickly:

The City Council met in an emergency session just hours after Mayor Duggan’s apologetic tweet, and voted unanimously to change the city’s name to 'D’efféminé.

Everything changes now. Well, not the Lions sucking at football. But most everything. D’efféminé will still make cars, but no more of those gas-guzzling pickups. We’ve done enough feeding of all that machismo in Warren. Suburban Ferndale is concerned about losing its residents, but that’s a topic for another day.

Vive l’apostrophé!

At least it still starts with a D. The locals won’t have to get rid of those weird English letters on their hats. But now that they have to get used to D’efféminé, Michigan. I wonder if they don’t need to update their headwear to reflect the more properly sensitive.... sensibilities with which the letter represents the city.

There were a few people who objected to the change. They called themselves "Don’t Take Our Troit", or DTOT for short.

They argued that: a) “of the straits” has nothing to do with heterosexuality, and isn’t even spelled the same; b) this is really, really stupid; and c) all those Canadians across the river are laughing their little dandy canuk asses off. The group spoke to WXYZ-TV to express its objections. The response to DTOT came swiftly in the form of a joint statement from General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Blue Cross Blue Shield, the UAW and Mitch Albom. It said:

“We denounce in the strongest terms the bigotry and hatred of DTOT, which we can’t help but note could also stand for 'Donald Trump Our Thicky'. 

The D’efféminé community must come together and oppose all forms of hatred and intolerance, and if that requires members of DTOT to be thrown from the Ambassador Bridge, tolerance must be protected at all costs.”

On Friday night, the D’efféminé Tigers will host the Cleveland Indigenous Peoples for the first of a three-game series. We could not confirm at press time that Kid Rock will be sitting alongside Chief Wahoo at the game, but things happen quickly in D’efféminé, Michigan.

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Little Prick David Hogg Threatens DJT on the Tweeter

After the president tweeted out a warning to Iranian leaders to knock off the threats against America, little David Hogg, who's fifteen minutes of fame was abruptly interrupted by a porn star, treasonist government officials and a fat korean kid with a bad haircut, was trying to be a keyboard badass when he tweeted out his own belligerent rhetoric mirroring the tweet sent out by President on Monday.

Hogg is just an ambitious opportunist struggling to remain relevant and now little more than an unnecessary tool of the sensationalist media. So Yesterday. His pathetic boycotts and anti-constitutional screeds wore thin. You'd think he'd know threatening the President just ain't cool, and it would be a real shame if the secret service was to show up and put little David's balls in a vice for the evening. He's more than earned it.......