When Rights Are Wrong

The LGBTQ movement makes me, at once, angry and sad.

Angry because a relatively tiny demographic have virtually usurped a vital and broad discussion of human rights, as well as tried to normalize perversions that have no place in the public domain.

Sad because these poor people believe they have so little to offer the world that their entire estimate of self-worth is completely wrapped up in how and with whom they have sex.

Across the world, even now in the 21st century, there is a thriving trade in slaves, children are used as warriors and cheap labor, and huge numbers of women still aren't allowed basic freedoms many of us consider basic to existence.

Even as I write this paragraph, human beings are bought and sold for a variety of reasons in North Africa and the Arabian peninsula. Many Indonesian women are more or less sold across Asia as domestic servants, treated worse than the family dog, and frequently beaten to death with no consequences. Children are regularly used across Africa and Asia as cheap, disposable labor, while others are sold into sex slavery, a trade whose horrors are just now slowly coming to light. Women in many cultures still don't have the rights to travel, associate and speak - rights those in the West take for granted.

In other words, there is still a huge effort needed to bring every human being up to a very basic level of equality and enfranchisement in the common culture. Millions of human beings don't even have the luxury of wishing they had the most basic of rights, and the LGBTQ "community" has the gall to worry whether they can behave lewdly at the local Denny's or use any toilet they wish or force society to use dozens of ridiculous pronouns?

Meanwhile, the LGBTQ movement enjoys copious and luxurious rights, such as assembly and speech; assembly to brow beat the rest of us into accepting behavior that, in a polite and proprietary culture, is best left to the privacy of one's domain; speech to warp and torture the common language so as to avoid giving offence where none existed. They fail to realize, or worse, acknowledge the amazing and privileged life they enjoy. From the most profound premises of their arguments, their entire movement assumes having rights that millions of human beings can't even imagine having, much less using.

Here in Indonesia, gay men are arrested and publicly humiliated for engaging in homosexual activities. In many parts of the Middle East, men are put to death for the same. In many societies, just the suspicion of being homosexual can get a man shunned and excommunicated by society at large.

In the West, there are virtually no barriers to homosexuality. Gay men are just as acceptable as anyone else. They enjoy all the rights and benefits of any other citizen. They can publicly identify themselves as "gay" and most people shrug and move on to more interesting topics. The biggest complaint one hears from the LGBTQ "community" is perceived (or imagined) insults, and that is hardly a major concern when in other parts of the world one's life is on the line.

Every June, cities across the West host parades of the most vile and lewd behavior, while encouraging children to attend and be subject to the basest of human behavior, with virtually no consequences. Often times part or all of the proceedings are televised, so even those who don't attend are still subject to the cultural rot. These "gay pride" celebrations have even overshadowed what used to be Juneteenth, celebrating the end of slavery in the US.

In short, the LGBTQ movement has become institutionalized, with vast sums of money coming in the form of grants and donations. Those financial spigots are supporting entire populations to fight something that no longer exists - at least in the West - namely discrimination and disenfranchisement.

Instead of admitting victory, or better, putting their time and money to bringing basic rights to oppressed people elsewhere, the LGBTQ activists continue to manufacture more and more imaginary and manfactured "barriers" to justify the rivers of money flowing in - things like pronouns and non-gender toilets and the fantasy that a knife can change one's sex and the supposed "insult" that natural functions like breast-feeding babies damages psyches.

In order to protect this endless flow of "free" money, these groups must create and adopt new causes, and adapt their narratives to include ever more perceived wrongs. This is the primary reason the original LGB moniker has added a T and a Q, and seems destined to continue adding letters in the quest for more funding.

In other words, it's become a business and a source of income for thousands of otherwise unemployable social workers, social scientists, social justice warriors, and busy-body activists. The LGBTQ movement, like government science, must keep inventing new frontiers of in order to justify the pallets of money being delivered to them from public coffers.

It is no longer about equal rights, but about supporting scads of unjustifiable and otherwise useless payrolls and projects in societies where the original issues have all but disappeared.

The question still remains, though, why do I feel sad for these folks?

Imagine your life being so empty and without value that you base your entire weltanschauung on who you sleep with.

