Society's ChildS


NPC

Memes are shaping elections and no one is immune from them

web memes
Moments after more than 100 million Americans finished watching the Super Bowl, a post on President Joe Biden's personal X account showed an image of him smiling, while his eyes emanated red beams. The Feb. 11 post read, "Just like we drew it up."

For the uninitiated, the message seems confusing at best and scary at worst. But the picture wasn't for them. It was designed for the online supporters and detractors of President Biden, who are already well aware of the so-called Dark Brandon meme.

Dark Brandon is just one of hundreds, if not thousands, of political memes that are subtly shaping the thoughts and perceptions of millions of voters in 2024.

In practice, an internet meme is any image, phrase, video, or other electronic material that people enjoy replicating, sharing, or reinterpreting to share with others.

No Entry

A low-trust society is an impoverished society

congress
The sole remaining reservoirs of trust in American life are personal networks, local enterprises and local institutions.

It's not exactly news that social trust has declined significantly in the United States. Surveys find that public trust in institutions and the professional classes that dominate those institutions has cratered. (see chart below) Social trust--our confidence that other people are trustworthy--has also fallen to multi-decade lows.

This was not the case in decades past. Americans maintained high levels of trust in their institutions, government and fellow citizens. The decline in social trust is across the entire spectrum: our trust in institutions, professional elites and our fellow Americans has declined precipitously.

The causes of this decay of social trust can be debated endlessly, but several factors are obvious:

Chess

Portugal sees shift to the right in general election

luispedro
© eco.sapo.pt.jpgLuis Montenegro • Pedro Nuno Santos
Portugal's centre-right Democratic Alliance Party has claimed victory by a slim margin in the country's general election, concluding eight years of Socialist Party rule.

The Democratic Alliance coalition's success in the snap election on Sunday saw its leader
Luis Montenegro, declare: "The Portuguese people have spoken. They want a different government, different policies, renewed parties and dialogue among their leaders...And that's what we are prepared to offer."
The electoral platform is made up of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) along with two smaller conservative parties, narrowly finishing first and defeating its socialist rivals in the election.

The election, in which no party secured a majority of seats in Parliament, saw both main parties - PSD and the Socialist Party (PS) polling roughly 29% of the vote. However, it was the right-wing Chega party which saw the biggest surge, securing 18 per cent of the vote, and 48 seats in the 230-seat parliament just five years after it entered Portuguese politics. It makes it the country's third largest political force. The result quadruples its seat count, from 12 to 48.

Target

6,000 foreign mercenaries killed in Ukraine, report published by Russia's Defense Ministry shows

foreign mercenary
© AP Photo / Bernat ArmangueA foreign mercenary takes part in a mission in Kharkov region, Ukraine.
Russia's Defense Ministry issued a report Thursday which said its forces have killed nearly 6,000 foreign mercenaries and volunteers fighting on behalf of Ukraine since the war began over two years ago.

The report claimed that in total 13,387 "foreign mercenaries" from multiple dozens of countries have fought in Ukraine, and offered a remarkably specific breakdown of nationalities. International press outlets underscored that it was impossible to independently verify the claims.

Comment: See also: NATO Troops MIGHT Deploy to Ukraine? They're Already There, And Getting Killed


USA

Consequences Minus Truth

"People crave trust in others, because God is found there." — Dom de Bailleul
Shameful Lady
© The Elephant
The rewards of civilization have come to seem rather trashy in these bleak days of late empire; so, why even bother pretending to be civilized? This appears to be the ethos driving our politics and culture now. But driving us where? Why, to a spectacular sort of crack-up, and at warp speed, compared to the more leisurely breakdown of past societies that arrived at a similar inflection point where Murphy's Law replaced the rule of law.

The US Military Academy at West point decided to "upgrade" its mission statement this week by deleting the phrase Duty, Honor, Country that summarized its essential moral orientation. They replaced it with an oblique reference to "Army Values," without spelling out what these values are, exactly, which could range from "embrace the suck" to "charlie foxtrot" to "FUBAR" — all neatly applicable to our country's current state of perplexity and dread.

Are you feeling more confident that the US military can competently defend our country? Probably more like the opposite, because the manipulation of language is being used deliberately to turn our country inside-out and upside-down. At this point we probably could not successfully pacify a Caribbean island if we had to, and you've got to wonder what might happen if we have to contend with countless hostile subversive cadres who have slipped across the border with the estimated nine-million others ushered in by the government's welcome wagon.

Momentous events await. This Monday, the Supreme Court will entertain oral arguments on the case Missouri, et al. v. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., et al. The integrity of the First Amendment hinges on the decision. Do we have freedom of speech as set forth in the Constitution? Or is it conditional on how government officials feel about some set of circumstances? At issue specifically is the government's conduct in coercing social media companies to censor opinion in order to suppress so-called "vaccine hesitancy" and to manipulate public debate in the 2020 election. Government lawyers have argued that they were merely "communicating" with Twitter, Facebook, Google, and others about "public health disinformation and election conspiracies."

Bizarro Earth

50 dead after 'anti-witchcraft rituals' in Angola, Africa

angola africa witchcraft
© RosaFrei/Getty ImagesThe deaths reportedly resulted from ceremonies in Angola earlier this year
At least 50 people have died in Angola after being coerced into drinking a herbal potion to prove they were not practitioners of witchcraft, police reported on Thursday.

The deaths occurred in the past two months near the town of Camacupa, local councilor Luzia Filemone told national radio, claiming that traditional healers had used a lethal mixture in the procedures.

"More than 50 victims were forced to drink this mysterious liquid which, according to traditional healers, proves whether or not a person practices witchcraft," Filemone stated.


