Author: Crowhill Report

What do you think? Is that commendable gratitude, or one of the more tone deaf things you’ve heard recently?

I just read some mess about the CEO of a conservative company giving The New York Times an interview, and the article included this comment: “How long do the mainstream media hacks have to keep exposing themselves as frothing-at-the-mouth haters of conservatives before conservatives get it?”

A few observations.

• Yes, conservatives are slow. You’re only now noticing? Do you see how that works?
• Conservatives should never talk to the NYT (or other left-wing news outlets) unless they want to be ruined.
• That these publications are “frothing-at-the-mouth haters of conservatives” is beyond dispute.
• Note how conservatives nevertheless play along by calling these haters “mainstream.”

Many years ago, I was at a cocktail party at a publishing industry conference, and one of the men was claiming that China was going to take over the world. I said something along the lines of “maybe, but I think freedom will prevail, and China will collapse under the weight of its own tyranny.”

Which reminds me of something else …. It had bugged me (back in those days) that John Paul II didn’t do more to counter unorthodox movements in the church. His defenders said he believed error contained the seeds of its own destruction, so all that was necessary was to sit back and watch it collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.

The obvious response is “tell that to the people who lived their whole lives under Soviet totalitarianism,” but JPII knew more of that tale than I ever will, and he still seemed to discourage direct action (although he did have an influence in Poland, so they say).

The point being that while it’s nice to think error will eventually eat its own, it might take 100 years to do that, and who wants to live under the heel of the communists while we wait for them to fall under the weight of their own foolishness?

China is a serious threat to the free world in many ways, but the United States is too busy trying to decide what pronouns we should use. I’m sure President Xi has fits of laughter over that — as he orders a new aircraft carrier with the money he gets from having permanent “most favored nation” status.

With all this confusion bubbling around in my head, I took some small comfort from this: Is COVID China’s Chernobyl?

The Chernobyl disaster cost the Soviet regime whatever credibility it had with its citizens and was the last nail in the coffin for the image of Soviet communism abroad. For the current Chinese communist regime in Beijing, the growing evidence that COVID does not have zoonotic origins — that it did not jump from animals to humans — as China still claims, but most likely leaked from a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, points to culpability for a global disaster far worse than Chernobyl: so much so that it is not unreasonable to speculate about its implications for the regime’s survival.

I don’t think COVID will tip the Chinese regime, but I do think COVID is yet another bit of evidence that shows the world how oppressive and untrustworthy the Chinese are. Those examples will continue because of the nature of Chinese oppression and their disregard for either people or the truth. And sooner or later, people might start to push back.

I hope it’s soon enough.

I had some damage to the siding on my house, and had to get some bids from some contractors. They gave me prices, and I picked the lowest one. When I gave the bad news to the other guys, they said, “I’ll talk to my manager to see if I can go that low.” At that point the deal was done. I’d signed with the low-price guy.

I know how this game is played. They want to negotiate. I don’t. I don’t want to keep going back and playing one bid off another. I’ll do that professionally, if I have to, but not personally.

Still, I should have told them up front that I wasn’t going to play that game.

“Give me the best price you can live with, because you’re not getting a second swing at this work.”

… is what?

In a recent zoom meeting (with almost all women), I said “the back of his shirt,” which was met with universal scorn. I had violated orthodoxy.

When confronted with such a question, you’re supposed to reflexively say “a woman.” As if a man can’t be successful without a woman, supporting and helping him.

Which is ridiculous.

A supportive spouse is a wonderful thing, but it’s clearly not necessary.

Abraham Lincoln’s wife was not as asset, nor was John Wesley’s. And many successful men are bachelors.

What if we were to reverse the saying? “Behind every successful woman is a man”?

Oh, that would be heresy, because a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Right?

IOW, the original saying is plainly false, and it’s clearly sexist (because you can’t say it the other way). So why are we pressured to affirm it?

If you have any sense, you know why, and you refuse to bend the knee to this kind of pressure.

Marriage is a wonderful thing, and husbands and wives should support one another. A supportive spouse gives anyone — man or woman — a great advantage.

But you should always check these trite sayings against reality, and you should refuse to go along with lies to keep the peace with ideologues.