Imagine having no over-arching philosophy of politics, science, art, cosmology, religion, or humanity to give context to your existence, other than your next orgasm. Imagine having no other reason to live but to find your next sex partner and force everyone else to be OK with your choice. Imagine finding no greater injustices in an unjust world than to stop others from teasing you.

What a sad, pitiful existence.

In a world where most of us define ourselves by our beliefs and achievements, these sad people have nothing more to offer the world than to parade their private proclivities in public and defy the rest of us to say anything about it. What a miserable and empty existence that must be.

Imagine the disconnect and lack of maturity in an adult mind, where playing dress-up and exploring boundaries is still the focus of existence. This used to be considered mental illness.

There are two remedies for this situation that go hand-in-hand.

First, we must return to a culture that values not what we are by birth, but what we do for the greater benefit of society. That Michelangelo was probably gay is useless and uninteresting information. What he gave to our culture is astounding. We must return to praising the great achievements of individuals and encouraging more of it, instead of dragging the world into our bedrooms and forcing it to accept our foibles, hedonism and psychoses.

Second, we must cut off the flow of taxpayer money to EVERY cause or question someone with good grant-writing skills can think of. This includes not just useless social movements, but Big Science and avant guard "art" projects. If these things have any value to society, there will be ample investment from the private sector.

The shovel-fulls of government money have created enormous bloat in hundreds of empty efforts that produce nothing of value for the rest of us, but offer comfortable employment for those with degrees in social "sciences" or gender/racial "studies". If George Soros wants to keep throwing his fortune at these manipulative ventures, he is free to do so with his own money, but we must stanch the flow of funds from public treasuries, which amounts to little more than political favoritism and corruption.

You could cross-breed aardvarks with armadillos and sell the results as sex toys, for all I care. What you do behind your doors and on your property is completely and entirely your business - until it crosses the line of propriety and the public space. You may not engage in these activities with people who do not or cannot consent, and you may not do them if it impedes on the rights of others within the public sphere. Within your domain, you can use whatever pronoun and toilet you want, but out here in the real world, there are two pronouns and two toilets.

I resent being forced to participate in others' peccadilloes, either by being forcefully dragged into activities and dialogue I don't want to engage in, or by siphoning off tax money to support a bunch of useless "research," "activism" and "projects" - most especially if it is at the point of a gun.

If one wants society at large to leave one alone in one's imaginary world, then one must leave the rest of us alone to enjoy ours. If one is incapable of allowing others the courtesy of pursuing other interests than one's own, then one must suffer the push-back that invariably comes with it (note use of non-gender pronoun).

One must respect my boundaries, desires and rights within the confines of my property and associations. One must accept that not everyone can or wants to agree with one's every whim. One must realize and accept, like every child does growing up, that there are limits to behaviors in the public sphere, so that we can all participate in that realm in a polite and agreeable manner.

I promise to give you the same respect.

Deep Throat v. Q

UPDATE 5SEP2018: As if on cue (Q), Woodward AND Bernstein (affectionately known in the Inner Circle as Woodstein) have both reappeared on the scene just in time for the Kavanaugh hearings.  Yes, we are taking credit for forecasting this one.
Bob Woodward
Carl Bernstein

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear during the halcyon days of Watergate in the early 1970s.  For those too young to remember, Watergate was a political crisis in which President Richard Nixon was brought down by a cover-up to hide a group of CIA operatives who broke into the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) national offices at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., to dig up dirt on George McGovern and other Democrat candidates.

If this doesn't sound familiar, please click over to CNN for 10 minutes before reading on.

One of the major features of that crisis was the reporting of two Washington Post hacks named Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward (played by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford in the movie).  The two reporters had several meetings with a mysterious source who called himself (or was called) Deep Throat.  The identity of Deep Throat has never been revealed, though there are reams of speculation, with a dozen or so books written on the topic.  Leads and information provided by Deep Throat led to evidence and key revelations that brought down the president and put a number of folks in jail, as well as making Nixon's name the stuff of bogeymen dreams for future politicians for decades.

I could wax verbose on Watergate and frankly, the jury of history is still out, since the reporting on the crisis was so heavily skewed to the Left that there has been little balance.  It will take years still to sort it all out, but one key feature we know for sure is that Hillary Clinton began her political career as a junior lawyer investigating that scandal.