Comment: Not unlike the ducking stool test Europeans allegedly practiced during the Middle Ages, and up to the 18th century.


Comment: As noted, this kind of belief and practice isn't uncommon, but could it be, going off the reports, that the concerns of people are increasing?


Attention

Zakharova refutes Estonian collaborators

"Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much." (Oscar Wilde)
Dear Readers:

Russian Diplomat Maria Zakharova is known around the world for her pithy put-downs of Russia's enemies. She is like a Russian, female, version of Oscar Wilde. In this story, Maria takes on the Estonians. Granted, it's like shooting fish in a barrel, but it's still fun to watch.

The topic is the 80th anniversary (celebrated last Saturday, March 9) of a Soviet air attack (March 9, 1944) on Nazi-occupied Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Tallinn was actually bombed many times in the course of WWII. First by the Germans, in the first few days of the war, and later by the Soviets, several times over the next few years, in the course of driving the Germans out.

Tallinn residents
© Awful AvalancheTallinn residents light candles to commemorate the Soviet bombs.
Apparently the Estonians didn't mind being bombed by the Germans, whom they considered to be their friends, but deeply resented the Soviet bombings. Which is why the Estonian Foreign Ministry decided make a big deal out of the 1944 anniversary. In their communique they termed the enemy bombers as "Russian" rather than "Soviet", and bemoaned the loss of life and property.

While it's true that bombs were not as "smart" in those days, and didn't always hit their target, the target was certainly fascist military formations. And yet the Estonian government, in its communique, insisted that the "Russians" were deliberately targeting "residential areas and cultural objects, just as they are doing now in the Ukraine."

Zakharova commented on her Telegram channel: "It is no secret to anyone that the current Estonian government associates itself with the Hitlerites... In fact, their rabid Russophobia would be envied by Goebbels himself."

Clipboard

Social contagion: Gallup survey finds nearly 30% of Gen Z women identify as LGBTQ

lgbtq pride flag gay lesbian trans
© Hannah Beier / ReutersPeople raise Bucks County's Pride Flag to kick off Pride Month in Doylestown, Pa., on June 1, 2023
Women ages 18 to 26 were more than twice as likely to identify as LGBTQ than their millennial counterparts, the survey found.

The percentage of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer adults in the U.S. continues to increase, reaching an all-time high of 7.6% in 2023, according to a new Gallup report. Broken down by gender, the survey of 12,000 people 18 and older across the country found that women were nearly twice as likely as men to identify as LGBTQ.

"Almost 30% of Gen Z women identify as LGBTQ+, most as bisexual," Jeffrey Jones, a senior editor at Gallup, told NBC News. "That's where a lot of the growth seems to be happening."

This is the first year Gallup has laid out its annual LGBTQ identification report in a way that breaks down each generation by gender. Looking at all generations, 8.5% of women and 4.7% of men identified as LGBTQ, the survey found. The survey reported margins of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points among LGBTQ respondents.

Comment: What will happen to all these folks when social approval for their lifestyle choices goes away? The pendulum always swings back.


Witch hat

Maryland city equity official says she wants US to burn to the ground: 'MY ideology can rise from the ashes'

Kayla Aliese Carter
© TIkTok: @kaylalieseMaryland city equity officer Kayla Aliese Carter labeled police as White supremacists in 2020.
The City of College Park, Maryland, hired a "racial equity" leader to spearhead its mission to eliminate systemic racism in its departments who has made statements defending violence and promoting the idea of a revolution against the United States.

Kayla Aliese Carter supports "Black liberation" through revolutionary means and said she is working with some activists to plan "how we will eat and live and grow after we burn it all down." She was hired to be a "Racial Equity Officer" under former Mayor Patrick L. Wojahn, who resigned from office after being arrested for child pornography.

According to the city's website, she assembled a team tasked with implementing a "racial equity" agenda across all city departments, affecting policies, practices, programs and budgets. However, after publication, the city told Fox News Digital that Carter doesn't oversee an entire team.

"Ms. Carter does not oversee an 'entire team.' Ms. Carter does not supervise City staff and her work primarily has been with the City's Restorative Justice Commission, which has been charged with the development and implementation of a successful process of restorative justice for College Park's Lakeland community," the city told Fox News Digital.

Carter was hired after former Mayor Wojahn signed into law "Resolution 20-R-16," "which renounced systemic racism, declared support of Black lives, and called for the ongoing explicit and conscious confrontation of racism," in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in 2020.

Comment: This woman's unabashed narcissism has revealed what drives many revolutionary Leftists: resentment. They resent having to work and they resent not being born with the intelligence and competence required to reach the top of competence hierarchies where they feel they belong. Hence the adoption of ideological causes which seek to reorder social hierarchies. It's the only way they can reach the top.


People 2

Majority disagree with Macron's comments on sending NATO troops to Ukraine - poll

French soldiers
© Getty Images / Anadolu
A majority of French people believe President Emmanuel Macron's increasingly hawkish stance on Russia is dangerous and will only increase tensions with Moscow, a new poll has found.

Some 57% of respondents believe Macron was "wrong" to "raise his voice against Russia" with recent remarks about deploying troops to Ukraine and calls to provide more support to Kiev, according to a survey by French broadcaster BFMTV.

Macron received a stern backlash in February after he suggested that the West "cannot exclude" the possibility of sending soldiers to aid Ukraine in its ongoing conflict with Russia.

Several NATO member states quickly repudiated Macron's remarks, asserting that they would put no boots on the ground in Ukraine. Macron, however, later doubled down on his original statement, arguing that his words were "weighed, thought-through, and measured."

According to the poll, a majority of French citizens believe his remarks not only increase tensions between France and Russia, but also create disagreements between France and its allies.