Skip forward 40 years, and we are watching a similar, if not far more massive scandal unfold in Washington, D.C.  This time, it is a DNC cabal, centered around the very same Hillary Clinton, who have been caught trying to manipulate the 2016 election by fabricating evidence to justify surveillance on an opposition candidate, and then perpetrating a massive cover-up using government agencies - specifically the Department of Justice and the FBI.

The delicious irony here is obvious.

What makes this newest scandal so amazing is the vast scope of the criminality - only now coming to light - and the use of government resources across all branches, such as the FISA court, Congressional committees, NSA and other intelligence agencies to perpetrate the crimes.  One cannot overestimate the breadth and depth of this scandal.  If it goes even a fraction as far as the Watergate investigation, it will bring down hundreds of government bureaucrats, a former president and a former presidential candidate - the latter of whom was part of the effort that destroyed Nixon.

History does't repeat, but it rhymes.

What makes this scandal even more mind-blowing (in the truest sense of the term) is that it threatens to expose a decades-old, and quite possibly a centuries old operation to blackmail and extort politicians around the world.

I am referring, of course, to the PedoGate scandal, so named in the American tradition of relating every scandal to Watergate, which is oddly poetic in this case.

The use of compromising information to control politicians is one of the oldest tricks in the book.  Feeding off of their human foibles and weaknesses, secretive groups lure politicians into compromising situations, then use the traps to control them by threatening to expose the dirt.

Records of this trick pre-date the Roman Empire, but the modern form is so insidious and demonic as to cause most people to collapse in fits of incredulity.  The tools to obtain and use the compromising information are sitting in front of you as you read this.

For likely hundreds of years, a small group of interests have controlled most of the world's political entities by luring politicians into pedophilia, a crime so vile that no one could survive being exposed.

Through this nefarious means, global events have been steered by a relatively small number of people, who have been able to control entire nations by simply compromising key political and business figures.

It works very simply but effectively.  Play the game and your pockets and bank accounts will swell, and you have a position of power and influence for life.  Don't play the game, and your name will be dragged into the dirt for all eternity and you will spend your remaining years swabbing toilets at the local correctional facility.  Just sell your soul and the deposits will start first thing tomorrow morning.

The problem is, you may be asked to fall on your sword for folks higher up the chain of command.  Kind of a slimy multi-level marketing scheme.

Because of the nature and scope of this scandal, and its rhyme with Watergate, it makes sense that a Deep Throat character would emerge, but instead of using two hack reporters from a disgraced newspaper organization owned by one of the most corrupt people in the world, this new Deep Throat would utilize the internet and turn all of us - or those willing to listen - into the Neo-Woodward-and-Bernsteins.

Enter stage right: Q and the Anons, which would make a killer band name. Think of the Anons as Sherlock Holmes' Baker Street Irregulars, or Buckaroo Bonzai's Blue Blazer Irregulars. The drops remind me of the Orphan Annie Secret Decoder Ring, distributed in your jar of Ovaltine, and the secret messages at the end of every radio broadcast.

I personally have no idea what to make of Q.  I have listened to the gaggle of YouTubers out there posing, postulating and preening on the topic.  I watched as Alex Jones and Jerome Corsi imploded all over the story.  I have read all the posts, also known as "drops" and "crumbs".  I have examined the so-called "winks", where someone will demand proof of Q's proximity to Donald Trump by getting the president to say or write something that can be directly linked to the request. (see "tippy-top" around last Easter)

I have to admit, I am intrigued.

But I am also very leery.  Q purports to be military intelligence and part of a team that recruited Trump to run for president in order to avoid an all-out military coup d'etat in the United States, against the gaping void of corruption in Washington known as the Clinton-Obama cabal.  Q is supposedly 'dropping' hints that allow researchers to find evidence hidden in plain sight, as well as predict actions the president will take in order to gain credibility and prove to everyone that Trump is keeping his promise to "hang" the cabal.

It seems a long shot to recruit Trump as the last resort before a full military coup, but then the whole scandal is predicated on Clinton assuming she would win, as well.  Touche.

To say that Q has all the ear-marks of a psy-op, or minimally a disinformation campaign, is an understatement.  The plot sounds like something straight out of a Tom Clancy novel with healthy doses of Robert Ludlum and Ian Fleming thrown in.

In other words, it's all just a bit too convenient and sensational.

But - and there's always that "but" hanging out there in the mists - suppose Q is real and the promised anti-coup is actually underway in Washington and worldwide?  Suppose this scandal threatens not just the Clinton-Obama cabal, but European, Asian, and Arab leaders, and even the Pope himself?

Certainly, for anyone with their eyes wide open, there are piles of events going on globally that can be interpreted to be part of a massive effort to expose the cabal that has controlled so much of our history and the world for centuries.  Events in Washington, Saudi Arabia, Europe, the Vatican and elsewhere seem to indicate a panic at highest levels of the dark side.

For years, many writers, including myself, have speculated on a perceived angst gripping the halls of power.  Perhaps they have been aware, or at least perceived a global shift in what we 'little people' are thinking and doing.  Perhaps they have tools that can predict mass movements and take the proverbial temperature of the entire human race.  Perhaps they have foreseen a swelling of ranks on the part of us wild-eyes conspiracy nuts who don't buy the public narrative.

Perhaps...

Perhaps Donald Trump really is a recruited face-man for the white hats.  Perhaps Q really is a Deep Throat, cueing all of us to search for specific information and watch certain events.  Perhaps the great Battle Between Good and Evil has begun in earnest.  There's a whopper-load of conditionals and speculations loaded into a handful of sentences, which would be better discussed around a table at the local pub over several long nights.

The moniker "Q" strikes me as a choice designed to activate Star Trek fanboys who live in Mom's basement and live for researching minutae and building stories around them.

The use of anonymous handles, 8-Chan and crypto keys seems well chosen to activate the conspiracy hounds and comic book buffs.

The element of military intelligence and spies seems perfectly selected to activate the political intrigue crowd who live for cat-and-mouse tales.

And the addition of PedoGate seems carefully selected to hook just about everyone else.

I offer no insights into who or what Q is.  I can only observe the project design and the influence it is having across the NetSphere.  As I have said, the phenomenon intrigues me from the standpoint of a mass behavioral study.

One thing I know for certain is that if Q is real and the things Q 'drops' and the 'crumbs' it leaves are real, then it will be the stuff of legends for decades, even centuries to come.  If we assume that everything about Q is true and accurate, then we are looking at a profound and probably unprecedented shift in Humanity and the way the world operates.  Q will become legendary in a way that Deep Throat only dreamed of, and the resulting crash of systems will make Watergate look like a perambulation in the park on Sunday afternoon.

Mostly what it reminds me of is the CICADA 3301 phenomenon.  If you are not familiar with the Cicada puzzle, I highly recommend reading up on it.  Many aspects of that global phenomenon match almost perfectly with the Q.  It may even have been a training or test run for the Q.

In any event, Q and the surrounding events and individuals bear watching from an historical perspective.  If my instincts are as accurate as I believe they are, then this Q phenomenon will be something our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will ask us about.

And if not, then it's wildly entertaining to watch.  It may become a Ph.D. paper or two for behavioral scientists if nothing else.

Either way, those of us who watch these things will learn a number of valuable lessons for future generations to ponder.

Avengers: Infinite Confusion (review)

Imagine getting on a roller-coaster that only has one speed - breakneck - and the entire ride consists of one massive dive off an unimaginably high peak.  That pretty much sums up my experience with "Avengers: Infinity War".

Now admittedly, I'm not a fan boy.  I really liked the first Iron Man installment and I've enjoyed all the manifestations of Hulk and Spider Man since I was a kid (Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno and Nicholas Hammondrespectively). 

I never read comic books, preferring real books like "Treasure Island" and "Robinson Crusoe" instead.  So, I was a bit lost when all these characters started showing up.  I knew the Guardians guys from the first movie, but I missed Dr. Strange's introduction, and had no idea who the rest of them were, including the bad guy who wasn't really bad, or something like that.

My first criticism is, what the hell happened to glorious techi-color?  Once upon a time, it was a big freaking deal to have movies and TeeVee in "living color," now everything is a strange steel gray with vague hues of hinted color washed over everything like those old hand-colored photos, and Turner's horrific colorized movies.  Can we return to those amazing days of yesteryear and have something approximating color again?  That would be really fun, at this point.  Maybe at some point in the distant future Turner will colorize films like this.

My next criticism involves the decision to throw EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER in the Marvel stables into one film.  C'mon guys, why not make two or three films covering different aspects of the same event, then bring them together at the end of the final installment, when we can at least kinda sort out who the hell is who in this mess? 

I pretty much kept up with the "story" up to the mid-point, but then gave up all hope of figuring out what the hell was supposed to be going on.  I gathered the bad guy was really good, albeit a bit warped; 75 superheroes couldn't coordinate their individual talents into a unified attack; and leveling entire cities had no repercussions, despite Donald Trump launching a few cruise missiles on three abandoned buildings in Syria causing months of hand-wringing - still to this day.

A better name for this film would have been, "Avengers: Life, the Universe and Everything."  Too bad Douglas Adams stole the title first.  I imagine Marvel execs sitting around the office pushing all their action figure heroes into a huge pile, and then tossing in the wet-bar sink for good measure.

My final criticism concerns this lazy directoral (spell check tags this as "direct oral" which is really funny) style popular now where, instead of taking the time to choreograph fight scenes and shooting a master shot, they just wave the camera around in a bunch of extreme close-ups, then edit them together in fraction-of-a-second cuts and call it a day.

On the plus side, the blend of CGI and "reality" is extremely good.  I had a hard time selecting out the pieces despite my 40+ years in the business.  If I turned off my higher reasoning and aural processing functions, and just looked at the pictures, it was a stunning experience, with a few really heart-pounding shots.  It could be that the entire film is CGI, and I have no reason to doubt it.

The list of credits alone was a gob-smacking moment of trying to imagine getting literally thousands of people in scattered parts of the world to work together on a single project.  I doff my hat to Marvel for this real-world feat.  Quite astounding.

Marvel has also pulled off one of the most miraculous cinematic stunts of all time - getting the majority of the audience to sit through the entire 18 minutes of credits for the now-famous "after-credits scene," which in all honesty, was even more baffling than the movie itself.

I watched the film with an Indonesian audience, and they got all the jokes.  The crowd laughed at the appropriate moments, so the humor was available and no one needed the subtitles to get it.  The humor was also organic and flowed from the characters and situations without being forced like James Bond one-liners.

The interactions of the characters was truly fun, and in the sections where there were less than 27 characters on screen, the dialogue was witty and each character had a unique voice, which given the overwhelming population, was a feat worthy of praise for the writers.

My biggest problem with this "story" is the same one I have with Superman - if the bad guy and/or the sum total of all the good guys are omnipotent, where exactly is the dramatic tension?  It's the same problem the Bumbledicks have with everything - if everyone is extraordinary, then by what standard do we judge them?  Put another way, if vaccine studies have no control groups, then we have no way of determining if the results are valid?

My wife and I choked down two large boxes of unbuttered popcorn, so obviously the action sequences were effective and fun.  Marvel came through for the cinema owners and made a product that sold products. 

Speaking of cinema owners, we saw the film at a CGV Cinema and were subjected to 30 freaking minutes of advertisements - not trailers, mind you, advertisements - and almost every one of them were for smartphones and apps, all of which I will now be personally boycotting for making a 3-hour movie even longer, especially since I was forced to pay for the privilege of having to watch those damn commercials. 

It reinforces my idea that I'm happier watching movies on the home theater, where I can skip the crap I don't want to waste my time on.  I can also pause playback while I run for more popcorn so I don't miss a key scene that might make sense of the entire second half of the film.

In the final analysis, I liked the movie.  It was fun, exciting, had some great character moments, and the effects were eye-popping.  Just don't go into it expecting to have any clue what is happening nor what the end means.  Both my wife and I left the auditorium scratching our heads.  She looked to me - the expert - to explain the meaning of the ending, and I was at a loss to do so.

When it comes to summer stock eye-candy, though, there is no comparison to anything else I've seen of late.  I'll give it a 4 out of 5 on the Mindless Entertainment scale, and a 2 of 5 on the Comprehensible scale, with a 5 of 5 on the Make It Go Boom scale. 

In 50 years, I doubt seriously we'll be celebrating this film as a turning point in cinematic history, like "2001: A Space Odyssey," which turned 50 in April 2018.  But it will probably stand up to another viewing when it comes out on home video, in a last-ditch effort to understand the "story", before I shelve it for all eternity.